I Just Want to Make Dinner

I can tell I am in need of a vacation after today's trip to the grocery store. To begin with, there were no fresh green beans in the produce aisle. ( I miss growing my own. ) Apparently, they had been out for a few days. This drove me to spend $4.99 a bag on "organic" green beans.

Then to make it worse, the checker tried to tell me I couldn't buy a single bottle of beer. Don't worry, I haven't been driven to drink just yet, but I needed beer to braise my short ribs. After much back and forth and a call to the manager, I finally got my single bottle of beer from the $7.99 six-pack for $2.49. So, if you aren't a drinker the store charges you almost twice as much per bottle.

I got home and realized I had just spent $10.00 on green beans and $30 on other ingredients for what my cookbook claims is a meal for under $1.99 a serving. I don't know where these people are shopping, but by my calculations this is costing me a little over $5.00 per person.

Makes you want to forget about the cooking and order pizza for your whole family for $20.
My beer-braised short ribs with oriental green beans and red mashed potatoes better taste like a million bucks or someone is getting a very terse letter in the future- after I finish all the other crap I have to do like cleaning up after making the meal.