Damn You Dutch Oven

I was at Goodwill the other day, and I found the Dutch oven pictured above. Cool! I could use that. It's a great (FRENCH!) brand, and I could make French onion soup or something in it. I turned it over for a price, and experienced some sticker shock. $40. $40 is a lot to spend on something at Goodwill. I decided to take a pass.

At first I felt I made a horrible, horrible decision, because a new Le Creuset Dutch oven is about $250. Of course I went back the next day to try to buy it, but it was gone. And of course, Le Creuset Dutch ovens have been haunting me ever since. I went to a knife skills class yesterday, and had to walk past a whole shelf of Le Crueset Dutch ovens in the practice kitchen. I opened my issue of Bon Appetit and of course the Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs recipe I would like to try requires a Dutch oven. On page 42 of the magazine, Bon Appetit pictures one specific Dutch oven — a Le Creuset one — and tells me to buy it for homestyle entertaining. If only I had purchased the $40 Dutch oven, my life would be so much better!

Ultimately, not spending $40 on something I would use sometimes but not all the time and don't really need was actually good decision. Yeah, it was $200 cheaper than a new one. And that's the part I'm kicking myself over because I love deals so very much. But it was also $40 more than needed to be spent. $0 was the price I should be spending on things I don't really need. And $0 was what I spent.

Deals aren't great deals if you're buying something you don't need or won't ever use. That's why the Extreme Couponer people with hundreds of tubes of stockpiled toothpaste have a problem. It's great to get toothpaste for chep, but the average person only uses a few tubes of toothpaste a year. That being said, I still kinda wish I bought the Dutch oven, but I'm not terribly upset that I missed my chance. I can make Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs in a pot.