You might think that getting a good, hot, healthy meal in a hurry is either impossible to come by or catastrophically expensive. After all, there’s no such thing as good, cheap and fast, right?
Well, we went out last week and proved this theory dead wrong.
Armed with a budget of $10, we set out to find the quickest, tastiest and most healthy meal in Concord. The key here is that our meal had to fit all of the criteria. It couldn’t just be something cheap and quick – we wanted to make sure we accounted for all five food groups.
So naturally, we hit up a gas station – Circle K on Fisherville Road.
The first order of business was selecting an entree. Cheddarwurst? Yes please. How can you pass up a cheese-filled dog?
And wouldn’t you know it, but Circle K offers a deal on the dogs: get any roller item plus a fountain drink of any size and a medium-sized bag of chips for $3. Sold.
Ridiculously huge soda (diet) and bag of chips (baked, for health) in hand, the next task was finding some fruit. Sure enough, right there next to the cheddarwurst and pepper jack tornadoes was a good supply of bananas. They were mostly all ripe, but a couple still had a hint of green. The main takeway: it cost 27 cents.
With meat, grain and fruit crossed off, it was veggie time. This proved a little tougher than the previous items, but there was at least one option: canned green beans.
Although it might not be the most practical item for on-the-go eating, there is a microwave in the store, so if you happen to have a can opener and microwave-safe container on you, go ahead and heat those beans up. The can of beans was actually the most expensive single item of the meal at $2.69, but that’s a small price to pay for the elite body you’ll develop as a result of eating them.
Even though the cheddarwurst has cheese inside it, we knew that many of you would probably tell us that doesn’t count as a dairy item. Luckily, we found a box of string cheese sticks in one of the coolers and grabbed one of those. At 89 cents, that one was a no-brainer.
So now we’ve got a meat (cheddarwurst), a grain (the bun), a fruit (banana), vegetable (green beans) and a dairy product (cheese stick). That makes one item from every major food group.
After putting together a legitimately tasty lunch with more healthful options than you probably thought possible for a grand total of $6.99, we felt we deserved a little reward. At $1.39, a Kit-Kat bar would make the perfect dessert.
When you add that in, the entire meal came to $8.38. To put that in perspective, you could go across the street to McDonald’s and get a value meal featuring a burger, fries and soda for the same price – if not more – and you still wouldn’t have any fruit or (non-deep-fried) vegetables.
So next time you’re in a rush and need to grab a nice lunch, don’t sleep on the gas stations. Getting a meal there is cheaper than you think.
