The Student Special

College cuisine finds many forms: Old pizza (reference our first post), ramen noodles, writing letters to senators for free spaghetti, and forgetting food to buy beer.... One of the staples of college cuisine has always been the fast food value menu. As it turned out, 2008 was a great year for college students; value menus at fast food restaurants got on their game. Taco bell came out with its 79, 89, 99 cent menu, Subway's $5 footlong got even mightier, Del came out with Dan's deal, and Wendy's added some cheep favorites. One of my favorite cheap fulls though is the local McDonalds student special.

I never really liked McDonalds. It made me feel sluggish, sickly, and greasy. Then college came, and those words become synonymous with full, so I decided to revaluate my relationship with America's burger joint. A friend introduced me to the Student Special: 2 cheeseburgers, a small, fry, and a small drink for 2.99. Make sure to ask for Mac-sauce, and thats not a bad full for under 3 bucks.

Anyway, the other day I ended up at McDonalds with 3 other buddies. We were hungry and broke, so we rolled through campus ended up in a fairly empty dining room about 9 o'clock at night. One buddy and I both ordered specials, while the other two split a 2 Quarter-pounder combo and assed a McChicken each to compensate for the split. When we all got our food we aruged through handfulls of fries who got more burg for their buck. After a few comments like, "bro the mac sauce makes it so much more filling", and "no man the QP has the lettuce and tomato definately has the edge for just a bit more money" we were interrupted by a young woman in the back corner of the dining room.

"Im homeless, and you guys sound just like homeless people"

She went on to explain how she'd been married 3 times and had a couple miscarriages, but she didn't feel so bad about being homeless after listening to us bicker about nickels and frys. One of my friends even tried to get in a debt battle with the young woman, student loans vs. divorce and medical bills. He lost the battle, but we all came out a little impressed and a little depressed at how heated we'd gotten over a couple dimes and a cheeseburger.

Happy Eating college folk, let me kow if there's any good deals I don't know about yet.

Hella Thrifty, Hella College