The Ingredients:
Using a scale to weigh the ingredients of the Cafe Steamers meal, I
find that it contains:
1 ¾ oz broccoli
1 5/8 oz cooked chicken
3 3/8 oz cooked penne pasta
2 ¾ oz tomato sauce
That comes out to just under 10 ounces total. The box says it’s 10
ounces, so I’m going to adjust the numbers slightly to adjust for some
broccoli debris left on the pasta when I weighed it and round the
amount of chicken up to 2 ounces.
My version will be:
2 oz frozen broccoli
2 oz cooked and refrigerated boneless and skinless chicken thigh meat
3 ¼ oz cooked whole grain penne pasta
2 ¾ oz jarred tomato sauce

The Shopping List
13.25oz box of Barilla Whole Grain Penne Pasta – $1.34
26oz jar store brand tomato sauce – $1.25
1.21 lbs Chicken thighs – $.99/pound
14oz frozen broccoli florets – $1.38
5 store brand 24oz entree semi-disposable containers – $1.98

I used chicken thighs with the bone in and skin on because they’re
cheap, and we’re trying to eat cheap here. I took the skin off and
de-boned them before cooking. If you prefer white meat, find some
frozen chicken breast tenderloins. You can usually find those under
$3.00/pound

Making The Meal
Cook your pasta according to package directions.
Grill the chicken until cooked.
Refrigerate chicken and pasta for a couple hours.
Once cool, chop the chicken into bite-sized pieces.

Place an entree container on a kitchen scale, and add 2 ¾ oz tomato
sauce, then 3 ¼ oz pasta, 2 oz broccoli, and 2 oz chicken. Put a lid
on it and freeze it. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The Cost
Without figuring in the cost of the container, I made the meal for
around 72 cents. The cost of the container makes it $1.11 if you throw
it away each time. If you use the container 5 times, the cost of the
meal is $.80, and if you use it 10 times, it goes down to $.76.

Showing My Work

You could probably drive the cost down even more if you were to use
coupons or buy your supplies during a good sale.

Conclusion:
Even if the Cafe Steamers meal is at its cheapest sale price, you can
make the Chicken Marinara meal for less than half of what the store
sells it for. In the coming weeks, I’m going to see what the cost of
making homemade versions of several different Cafe Steamers meals is.

A source deep within the athletic department tells me that not only is Jim Tressel planning on leaving his post as head coach after the Sugar Bowl, he is going to be an astronaut.

Tressel will join the crew of the International Space Station where he will coach the U.S. Space football team. According to my source, “Coach Tressel is looking forward to facing the challenges presented by playing football in a zero-g environment.”

While Tressel will become the first Division I FBS coach to become an astronaut, he will not be the first current Buckeye in space. Terelle Pryor has spent most of the last three years in space, with the earth revolving around him.

Update, 9:40 a.m.

I’m being told that this story is totally ridiculous, but I don’t care. I’m sticking with it.

I hope the already tight 2009 budgets of local stations are not based on powering only one transmitter after February 17. I can’t imagine that running a 100 kilowatt analog transmitter is very cheap. Since digital transmitters tend to be in the 100 kilowatt range, I’d imagine that broadcasters would be eager to lower the electricity bill at least a little.

Over the last year, broadcasters have been making a huge investment of airtime and effort to educate people about the transition. Segments during the news, booths at community events, call centers, promos during shows, frequent tests, and just about everything short of actually turning the analog signal off has been tried. Four months of the same isn’t going to make a huge dent in the numbers of the unconverted. It’s just going to make us look bad. Every time the deadline approaches, congress extends the deadline. The original deadline was December 31, 2006. All the eggs are already in the February 17 basket. Nielsen actually moved back February sweeps into march to accommodate the transition.  Let’s pick a date and stick with it.

1. A renewal of the “Assault Weapons Ban” will be proposed. Some form of ban on the sale and transfer of mean looking black rifles will be proposed and given serious consideration. The 1994 ban classified guns as “assault rifles” based on features that made them look “mean.” I’ll be looking for some sort of similar ban in 2010 that does the same thing, along with restrictions on transferring banned guns purchased before the ban.
   How likely? 8
    
2. Restricting private sales of firearms. The “gun show loophole” as it is sometimes called allows private citizens to transfer firearms to one another without going through a dealer. The gun banners have been barking mad about this one for a long time. It’s a good bet that even the “pro gun” democrats will back this one.
   How likely? 9
    
3. Concealed Carry Ban. Obama comes from a state that allows no form carry, open or concealed. As a state senator, he supported legislation to ban concealed carry in all 50 states in the past. With 48 states allowing citizens to carry handguns in some form or another, It’s not clear if he would support or propose such a ban as President. The threat does still exist.
   How likely? 4
    
4. Mandating imaginary technology. Proposals to mandate microstamping firing pins and putting serial numbers on individual bullets have been proposed in quite a few states already. The fact that the technology to do these things does not exist in a way that is economical doesn’t matter to the people proposing it. They are proposals that sound reasonable to the common person, but will only succeed in punishing law abiding gun owners.
   How likely? 4 
    
5. Restricting ammunition. Chris Rock put this one out there ten years ago. Tax the heck out of the bullets, and gun violence ends. Sounds foolproof to me.
   How likely? 6  
    
6. Total ban. This is the most extreme idea. There are those out there that would love to see nothing less than a total ban on civilian ownership of firearms in the United States. The support for this kind of measure doesn’t seem widespread enough to succeed. The proposal of a total ban could however lead to a compromise that leads to other measures.
   How likely? 1 

No matter how likely or unlikely any of these proposals happen to be, they are all unacceptable. Every single one of them infringes on our right to keep and bear arms, and each and every one of them needs to be stopped.

Big Boy Chair

Last Sunday, the newsroom found that assignment editors are in short supply. With the regular sunday night occupant of the seat absent and the others unable to cover on such short notice, there was only one thing to do. It was time to turn the power of the Big Boy Chair over to a photog with very little clue about what he is doing.

You see a very different side of the news from way up high on the assignment desk. As a photog, my job is to be concerned about the stories that I happen to be working on directly, two or three on an average night. While playing assignment editor, I had to be familiar with every story that reporters and photogs were working on for the night. There were more phone calls than I can fathom. I was the point of contact between the newsroom and the field crews. At the same time, I had to be the ears of the newsroom, listening to the outside world.

The most difficult part of the night was listening to the scanners and filtering out the crap. So much information comes through on those little radios, and 99% of it is worthless to me. At first, I was a little shy about calling police dispatchers, but that faded quickly. I missed a shooting, heard another shooting, routed crews, and rerouted crews. Press releases came in, plans were made, and plans were changed.

All things considered, the experience gave me an insight into the job that I never had before. Would I do it again? Sure. Would I want to do it full time? Maybe, but not just yet. I still have some stories to tell. Is Jason still an ego-maniacal desk monkey that likes sending his lackeys all over town for his sick pleasure? You bet.

A. By building an even larger mountain of debt to distract you from the first pile.

Just like Major Payne takes the soldier’s mind off of getting shot by breaking his finger, the government seems to be trying to spend its way out of a problem that was caused by too much spending in the first place. This whole mess makes you think that maybe the crazy guy that lives in a shack on the mountain had it right all along.