Lessons Learned...

The family and I went shopping a few weeks ago to our local shoppers warehouse. Out here on Long Island, there are a number of choices for such shopping. Both Costco and Sams have taken root out here, but there's one nearer to us called BJ's. Apparently they are all over too. I had just never been anywhere near one before moving to New York.

After we purchased our first home we decided that we finally had some room to store items that we could purchase in bulk. We headed to the local BJ's, took some unflattering images that barely resemble ourselves and set off to shop. Armed with our membership cards we pushed the cart with one bad wheel, up and down huge aisle after aisle picking up items and making mental calculations on how much we saved by buying in bulk.In order for us to make the shopping go as quickly as possible with two kids I generally run ahead and grab other things and drag either Jonah or Brielle with me.

We had a few items written down that we wanted to get for meals we would be making throughout the coming week. Two of these recipes included ground beef. We needed in total, 3 pounds of the ground up cow to make our favorite dishes. While I ran off getting hotdog buns and sandwich bread, Holly picked out the packages of meat.

When I returned she was concerned about the fact that she had to get two packages and would have an extra pound of meat left over. I figured we could find something to make with it. Hamburger Helper was down the very next aisle!!! In a 3 pack!

We finished up our shopping and headed for home. It was getting late, so Holly took Brielle up for a bath while Jonah and I unloaded the car and put the groceries away.

Something didn't feel right as I was putting the packages of hamburger away. I took a closer look at the packaging and spoke with Holly from the stairs.

"Babe, how many pounds did we need of hamburger?"

The splashing and giggling of Brielle in the tub over shadowed by Jonah's video game made it difficult to hear Holly's response.

"What was that?"

"Three pounds!" punctuated by an extra loud splash and a fusillade of laughter.

I couldn't suppress my laughter any more. "So what are we going to do with the extra nine pounds?"

I saw her head pop out from the bathroom door. "What?"

"We bought twelve pounds of hamburger..."

"Shut up..." she thought I was joking.

"As I laughed louder she began to realize that I wasn't kidding and that infect she had been looking at the cost per pound instead of the weight."

Well we both had a good laugh about it. None of the meat was put to waste. Jonah was extra excited, because we made a double batch of his favorite meatball recipe for his spaghetti.

Lessons learned...

The good news is that ground up cow has many uses and I found every single one of them...