A tale of two Walmarts. Sebring and Avon Park. Both roughly the same size, I would guess, but under entirely different management philosophies it would seem. Sebring, appropriately numbered as store #666, is the evil twin to its Avon Park counterpart. Here they have the most unkempt shelves, poor stock, limited selection, and surly employees. Avon Park however, just about 5 miles further down the road, I find frequently has gems like these.
Pictured is one of the packages of the four I snatched up as fast as I could when I saw the unbelievable price on the shelf in the freezer case. This is a full family size meal. Next to these were other varieties in the Marie Callender's repertoire of similar meals of exactly the same size going for something like almost $7 each.
Signage indicated these were marked down for clearance and when this store wants to move shit out their door, they don't fuck around. Each package at 1 lb., 10 oz. was, as you can see by the receipt, just $1.64!
I'm pretty sure that even if you go back to the beginning of these brand of frozen dinners which appeared on the shelves, I would guess, sometime in the 90s, they would still be more than a $1.64.
A bit suspicious, I checked the expiration dates, one package having a slightly different design graphic will expire in May of 2024, the others with the design graphic as seen in the picture above, will expire in December of 2024, so no, these aren't about to expire. The only guess I have as to why they're marked down is they oversupplied or maybe they're discontinuing this particular variety, I don't know.
I've had this variety before, but frankly at full price it's a little hard to swallow, pun intended, since I can make this from scratch much cheaper. But at $1.64, it's probably cheaper than I could make from scratch.
Let's figure it out shall we?
If I bought cheap Great Value fettuccine at $1 a pound, chicken breasts at, if lucky, $4 a pound, broccoli at a couple bucks per pound, and Prego alfredo sauce at $3 a jar, we're up to about 10 bucks. I figure with all these ingredients you could make two meals about the size of one of these so we'll say $5 each meal. This is not counting the time I'd have to put in chopping the broccoli (while singing like Dana Carvey), boiling the pasta, cooking the chicken, putting it all together and baking the whole mix up as a casserole. So yeah considering all that, with a sharp eye you can sometimes find hidden treasures in likely benevolently managed stores that understand that in these times us poor folk need a freaking break every now and again. Thank you Avon Park Walmart!