# Rare cases of things that are both cheap and good. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [September 14, 2006, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763 "2006-09-14T22:37:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Scribble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scribble/32/3317_2.png) [@Scribble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scribble)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/41 "2006-09-16T01:32:48Z")
Some Chilean wines and, as another Doper mentioned, some Argentinian wines. Concha y Toro Castillero del Diablo and the Concha y Toro Reserva Especial are both good. Many of the books available for download from Project Gutenberg (or maybe it’s called The Gutenberg Project. I’ve forgotten. ) Those things are free, and some of them are classics. Lots of things from Trader Joe’s. ---
**Author:** ![Weirddave](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/919ad9/32.png) [@Weirddave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weirddave)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/42 "2006-09-16T03:15:51Z")
Pho. Ain’t nothing like it taste wise, and it’ll fill you up for most of the day for about $6 per large bowl. ---
**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/43 "2006-09-16T03:56:05Z")
Tap water, as opposed to bottled. ---
**Author:** ![Mindfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mindfield/32/19759_2.png) [@Mindfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mindfield)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 4:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/44 "2006-09-16T04:07:30Z")
[QUOTE=Weirddave] Pho. Ain’t nothing like it taste wise, and it’ll fill you up for most of the day for about $6 per large bowl. [/QUOTE] Actually, most dishes at Pho joints are pretty cheap and plenty filling, I find. $5 can get you a nice large plate of saffron rice with a pork chop and a fried egg on top. Great for lunch. Even better is getting a bunch of people together and ordering a massive hot & sour fondue pot. Now that there’s good eats. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/45 "2006-09-16T04:50:28Z")
Calculators – I bout the very first ever consumer TI calculator for 100 bucks, now comparable ones are virtually free with the purchase of about a million other things. DVD and CD players. Taco Bell. Tap water. ---
**Author:** ![MrJackboots](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c0e974/32.png) [@MrJackboots](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrJackboots)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/46 "2006-09-16T04:54:36Z")
[QUOTE=Boyo Jim] Taco Bell. [/QUOTE] I don’t know about Taco Bell over in your neck of the woods, but over here, Taco Bell is Mexican food designed by people who have only tangentially heard of Mexico. Or of _food_, for that matter. ---
**Author:** ![mrrealtime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e8c25b/32.png) [@mrrealtime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mrrealtime)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/47 "2006-09-16T05:28:19Z")
for me its definitely macromedia flash. For a $600 piece of software, Ive made my living from it for around 7 years. I dont have to pay Macromedia any royalties. I would bet for many of us, in spite of all the cursing we do at it, Microsoft Windows, Word, Internet Explorer, etc. gives a pretty good ROI. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/48 "2006-09-16T06:28:24Z")
Expensive software is usually crap. It isn’t just low-quality, buggy, and never fixed, it often spies on you in ways you cannot control. Neither Microsoft nor Apple nor anyone else who sells closed-source software is clean in this regard: There are people who have been caught and people who will be caught. Ubuntu Linux, on the other hand, is on the opposite extreme: It’s high-quality software that can not only be [downloaded for free](http://www.ubuntu.com/download), but [will be shipped to you for free on a CD-ROM](https://shipit.ubuntu.com/). ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/49 "2006-09-16T08:32:41Z")
Zippo lighters. ---
**Author:** ![Tully\_Mars](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7ab992/32.png) [@Tully\_Mars](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tully_Mars)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/50 "2006-09-16T11:38:05Z")
[QUOTE=silenus] Mount Gay Eclipse rum. Beats anything else out there as a mixing rum, and makes a killer Cuba Librè. Cheap, available everywhere, and nobody’s heard of it. [/QUOTE] Not only have I heard of it, it’s my favorite rum. I discovered in Barbados and brought a bottle home. I was pleasantly surprised to find I could buy it at the local liquor stores and at prices comparable to all of the usual brands. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Il\_Palazzo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Lord\_Il\_Palazzo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Il_Palazzo)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/51 "2006-09-16T12:15:47Z")
On campus dining. My college has one of the best dining programs in the country (second last time I heard) and some of the food is both incredible and cheap. On meal plan, you can get grilled to order chicken served on garlic mashed potatoes and topped with gravy and crispy onions for just $2.05 (and only $4.10 if you don’t have a meal plan.) Or a huge bread bowl of the best chili I’ve ever tasted for around $1.75 on meal plan. It’s great. Bad movies. If you know where and how to look, it’s easy to find MST3K style “so bad, they’re good” movies for dirt cheap. I own over a hundred such movies and love them. ---
**Author:** ![Crotalus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crotalus/32/41_2.png) [@Crotalus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crotalus)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/52 "2006-09-16T13:11:56Z")
[QUOTE=Largo62] In California (and I don’t know if they are in other states) a liquor and food chain called Trader Joe’s carries a brand of California wine known locally as "two-buck Chuck because the first name of the maker is Charles and it costs $1.99 per bottle. I’m not an expert, but I know what I like. These wines stand up to my personal taste test against wines that are many times more expensive, and win against most. They have a cabernet sauvignan (forgive me if I spelled that wrong), a merlot, a shiraz, a zinfandel (in season) and a nice gamay beaujelet (again with the spelling . . . I do not know from French). They have a couple of whites, too, but I haven’t tried them because I prefer red wine. I’m guessing they are pretty good, too. I used to assume that cheap wine was drek, but “Two Buck Chuck” has changed my mind. [/QUOTE] This is a minor hijack, but I gotta tell it. I had never heard of “Two Buck Chuck” until this post. Shortly after I read the post, I left work. In my car, I’ve been listening to an audio book, “The Devil’s Teeth”, by Susan Casey. Within a minute of getting in the car, I heard the phrase “Two Buck Chuck” from the narrator, who was describing supplies for a visit to the Farallon Islands. I would have had no idea what this was from context. Reading SDMB whittles away at my ignorance. ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/53 "2006-09-16T14:35:45Z")
I really, really, really like Bolla red wine. If you are unlucky, you might have to pay $7.99 for a bottle, but I can often get it for $6.19 on sale at Meijer. I call it my “house wine” and buy it in huge quantities, whenever it hits this price. There are a lot of really great frozen vegetables, too. Spinach, sweet white corn, green peas, and snow peas are now available frozen and they are wonderful. Canned tomatoes, too. What a great invention. ---
**Author:** ![Wee\_Bairn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/90db22/32.png) [@Wee\_Bairn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wee_Bairn)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2006, 5:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763/54 "2006-09-16T17:12:48Z")
Potato samosas for 75p in some of the London Underground stations- yummy! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-cases-of-things-that-are-both-cheap-and-good/372763.md?page=2)