where's the beef?

The other day I received coupons in one of those "value pack" envelopes. You know, the ones that give you all kinds of coupons for vendors in your area/state? One of the coupons was for Omaha Steaks, which I'd never even heard of, but it seemed like a good deal. I think it was for 4 filet mignons, 4 flank steaks, 4 hot dogs, 4 chicken breasts, 4 baked stuffed potatoes, 4 of some other cut of beef I'm forgetting, and 4 hamburgers, all for $49.99. Plus, if you took the deal, they'd also give you 6 more free hamburgers. I don't normally pay attention to any of those coupons, but this really did seem like a good deal so I loaded Josie into the car after dropping Gabe off at school and we headed over to Omaha Steaks.

As soon as we walked through the door, I realized they must not be doing well in this economy. The store was completely deserted, and the salesperson actually looked shocked to have a customer. He jumped up from where he was sitting on the floor behind the counter and then set about making a sale. By the time we walked out of there, he'd pretty much given me half of a cow. Literally.

He offered to double the deal and then knock $20 off the price of the order. Then he threw in 6 more free hamburgers. Then for $10 he gave us 2 boxes of salisbury steak over noodles plus 2 boxes of garlic roasted mashed potatoes. He gave us free cookbooks, free spice packets, extra coupons for us to come back, and then carried everything to the car for me.

It was only when I got home that I realized I'd never be able to fit everything into our freezer. I came home with 3 gigantic bags of food, all requiring immediate refrigeration. We pretty much don't need to go grocery shopping for the next month and a half, but I felt so badly for how excited the salesman looked when he saw us walk through the door that I couldn't say no to his offers. I've since learned that Omaha Steaks is more of a splurge/gift giving store, and these days, people aren't doing much splurging.

We don't even eat much beef these days, but we're going to have to start, if I ever want to be able to buy any other frozen foods. I will say, we made 4 of the chicken breasts and one of the salisbury steaks, and hot damn, they were pretty good! Only 79 pieces of beef to go! Anyone want to come over for dinner?