Episode #165: Did You Buy Something Good Or Fugly?

I subscribe to a bucket load of YouTube channels, 58 to be exact, and out of those 58 channels about 90% are active in a given week.

One of the channels that I subscribe to is called The TRY Channel, which is based in Dublin, and it's basically where they have a panel of 6 trying all kinds of foods, wine, liquor and everything else that covers the edible spectrum across this Big Blue Marble.

Any ways, I was watching an episode that was called "10 shots and 10 questions", which is basically self-explanatory, when one of the questions they asked piqued my curiosity:

"What was the best purchase that you made and what was the worst purchase that you made?"

I immediately thought to myself, "this would make a good post topic." So without further ado, here are my answers to those two questions.

Best purchase ever made: This one actually happened to me last summer, and it was the proverbial "taking one for the team." As most of you may or may not know, I am a moderately severe diabetic, who takes all kinds of insulin and pills to keep it under control.

So while I was finishing up my walk one hot summer day, I walked by a house on my street that had three kids selling lemonade for 50 cents a glass. Now normally, I would say no thank you and finish my walk. But here's the thing about my street, it goes through cycles of having lots of children, and in this particular year, children were in the valley of the cycle. Plus, no traffic whatsoever to speak of. But this time, I said, "yes please," to the question of "do I want some?"

So I paid my 50 cents and received a wonderfully cold and sweetened cup of lemonade. I also had a short chat with the mother who was chilling in the shade feeding her baby. Being a diabetic and not wanting to insult the young children, I only sipped on the lemonade and nursed that cup on the last twenty-five yards or so to my house. Once inside, that bad boy got pitched and it took me about a day to recover, but overall it was my best purchase ever. Nothing like making little childrens smile on a hot day.

Now we have.....our worst purchase made: Now this would cover the spectrum of a boatload of very bad purchases across a multitude of things, music household stuff, stationary supplies, etc. But for this post, we'll just do a catch-all and say my worst purchases have been food. Not so much as the stuff you buy in the supermarket, although I did have one very recently that was very much a mistake, but mainly fast food.

There have been times where I have gone to local fast-casual places to buy/try a particular item, let's say hamburgers for example. Not the commercial burgers from the major fast food places, but more from the local places/regional chains. I cannot tell you the amount of times that I've purchased a gourmet burger (that's a burger where the price point starts at $7), brought it home, and was severely disappointed that it didn't live up to whatever I was charged for the burger. I mean, if I'm going to drop a total of $15 for a combo meal (yes, I did just that a month ago at a small local chain), I want to get my money's worth.

Or say I went to a local deli, one that is well known in our state. I want the product to live up to the expectation/hoopla that I expect it to. I don't want to drop money on a product that I can make at home and have it come out slightly better than the product I'd bought. Your personal cooking shouldn't be better than a place where you drop $20 for a lunch.

So yeah, a small chunk of my worst purchases have involved food, all of which had left me severely disappointed and not wanting to try the offending place again.

So my friends, what say you? What have some of your best and worst purchases that you have made over the years?

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