Ah, if only rice and beans had an ad campaign...

Saw this quotation recently:

"In general, my children refuse to eat anything that hasn't danced on television."

One of the things that makes an ad campaign successful is familiarity--repetition on television leads to increased requests for a given product--if you have a child, or ever were one, you most likely have witnessed at least once the great capacity a child has to ask repeatedly if they can get/ eat/order newest wonder item because they saw it on TV. Usually, at our house growing up, we would be given a one-time try at a brand-new type of breakfast cereal, but after that we were never to bug our parents or clamor about said item again. We usually didn't have sugar cereals at our house, and if memory serves, we needed to want the advertised cereal a great deal in order to have the special exception apply. Which leads back to the post title--if only rice and beans-- which store a lot longer than your basic ready-t0-eat food advertised incessantly on television--had an ad campaign that would encourage children and adults alike to rush out and buy some....hopefully in large amounts that would take a long time to consume.... :)

My personal endorsement for rice and beans? Not only do rice and beans last longer, and provide a complete protein when eaten together, they are in general a lot less expensive than our pre-packaged food items. That said, the pre-packaged food items definitely have their place when it comes to comfort foods, or having something to eat when there are low-to-no energy sources for cooking/baking/purifying water or the like. Because I find the prices of ready-made items prohibitive a lot of the time, I buy them only on sale if possible. In that vein, here is a heads-up on a sale that is specific to a grocery store that I know is found throughout Idaho: Albertson's. If you subscribe to a newspaper, you may have noticed that Albertson's flyers arrive on Wednesdays, and the sales run from Wednesday through Tuesday. That means that you have until tomorrow night to take advantage of this week's sale prices. I went on Saturday, because I wanted to make sure (did you see this one coming? :) that there was a choice in the cereal aisle. Here's what I wanted specifically for preparation purposes (even if for preparation purposes I only mean that I am preparing not to spend higher prices and can hold on until the next sale prices come around):

First 5 (selected flavors/sizes) Kellogg's cereals for $1.59 each. These are not the huge boxes, but a trip down almost any cereal aisle in America is about enough to give me sticker shock, so I thought this was a good buy.

3/$10 cases of Albertson's brand purified water--cases of 24 16-oz. bottles

Ended up also with some tuna that was 4/$5.00. I'm not a big fan of tuna, so I don't know a lot about the pricing, but this seemed reasonable to me. I admit if they have something besides the sales that is reasonably priced I will buy that as well--they've given me a break on the sales items, right?

I did buy other sales items not specifically for prepping, but in case you don't check out these flyers, I wanted to let you know that sometimes you can find a great deal on stuff you need anyway. If you need some water/cold cereal/tuna, you may want to check it out before Wednesday.... (oh, and no one in my family that I know of works for Albertson's) (oh, and if anyone knows of other sales specific to our area, please comment)... I think that's it.

So, keep trying to get the word out about rice and beans...but don't forget that we may find that some of those products that have "danced on television" (Erma Bombeck makes me laugh) are mighty handy in an emergency situation...