So here is my dilemma – I’m trying to save money on groceries and cut down on carbs all at the same time. Why? So that I can buy the more expensive, not 98.975% water, beer that I enjoy instead of Crazy Hank’s Light Beer That Tastes Less Like Beer than Michelob Ultra. The length of that name, combined with the fact that they found a way to make it fit on a bottle label (given, the label actually extends to the inside of the bottle to make it work), only confirms Hank’s level of crazy. So, to make sense of a convoluted, poorly constructed joke, I’m trying to save money, lose some of this beer belly, and still drink good beer all at once. Awesome.

Here is the problem – cheap food is loaded with carbs, probably because bread is the third least expensive thing on earth to produce, next to AOL Free Trial CDs and internet porn. Corn dogs – buy one box, get one free! Problem? It’s a hot dog, covered in bread. On the upside, that wooden stick in the middle is a great source of dietary fiber. Just make sure you chew it enough so you don’t get splinters in your intestines. On a side note, corn dogs rock. If any of you reading this happened to invent corn dogs, or are related to the inventor, I would like to buy you a beer (although on my current budget it will have to be Crazy Hank’s). “Insert store brand name here” Pizza? Cheap, but little more than a disk of bread covered by 1/32 of an inch worth of pseudo-cheese and meat by-products. For all of my Canadian readers, it’s the metric equivalent of a deciliter, roughly. Since I don’t actually have any Canadian readers, it seemed like a waste of time to actually do the research on that one.

So, what to do? I considered raising my own livestock, but while my homeowners’ association bylaws don’t explicitly prohibit it, it’s probably more because they didn’t think anyone other than me would try it on 1/3 of an acre of land (for Canada, that’s roughly one deciliter), and they were fervently praying that I wouldn’t move in. The joke was on them. They were praying to the friendly New Testament God, and I prayed to the angry Old Testament God, including a burnt offering, so I won. That, and if I’m scrimping on the grocery budget, where is the money for a cow, feed, and a processing plant coming from. One of my neighbors is a taxidermist, but that’s not the processing I’m looking for, although a stuffed cow would look great on the veranda (if I knew what a veranda was).

Wow…I just took a break and came back to this, rereading the previous portion…what the hell was I on? Answer: 9 cups of premium high-grade coffee (insert lame metric equivalent joke here). Luckily, I just finished my tenth cup, so I’ve hit a plateau, and it hopefully won’t get an worse. It won’t get better, I can promise you that.

So, back to the topic at hand. Another possible solution is buying in bulk. Sure, it’s more expense up front, but it saves money in the long run, if you have room to store 3 cubic tons of beef jerky, and are willing to eat nothing but beef jerky until 2 years after you die (most likely from a jerky overdose. It’s an epidemic that is sweeping our nation). Seriously, who doesn’t need 17 gallons of cran-apple juice? So, for the time being, unless one of you has a better solution, I’m sticking to Crazy Hank and corn dogs.

Tune in next time for more zany metric conversions, as well as the answer to the age old question: Where is my other shoe?