It started with the doorbell ringing. A nice looking young man had parked his low-riding red pickup truck in my driveway. When I opened the door for him, he introduced himself as my "meat man." He is the head of the fleet of Empire Frozen Foods home delivery men for our area and he's here to solve all my meat buying issues forevermore. If I'll follow him out to his truck, he will show me the best meat I've ever seen and cut me a deal. He's just trying to get rid of what's left in his freezer and since I'm a new customer, he has the best deal in the world for me. He whips out his brochure and is talking so fast I can't keep up, much less read the brochure AND listen! This is such a fabulous deal. Not everyone gets this deal. I can just help him out by taking these last two cases--one of chicken, one of beef--off his hands, for the incredible price of buy the chicken, get the beef. How much is the case of chicken? Well, ma'am, my meat man and his company have surveyed all the local groceries, including the military commissary, and averaged their prices. This box of chicken alone would cost $299 at that price. But, he'll give me both boxes--the chicken and the beef, for that incredible price. What's more, my meat man will lock in that price for a year and I'll never pay more than that for 2 boxes of choice meat. Meanwhile, I'm trying to do some mental math. I'm used to buying meat at a per pound price, but his brochure is broken down per serving. Still, a little quick math and division gives me $5 per serving. Now, normally, I pay $2 per POUND for boneless skinless chicken breast like this. I MUST have messed up the math. There's obviously no comparison between $2 per POUND and $5 per SERVING. Plainly, there is a mistake somewhere. And, knowing I'm no mathematical genius, I assume I must have done something wrong. I continue to half-listen to the fast-hitting sales pitch while trying to wrap my math-challenge mind around this perplexities of this dichotomy. And I become so confounded that I give in. How did it happen? How did I succomb? I really don't know. At some undeterminable moment I became the meat man's favorite person: a sucker. So, I wrote out the check. "Now, there is some tax involved here too. So, if you could, just make that out for $318." Uh, okay. My meat man even offered to help me load it into the freezer. "I have a PhD in freezer packing." (I swear I didn't make that up. It's a direct quote.) Oh, and don't forget, there is the best guarantee in the business! And that guarantee lasts for a year from the purchase price! Yippee!

So, I pack the meat into the freezer, thinking it somehow looks rather sparse as I stuff it all into an oddly compact area. Three hundred (plus) dollars... hmm. Hours later when A came home I told him I may have done something stupid. He got out the brochure and did some figuring of his own. Via Excell. I kid you not. As a side note, if you'd like to be amused some day, pop on over and see what kind of wonders exist in our archive of Excell sheets! Anyway, turns out that "average of the grocers and commissary" would charge you $20 for a 16 oz striploin (I've never even heard of a striploin!). But, with the incredible deal my meat man gave me, it was a mere $10 for each of those steaks. Yikes. In all, here's what my sweet deal boiled down to: 21 lbs of beef plus 18.5 lbs of chicken (3 lbs of which was heavily breaded "tenders") for $318. For those of you who can't do mental math so swiftly either, that's roughly EIGHT dollars per pound! And that's the special first-timer BOGO deal! Yeow!!!!!

So, yeah. After Excell enlightened us, A was none too pleased. Thankfully, he wasn't mad at the poor sweet sucker who makes him cupcake truffles. He called my meat man and told him I wasn't "authorized to make that purchase" (Ooops. Good thing the sucker can laugh at herself and her man!). My meat man gave him the run-around, of course. It was past business hours, so my meat man suggested A give the big guns a call this morning. A had no less than FOUR conversations with the the honchos and two more with my meat man. Fortunately (and this was my idea) we were in control because we could just stop payment on the check. And then it was up to them to pick it up or "make a donation." They tried to get A to agree to $35/box restocking fees and all kinds of things. Thankfully, A is not the sucker his beloved is (and he was a little more prepared for these conversations) and stuck to his guns.

Finally, my meat man agreed to come pick it up at noon today. But, he wanted everything repacked and ready to go when he arrived. A told him I would help him repack it. In the end I figured I wanted to spend as little time with the meat man as possible, so I had it all packed up by 11:50. No meat man. 12:00 no meat man. 12:10 no meat man. 12:20 my meat man finally showed up and said, "Well, I didn't know you were going to leave it outside!" Sheesh. So, our check is back in our hands, our freezer is nice and roomy, I have heaps more experience, and I gave A a chance to be my hero! :) It's not very often a capable, intelligent woman like me needs rescuing, but I like it so much, I just might have to play the sucker more often!