Every Friday, Lou and I each throw $50 into a zippered change purse. That’s our grocery money for the coming week, and any cash left over goes toward our dining-out fund. This week we were super thrifty, so we had $19.35 for a culinary adventure today. We picked Amato’s, the hundred-year-old home of the Italian sandwich. Turns out it’s also the cheapest lunch in town: $3.50 for an Italian, plus two-fifty for a side of crispy potato wedges hot out of the pizza oven, with marinara sauce. And ketchup packets. That means, my friends, we had leftover money from our leftover money. Which meant dessert from the freezer case at Micucci’s next door. One tiramisu and a plastic fork. And we still had some change. We walked home with full bellies and the sweet taste of strategic cheapness lingering in our mouths.
