Health & Fitness
Dinner on a Budget: Tuesdays at Papa Murphy’s
Dining out is expensive. Cooking meals is a chore. Tuesdays at Papa Murphy's will get you dinner on the cheap.
I just spent $72 to put gas in my eight-year-old, only-kinda-green SUV. I can’t seem to get out of the Safeway without spending at least $100 on groceries. Boy-child just out-grew his shoes (again). Husband needs new shoes. I want new shoes.
Life is expensive, and we’re all on some kind of budget. But what happens to that budget when the cook of the house really REALLY doesn’t want to make dinner again? Cereal? Grilled cheese and tomato soup?
Sometimes, you just have to outsource dinner. Like Tuesday. Boy-child took his first ever MSP, on writing, his LEAST favorite subject. It was, in his words, “the worst day of my life.” Why? Not because of the MSP, but because the teachers decided it was OK to chew gum in class. But Boy-child has an expander and his orthodontist said, NO WAY. So Boy-child had to sit in a room with 26 other kids all chewing gum (according to him) and write an essay under all kinds of stress. How would you console him?
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We do it with food, and Boy-child wanted pizza.
And not just any pizza. A . In case you aren’t familiar, Papa Murphy’s puts together uncooked pizzas. You pop them in your own oven when you’re ready and about 15 minutes later (plus the time to preheat your oven to 425 degrees), you get fresh hot pizza.
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So, good mom that I am, I drove on down to my local Papa Murphy’s (I went when I had other errands to run in the area so I could conserve on that pesky gasoline) and received a most excellent surprise. Every Tuesday for the next six months or so, every pizza, any size, is only ten bucks.
Ten bucks! (OK, $10.66 with tax)
I did the math (because I’m like that). A family size pizza is labeled to serve 4 to 6 people. In our household of three (Mom, Dad, nine-year-old Boy-child), if I add a salad, it will feed us and have two servings left over for Boy-child’s lunch during the week. I usually throw together a Caesar salad with my favorite bottled dressing. Using prices from Safeway’s website, our dinner tonight is just $3.67 a serving. Can’t beat that with a stick.
The Ruby Slipper Guide (to the Eastside) has a “Kids Eat Free” listing, last updated in 2010, to help you eat out on a budget.
Where is your favorite place to eat out? And how do you keep the cost down when you go?