Tag / cheap

by Kelly Mattei

I’m Glad I Went to College in the 1980s

I’m glad I went to college in the 1980s.

Most people my age probably agree with me on this. I have always thought college was great in the 1980s for lots of reasons, and here are a few:

  • No smartphones. Sure, there are advantages to smartphones. You can call for roadside assistance if you need it. However, you can also take videos and photos with smartphones…not always the best thing for college students. I have to always remind my daughter there are cameras everywhere. I’m just thankful that was not the case in the 1980s when I was a student. We all tell stories about what we did, but we don’t need photographic evidence.
  • Our parents were clueless. I know what my daughters major is, but I don’t know what classes she is taking or what classes she needs to take to complete her degree…that makes me more like an 80s parent. Based on the Facebook parents’ pages for her university, parents are making their kids schedules these days, telling them what to take, and monitoring their progress toward graduation! They’re even checking their grades online! Nope. I don’t have access to my daughter’s grades, and I don’t even know what classes she is taking. OK, so I know she is taking a math and an English class this semester (because she mentioned them in passing), but I don’t know her other classes or anything else. I just expect her to handle it. I do, however, see her grades at the end of each semester, because she shows them to me.
  • Information was in an easy-to-read catalogue. We got hardcopy catalogues about majors and graduation requirements. It made it easy to look up what classes we had to take to graduate. It’s just as easy to look online, but apparently, students don’t do that! Well, I think lots of them do, but apparently, some don’t, and as the graduation date nears, they realize they have more classes to take! How does that happen? If they had a hardcopy catalogue on their nightstands, would this happen?
  • A night out was cheap. Seriously, I think I could buy a bottle of beer at my favorite watering hole for $1.50 or $1.75…then leave a dollar tip. I could take $15 and enjoy a night!
  • Transfer portals didn’t exist. Sure, athletes could transfer, but they often had to sit out a year after doing so. Athletes made their decisions and usually stuck to them. There was loyalty. Now the thinking is more like a 1986 Janet Jackson song, “What have you done for me lately?” There are athletes who transfer two and three times during their college careers! It’s insanity! Not only are they not loyal to their teams, they are ruining their own college experience! That’s just my opinion. People can do what they want, but I wouldn’t want mine doing that. Honestly, I think this generation expects immediate gratification in everything. Maybe we learned something from having to send off film from our 110 cameras and wait a week to see the photos! Now they see the photos as soon as they take them…even faster than a Polaroid! And speaking of Janet Jackson…
  • We had the real MTV! Yes, it’s a thing. We had the real MTV that actually showed music videos and featured music-related content. Plus, there was Remote Control, the MTV gameshow! Good times! How many of us can remember rushing home to see the world premier of the videos for Thriller and The Reflex? For me, that was high school, but even in college, we watched a lot of MTV…I can still dance along with Bobby Brown! (If you’d like to purchase an MTV sweatshirt to help you remember the good old days, click here.)
  • We could make prank phone calls. It’s a fact. We loved making prank calls in college. My junior and senior years , we made one prank call Monday nights…sending a college boy on a wild goose chase, and it worked every time. It was so funny that I often laughed until…well, you get the idea. With “caller ID” automatic now, students can’t make those prank calls now. Well, I guess they can, but it’s not the same.

I’m sure there are lots more reasons I love college in the 80s! My own daughter has said many times that she wishes she had been in high school/college in the 80s, and I tell her, “It was a good time to be alive!”

If you have other reasons it was great to be in college in the 1980s, please share!

by Kelly Mattei

My Food/Beverage Guilty Pleasures

My food/beverage guilty pleasures.

I don’t know if everyone has food and beverage guilty pleasures, but I definitely do. There are some things I simply cannot pass up…and some things I crave. I have some guilty pleasures that are labeled as guilty pleasures simply because of the calorie content. But I have other guilty food and beverage pleasures that are guilty pleasures because they are trashy and cheap.

When I was pregnant in 2003, I craved birthday cake. No, not expensive birthday cakes. I craved the, as we called them, “el cheapo” birthday cakes from the local grocery store. I don’t know if it was the cake part or the frosting, but I craved them…and I treated myself once a week. Actually, my husband would pick up a small birthday cake, labeled a “patty cake,” once a week when he went to the store. He was a regular at the grocery store, so we used to laugh and laugh at the conversations the employees likely had every time he walked out with another cake…they probably thought he had a whole house full of kids. Nope…just one pregnant wife.

These days, if I crave a quick and easy cake, it’s more likely to be one from Nothing Bundt Cakes. Holy smokes, those things are good! We joke at our house that they must put some secret addictive ingredient in them, because once you have one, you keep craving them. If you haven’t had one, you should. They have store locations in lots of places. We are fortunate to have a couple of different locations in the Charlotte area, and one is just a few miles from our house. We don’t go often, but when we do, we stock up! Our personal favorite? The chocolate/chocolate chip with cream cheese frosting. We also like the Raspberry/White Chocolate. Oh, who am I kidding?! We wouldn’t turn down any of them! To see the website for Nothing Bundt Cakes, click here.

But I am a little ashamed to say I crave some cakes that are even cheaper than the regular grocery store cakes. Cheaper than a grocery store cake? And more embarrassing? Yep. Here’s my embarrassing cake guilty pleasure: Hostess Birthday Cupcakes. You likely remember the Hostess Chocolate Cupcakes with the white swirls you’d see in stores as a kid…they came in packs of two. Well, Hostess also makes Birthday Cupcakes. They taste, to me, like Twinkies with cheap frosting on top…but I’m not gonna lie…I’m completely addicted to them. I think about them all the time, but I only buy them once every few months. Each little cupcake in the two-pack has 180 calories, so I must refrain on a regular basis. But sometimes…I give in and go buy some. I’m not going to tell you where I buy them locally, because well, I want to be able to find them when I want them, but you can look on the Hostess website here. In truth, when I browse the Hostess website, I see there are lots of Hostess brand treats I’d love to try. But since I only allow myself to have those treat every couple of months, it will likely be a while before I can try them all. Does anyone else remember having Honeybuns as breakfast or snacks as a kid? Hostess makes them!

My cookie guilty pleasure comes from Tiff’s Treats in Charlotte. I discovered this place when someone sent me a box of them a year or two ago. My daughter and I couldn’t stop eating them! These cookies are yummy! My favorite flavor? The M&M cookies…they take me back to my childhood when my aunt used to make them. What makes Tiff’s Treats even better? They deliver! If you join them as an “elite” member, you even get free delivery and monthly specials! And if you send them to someone, you can also send cold milk or ice cream! I highly recommend this guilty pleasure. Check them out online here.

I also have a fried food guilty pleasure. All my friends know what it is, because I order it any time we go to Ilios Noche. If you haven’t visited Ilios Noche on Providence Road in South Charlotte, it’s high time you did. And when you do, order this guilty pleasure: Zucchini and Eggplant Chips. You’ll thank me later. They are lightly breaded and fried and served with tzatziki. You’ll keep going back for them, no doubt. See the Ilios Noche website here.

Other food guilty pleasures? Chips and salsa from Paco’s Tacos and Tequila in Charlotte, The Bento Box from Cowfish in Charlotte, soufflés from a favorite restaurant, and the Hazelnut cookie from a favorite restaurant. I could tell you where they are, but then they’d likely disappear before I could ever get them…some guilty pleasures should remain a secret, I suppose.

Now I’m likely to really disgust some of you with my beverage guilty pleasure. No, it’s not Mountain Dew or any other super sugary soda. It’s not Kool Aid, Hawaiian Punch, or Hi-C. I will readily admit I loved Kool-Aid as a kid. Everyone did in the 70s…if your mother allowed you to have it. Ours definitely did. In fact, I drank so much grape Kool-Aid that…embarrassing as this is…my poop turned blue. It’s true. Yikes! But back to the topic at hand…my embarrassing guilty beverage pleasure is a drink called Verdi Sparkletini. You likely haven’t heard of it, and that’s because it’s not something you’d likely buy. It is sold in the wine aisle, but the label calls it a “malt beverage.” It’s usually less than $6 a bottle. Go ahead and laugh. I know it’s cheap and trashy. And I think you are supposed to chill the bottle and serve it. However, I was introduced to it last summer when someone I know (I won’t let her secret out) served it to me over ice. Now, I’m not a beverage snob, so I didn’t care, and I was happy to try it…lucky for me! That day, we had the watermelon flavor, but they also make a yummy raspberry flavor and a peach flavor. In all seriousness, served over ice, they taste like spritzers. I offered one to a friend last summer at the beach, and she turned her nose up at it, telling me, “That cheap stuff gives me headaches.” I begged her to try it, and after we finished the bottle, we were both really relaxed…and neither of us ever got a headache! In fact, my friend ended up liking it so much that she secretly purchases a bottle every couple of days! Check your local grocery stores in the sparkling wine aisle (even thought I’m not sure it’s really wine). And it won’t turn your poop blue!

Oh, how I love my guilty food and beverage pleasures! Did I mention Guthrie’s chicken fingers that I have to pick up and bring home in a cooler any time I drive through Opelika, Alabama? Yeah…that’s a little embarrassing…I run into the restaurant (it’s co-branded with a gas station) and order the big bucket of chicken fingers. Then while they’re getting those ready, I run over to the gas station section and purchase a bag of ice and a styrofoam cooler. I fill up the cooler with the ice and put them in my car before I run back into Guthrie’s to get the chicken fingers. I put them on ice and drive the rest of the way to Charlotte! My daughter meets me at the door for those Guthrie’s chicken fingers every time! See their website here.

Now I’m feeling the need to drive to Opelika…