Channel: Mythical Kitchen
YouTube Video ID: RU-xJE5Ys-E
Episode Post Date: April 2, 2026
Transcript
Today, we're putting two grocery stores to the test. It's Dollar Tree versus Whole Foods. Does it actually matter where you buy your groceries? We will be making two identical dishes. We're making mac and cheese. Yes, I know, in this economy, we can do both. And one of them is going to be made with ingredients from the Dollar Tree, the other is going to be made with ingredients from the Whole Foods. We will eat them side by side, and then we will decide which one is well we want. There's going to be a judge, you see. And the edge not Judge Dredd the remake with Was that Glenn Powell? Was Judge Dredd the remake Glenn Powell? I just assumed Glenn Powell's been in the remake of everything. Yeah. It's Karl Urban. God, I love Karl Urban. The kitcheneers are out shopping right now. Let's see what they got. I can't stop looking at it. I can't stop This is the most beautiful bottle of hot sauce I've ever seen. This looks like a vintage perfume. This looks like something that that lady on the Titanic would have like looked at longingly. I've never seen Titanic. I just imagine there was something like a bottle like this. Look at this. This is a $12 bottle of hot sauce [laughter] that we got from the Whole Foods. And this is actually Brooklyn Beckham's brand. Brooklyn Beck- God dang it. Brooklyn Beckham's brand of hot sauce. This is Brooklyn Beckham's hot sauce called Cloud 23. I've never had it before. I've been meaning to try it, but I never wanted to spend my own money. So, now that I can put it on the company card, we did use that as an excuse. But, that's actually the biggest difference in price between Whole Foods and Dollar Tree over here. $12 versus $1.25. Overall, and this seems tremendously improbable. We spent $176 at Whole Foods, and this is to make macaroni and cheese. How is anybody surviving right now? But, we spent $42 over here at Dollar Tree to God, this this is the first time it's really existentially bummed me out to to look at the groceries and how much we spent on them. Anyways, we got the good old fashioned Columbia elbow macaroni noodles. Now, these cost $1.25 for a pound of pasta. That is really really going to stretch your dollar over there. Again, this is really good, filling, and nutritious. Also, a deceptive amount of protein in pasta. That's just coming from gluten. Like, you look at a 200 calorie serving, and there's just 7 g of protein. That's a great way to add it in there. Over here at Whole Foods, now this is a $5 pound of pasta. This stuff is really really delicious. So, I've had this brand of pasta before. I've gotten their spaghetti. It's got the ridges in there. You're definitely going to notice the difference. But, we actually had a caller on a hot dog is a sandwich podcast go where we get a podcast who made the claim that every expensive mac and cheeses he's has been like worse than the cheaper mac and cheeses he's had. And I realized in my own life, I think he's kind of correct. But, I don't know if that's just a sample size bias. This milk is just leaking. That's so cool. I don't >> [laughter] >> It's going to be a good day, folks. We're going to see if good noodles can actually make it better. We did spend a lot on spices. You don't have to add this many spices to your mac and cheese. You can kind of just [music] use whatever you have in your pantry. But, each spice here was between like five and eight dollars versus $1.25 over at the Dollar Tree. What else? We're making a salad. It's the greatest salad in the history of the world. I make it all the time in my own home. But, it does come from a restaurant chain called Sweet Tomatoes. Some of you know it by another name that's tremendously unfortunate. And I can't believe that they just called a restaurant that for so long. That's crazy. But, anyways, Joan's broccoli madness. It's equal parts broccoli, sugar, and mayonnaise, and it's the best thing you've ever had in your life. We're using frozen broccoli from both Whole Foods and Dollar Tree. Some craisins and peanuts cuz that's all they had. They ain't got no raisins and cashews like Joan when she initially got struck ill with her madness of broccoli decided to put in there. Let's get cooking. I'm sorry. I just blanked out. Forgot what we're doing for a second. Will Ferrell and cowbell Jimmy Fallon the almost ruined lot sketch. We love you, Jimmy Fallon, but you almost ruined lot sketch. All right, great. So, we're >> [laughter] >> I'm just going to get the the pasta going in a pot. I have a feeling this Columbia pasta is going to boil much quicker than this Remo pasta cuz like differences in pastas. It's likely both made with semolina, but this is so much thicker on the noodles. And also, you can see it's got the little rigate on there. Yeah, you even see like more starch on the outside of the Whole Foods pasta here. This is going to soak up a lot of sauce a lot better. But, again, it's mac and cheese. Like, mac and cheese, you're not there for the beautiful al dente pasta, you know? You're there because you want to eat a brick of cheese, but you can only morally justify that if you have added macaroni to it somehow. So, put that there. Now, we're going to start shredding our cheese. Make sure you stir the pasta once you add it in there. We're So, we're 95% sure this is all going to boil over, right? It's fine if it does. You know what I mean? Cuz it'll it'll add some comedy. Joshua, you know, it'll be all whoa no whoa no like whoa whoa whoa. Kind of a Mr. Bean act. I've just always wanted to be the Mr. Bean of internet cooking. Okay. No, don't do that. Intrusive thought. We're shredding cheese right now. We are going with a classic sort of hybrid between like a creamy mac and cheese and like a dense brick baked mac and cheese. This is like based on a recipe that Nicole developed that I think is really really delicious. But, we're going to use a couple different cheeses here. We got American cheese coming in later, but I want to shred my cheese mixture right now that's also going to be like dotted throughout. So, we're going with a mixture of Colby. I don't know what Colby cheese is. Do you? This is cheddar, right? Can someone look up what Colby is? So, this is just a Wisconsin based cheddar cuz cheddar is is in England. Was this just America trying to like I need to try Colby and cheddar side by side. So, I refuse to believe that these are two different cheeses. Okay. I'll Colby. Tastes like Colby. Yeah, the cheddar's sharper. The Colby feels like a little bit milkier, almost a little bit spongier. Probably like melts a little bit better. Well, anyways, we're using Colby. We're using cheddar. We're using a little bit mozzarella just so we get that kind of cheese pull. And then, we're adding American into the sauce just as a binding agent. Dollar Tree, each of these cheeses were $3. The American was $4. Pretty cheap for cheese, but also they're using name brand cheese at the Dollar Tree. They're using Kraft, which is pretty good. I made the claim that James Kraft invented American cheese, and then someone [clears throat] said Fritz and Gerber are rolling in their graves. And again, that's one of those things that only only a select amount of people in the world can you communicate that to. They're referring to the Swiss chemist that introduced the process of shelf stabilizing cheese using like binding agents like sodium citrate. And basically, it was a way to like get cheese to the troops in I think World War I or just before World War I. But, anyways, that creates a bit of like an etymological quandary. Right? How could two Swiss people invent American cheese? Is American cheese specifically the type of cheese they made in America or did inventing a process of emulsification and stabiliza- stabilization warrant the title of American cheese? Or did they just invent the shelf stabil- stabilization and process of cheese? I don't know. Is that interesting to you? If you could just fill out a comment card, that'd be really nice. Mail it to us. Amidst my budding oral fixation, I've started sucking on my thumb like a child. To prevent that, we've put on a wrap with a bittering agent. That way, every time I do it, I'm suddenly No, I I nick- I I nick myself, but that's fine. That happens in the kitchen. You know what they say? Sharp knives save lives. They also say thick thighs save lives. I've seen a t-shirt that says that at the gym. I don't know how exactly. You know, I don't know. Like, somebody somebody like stuck in a burning building, and someone's like, I can front squat them out of this sticky situation. So, I don't know. But, I also saw that t-shirt at the gym that said FBI Federal Booty Inspector. I just love that it's not a state based agency. That they were like, you know what? We need a national We need a national board. I got to stop [laughter] trying to run bits while I shred cheese. Some bad things happen. Okay, so this is this is cheddar, which as we learned from Ben Ebner of Sorted Food comes from a place called Cheddar. You You there. What's your name? What's the There's a There's [laughter] like a I love when you make jokes. There's a Mimolette. Mimolette in France. Mimolette. Mimolette. Mimolette was invented to try and compete [music] with English cheddar. Cuz English cheddar, when they dyed it orange with anatto seed, >> [music] >> was so popular and the French were like, we need an orange cheese to compete with the damn English. And they invented Mimolette because of it. There's always like some sort of war going on. Yum. We're draining it. We're killing it. Ow. >> [laughter] >> All right. We got it. I'm draining off the pasta. All right. I've Oh, that's nice. I didn't get a chance to steam at the gym today, so this is it. What Who just left a thing floating in there? All right. Don't run with the pots. Yao. Yao Ming. All right. Yo, Yao Ming. Now, speaking of Yao Ming, he almost single-handedly ended the shark fin soup trade in China. All right. We have cheese shredded in there. This is called mozzarella. Comes from the mozzarella region of New Jersey. But, there they pronounce it mozzarella. Speaking of Dells, Wisconsin Dells. Colby Jack. Now, we're using I know what you're saying. You're only using Colby on the Dollar Tree side, but now you have this Colby mixed with Jack. Isn't that going to skew your results? No. These cheeses all taste the same. Am I crazy? A Jack cheese, a mild cheddar, a cold They're all the same damn cheese. Even American cheese is just this cheese mixed with milk. So, we're all just There's like one and a half cheeses in this. But, there's five cheeses. Then, we got the shredded mozzarella over there. Mozzarella doesn't even taste that much different cuz this isn't like real mozzarella. You know, you get like a you know, you get like an old Italian man, we've all seen him. They And they give you like a ball of the cheese and you eat that. That tastes very different than the bag stuff. This bag stuff tastes like this, not the old man cheese balls. All right. There's different colors. This butter is more whiter than this butter, which is more yellower. However, this cheese is more oranger than this cheese. This has been my analysis. I'll see you later. Okay, we're going to start making some mac and cheese right here. We got our mixture of cheeses. We got our evaporated milk. We are doing a roux béchamel style cheese sauce, but then we're going to supplement that with actual shredded cheese cuz then I think you get the best of both worlds. You get that creaminess from the actual cheese sauce with the American cheese in there, but then you also get some of that stretch and cheese pull and then you get a nice cheese crust on top. So, we're going to start melting our butter in here to make our sauce. We're going to combine a roux. Yeah, so the yellow in this this generally indicates grass-fed. Um the butter at Whole Foods is twice as expensive as the butter at Dollar Tree. We were just stoked to see real butter at Dollar Tree cuz a lot of times when we make Dollar Tree recipes, um we've just had to use margarine and margarine does not function the same as butter in recipes, though it is delicious spread on bread, dude. Margarine, it's like the You ever taste a Tootsie Roll and you're like, I recognize that this is the flavor of chocolate, but it it has nothing to do with like real chocolate. It's like margarine and and and butter, man. Okay, we're going to add our flour. We're going to like gently cook this roux off. Do I think this show has made me a lot better with my left hand in general? You know? I think I could I think I could bat switch. Okay, we got our cheeses right here. I'm going to toss these Wait, I want to taste the mozzarell. That's a Kraft mozzarell. This mozzarell is much more finely shredded. From Whole Foods. Not bad. That's a bad mozzarell. And that mozzarell cost $11 compared to like $3 over here at Dollar Tree. And again, this is not a proper Italian mozzarella cheese for any Italian audience that I have miraculously failed to alienate over the last 6 years. You're still here. I'm so sorry. Who was the guy? We shot We shot at a mozzarella factory once. We were doing a fancy fast food Pizza Hut episode 6 and 1/2 years ago, maybe. And we [music] went to a mozzarella and burrata factory. And we shot with this old Italian man and his beautiful volleyball playing sons. But, he was telling us this story. These Italians, they tell me that your burrata doesn't taste like the burrata in the old country. I made burrata in a factory when I was 11 years old and it was just after World War II. And then the men used to smoke cigarettes. And how they would blow up the cheese skin for the burrata. They would smoke a cigarette and they would grab the cheese and they stretch and they go >> [snorts] >> and then fill it with the cream. The burrata that you used to taste was just unfiltered cigarette smoke. And I'm like, that's awesome. Now in the 2020s, I want mango ice vape smoked burrata. I think we can make that happen. I'm going to start with half this milk. I'm going to see where we end up. Is that thickening a bit? I'm going to crank the heat over here. Then, I'm going to run Oh, I'm thickening the milk. I'm thickening the milk again. All right, we're fine. Josh, calm down. You don't need to yell and scream. This is not Smosh. We're using evaporated milk cuz um speaking of getting uh food to troops that doesn't spoil. That's kind of why evaporated milk was invented. Um but also, it just gets more milk per milk. You don't think about milk as like a flavor, but it really is. And evaporated milk, condensed milk, even powdered milk are all really good products to use. I can really can't do as good a job with my left. Okay, we're going to let this come together. I want to taste these hot sauces. This has been high on my list of things to do. Dream big, Josh. It's fine. I don't know. What do you want me to say? It's actually Have you ever had something that's so salty and so sweet at the same time that it almost just creates like a really um unpleasant experience on your palate? You know what I mean? It's like your your body's almost like fighting the sweet and fighting the salt at the same time. It's kind of what I'm getting from that hot sauce. I really wanted to like it. There's kind of a bias where if you spend a lot of money on something, you you actually like psychologically will yourself to enjoy it more because it's a sunk cost. And I think that's what's going on here, but um I really vastly prefer the $1.25 hot sauce. This is Louisiana Sun sauce is probably coming from the same exact factory as Texas Pete's and Red Rooster. Oh, this is also Southern Sweet. Wait, what? Why is this sweet? You added sugar to this? They're adding sugar to everything. They're sure they're taking the the the the the the the the the the the the the food dye is making the kids all all aggressive. You know what I mean? And then they're putting sugar in the hot sauce. God damn it. Should I add both cans of milk? A doc, dude. Dude. What are we even doing? Let's go home. Everyone go home. We'll add the spices. We're making soup today. There's no macaroni. We're making a loose spice-based soup and then we get to go home. All right. You know? Making that. Adding paprika. No, no one helped. That's right. Don't even look at me. >> [laughter] >> Everyone turn around. That's brutal. Onion powder, garlic powder. Spice Spice Spice up your life. That's what Brooklyn Beckham's mom sang. Add some paprika in there. This little What is this? Honey? This is better than bouillon. I know what you're saying. Bouillon's the best. How can you possibly make better than it? Well, they did it. Little bit of black pepper. Here's the thing about black pepper. All right, now we're going to put our cheese in there. >> [laughter] >> We got a little bit more milk. Well, we don't even need evaporated. Listen, that's part of it. There's something about the Whole Foods evaporated milk that made it spill out of my hand. That is now worked into the fabric of this episode. All right, this is happening. I'm going to try this uh We've wet the American cheese with the evaporated milk and that's fine. Here's the thing, there's no accidents in cooking, just [music] gifts. I like it cuz if you've ever eaten cheese and eaten Play-Doh and thought, I really wish this was combined into one product. American cheese does that for you. The Kraft American cheese is significantly better. I'm just going to go ahead and wing a whole raft of that in there. Cuz here's the thing, there's so many chemicals in American cheese, sodium citrate as the the chemical binder, that you don't have to add it in gradually. You can just chuck it. You just chuck it, it'll melt down nice. But, the reason we're doing that is to kind of add like the non-cheese What like do I address it? What if I exactly is not there? Just going to go ahead and add some counter add some counter milk. Hey, hey, hey, you ain't getting this level of authenticity over on the Cooking Channel, are you? You know, no, no, that's right here on [laughter] YouTube, baby. Uh I'm going to put some more milk. We got to adjust for the milks. Um what's been going on with you? I feel like I've been talking about myself this whole time. What's new? What's new in uh you land over there? Still in school? Yeah? Criminology. No way. Is that a Are you going to grad grad You're applying to grad Got you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. At UCSD. Um At UCSD Go Tritons. Uh I heard they have a good criminology master's program there. What are recruiting? You thought Yeah. I know they don't have as much They don't have as much grant money to give out, but I I've still heard this. It's I mean like What's it? 50 bucks to apply? It's worth applying. You know? Yeah, you see socially dead. No, I've heard that, but it's actually pretty cool school. What are we doing? All right, we're going to take half this cheese. Um yeah, we There's a statistical outlier now because the half the evaporated milk is gone. But, I've stopped some I There's not I'm going to add that cheese in there. You're going to add it gradually. >> [laughter] >> It's all getting baked off. It's all getting mashed with pasta. You know what I mean? What are we doing? Estimate half the cheese in there. I think this is about equivalent. I think so. Someone look up where UCSD's criminology program is currently ranked. >> [laughter] >> What? What do you mean? They two I They're just lying to me? They don't have a criminology program? Jesus Christ, man. This is why This is why I have trust issues. We're going to go ahead and we're going to add our pasta. Yeah, that's nice. We'll save We'll save some. We'll see how it goes. Just going to go ahead and wet that spoon with some of the milk. That is Yeah. This little spoon wet Did we cook the pasta? >> [laughter] >> It's so funny just carrying on as if nothing's happened for me. Um we we cooked the pastas to slightly below al dente. That way it's going to kind of firm up and absorb some of this cheese sauce. Then go ahead and add that rumo in there. It's good stuff. That should be 16 oz. This should be 16 oz, but I need to need to check cuz sometimes you have 16 oz of a thin pasta that's going to be significantly more noodles than 16 oz of a thick pasta. You know what I'm saying? Let's taste for seasoning here. See if we need to add any salt. Pretty good, Mr. Share. Mhm. I see what you've done here. I see you've been sucking your thumb like a child. It's a little bit under seasoned. It's going to happen. Even if you boil the pasta in salted water, it's going to soak up some of that cheese sauce. So, I always like to kind of over adjust the salt in a mac and cheese. Having an under seasoned mac criminal. And you know where you can study the criminalization of under seasoned mac? UCSD for their famous criminology department. Now we're going to do It looks soupy now, but we're going to bake this off. And it's really going to use that. We're going to add half of that in there. Going real scientific on this. I don't know, dude. Is this not how people are supposed to cook on a TV show? Going to let I'm asking that 6 years in. I act like I'm new. Going to add half the cheese in there. Cuz then we're going to layer this back on top. YEAH. COME ON. There's a chance that I just forgot to add a whole class of ingredients, but I'm not going to not going to think about that. Come over to this guy. All right. Drop that down. The outcomes. Boom. I have that cheese. It's still on. I turned it off. God dang it. I don't know how these damn stoves work. Using science that I don't understand. Induction. Sounds like a goddamn tectonic plate. When do you think the big one's going to hit California? You guys think about that? >> [laughter] >> Boom. Let me hear you say wayo. Wayo. There we go. We're going to get sued by whoever made that song. I'm sorry. I can't I can't stop eating the fake and bacon. You guys know about Bac-Os? Did you guys grow up in a Bac-Os household? You guys didn't have a salad shaker full of Bac-Os at all times? All right. So, anyone who had a boomer dad with high cholesterol, you probably ate a product called Bac-Os at some point. That was the brand name. This is McCormick bacon style bits. It's textured soy flour that's mixed together with food dye, uh liquid smoke, meat extract, which is called disodium inosinate or guanylate, and then uh a whole lot of salt. And then something that makes it taste burnt. Or maybe that's just in the baking process. And then they like mix it all together, crumble it up a little bit, bake it off until it's crispy. So, it's just crispy, salty, meaty, liquid smoke. And it's bizarre. It doesn't taste like humans should should enjoy it, but I sure do. We got a couple other of my favorite things to talk about. Um Jones broccoli madness. >> [music] >> It was the best salad on the buffet at Sweet Tomatoes. And then they went by another name that was less fortunate in the West Coast. I don't know how they got away with that. But anyways, now they're all closed down. Somebody opened up their own version of it though, completely independently, stealing all of their old recipes. But what it was was a buffet with no entrees. Revolutionary. It was a buffet, but all it was a giant salad bar. It was six different soups. And then there was the worst pastas that you've ever had in your life. There were things that they called pizza, but weren't pizza. It was just like a large square of bread with cheese and sauce. So, I I guess that is what pizza is, but somehow this was so far removed from pizza. I didn't think And then they had muffins. And what you do I'll get cooking in a sec. You crack open a blueberry muffin and you would just walk with that in your little 9-year-old hands. You go up to the soft serve dispenser and you'd put vanilla ice cream into the muffin and then close it with the top and then walk around and eat that while you decided what soup you wanted to eat next. It was the greatest place in the world. It was perfect. I go there with my grandma. I stole gallons of Sprite in a water cup from my grandma at the Sweet Tomatoes. And we're making the single best thing they had, Jones broccoli madness. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk about Sweet Tomatoes. Bring it back. GIANT GOB OF MAYONNAISE. LITERALLY, it was basically a coleslaw dressing, but instead of cabbage, it was broccoli, raisins, cashews, bacon, and onions. Except they ain't got no raisins and cashews. They got crazens and peanuts at the Dollar Tree. Cranberries and peanuts are both like fantastic American products. There's some of the things that make me patriotic along with women's gymnastics. Every time I see the Olympics run around. So, I love cranberry peanuts. Vinegar, sugar. Got a coleslaw'd up. Going to whisk this together into a dressing. Controversial tactic. I want the crazens in there first cuz I want them to soak up some of the vinegar moisture so they get plumper. This is the next level cooking that you come to Mythical Kitchen for. Now, if you notice the mayonnaise over here at Whole Foods, this is more yellower. And that's on account of mayonnaise is supposed to have eggs, which are traditionally yellow shaped. You got the chunky sugar at the Whole Foods. That sugar dissolves in nothing. Somehow Whole Foods has just refused to carry normal sugar. The even the crazens seem like bigger and plumper. But I believe it was at Ocean Spray at Dollar Tree. This video is not sponsored by Ocean Spray. But it could be. I love Ocean Spray. You ever see how they farm cranberries in a bog? No? You got to flood it. You flood it. You flood the cranberry bog. They float. Scoop them with a net. All right. I'll get cooking. Add some peanuts. As I've gotten older, I've started to appreciate a handful of nuts significantly more than when I was a younger man. I hope for all of you who who get to grow into beautiful adults, you also will start appreciating a handful of nuts more like I did. We're taking the broccoli. And we've steamed it. We've dried it off. Historically, the broccoli we've gotten from Dollar Tree has been 80% stems. This is not it. Dollar Tree has upped their broccoli game. I made the claim that frozen vegetables keep the same nutritional profile as fresh vegetables, which I believe to be true. Somebody stepped in and was like, they actually have more nutrients. Which I think that might only be the case because they would be like flash frozen at the time of picking. But either way, frozen vegetables are a great way to get vegetables in. Also, if you know, you got fresh vegetables in your house and those can like kind of sit there. They can get bad. Frozen vegetables, dude, I was real hard up for dinner the other day. Uh and I didn't have anything to cook. And I found a thing of frozen edamame already shelled in my freezer. And I was like, dinner's saved, man. This this episode isn't sponsored by frozen vegetables, but it could be. You know how they freeze vegetables? What's it called? Double spiral freezers. Conveyor belts. Taylor, conveyor belts all the way down. Cold air blowing. [snorts] Double spiral conveyor belts. All right. >> [laughter] >> There's something that I don't know that makes you go insane just being up here talking to a camera while while a bunch of people watch you. It's very strange. Uh yeah, this is Jones broccoli madness. And I am so happy. I I'm like I'm not being ironic at all. This is actually one of the best salads I've ever had. I will make this at home with like my own dressing and steamed broccoli and stuff. It is absolutely that good. I'm not going to try it cuz I want to judge to No, I'm going to try it. Hell yeah. There's no better flavor in the world. I don't even want mac and cheese. Give me this with an undrained can of tuna that I can eat on the side. Hell yeah. Chase, do you promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Yes. Is this confirming that you are indeed a God-fearing man? Yeah, but I don't know which one I believe in anymore. I'm still definitely a scared though. >> [laughter] >> I was going to say afraid and then I said scared. I am scared. >> [laughter] >> Do not be feared, Chase. What do you have? Macaroni um before you. So, this is a plate of mac and cheese. Kind of did like a hybrid creamy and baked one. And then just to round it out, make it like a proper meal with some vegetables. We got You ever go to They call it Sweet Tomatoes elsewhere, but like we grew up with it being called It's like a name that feels weird even saying now. What is it called here? You know what I mean? It feels like it'd be like calling it It'd be like starting like a tutoring study center and calling it like Like you just wouldn't do that. We >> [laughter] >> have revived their best salad. This is Jones broccoli madness. All right. I like that. >> Yeah, eat and enjoy. One of these is from Dollar Tree. One of these is from Whole Foods. And I will tell you which is which later. All right. Do you want to start anywhere in particular or should I just go for whatever? >> whatever you're feeling. Can I eat some, too? I'm hungry. Please. Eat vegetables. It'd be weird for me to come on your show and say don't eat. Well, started with frozen broccoli. That's good to know. Mhm. I was thinking about the consistency and texture of this broccoli. >> Yeah. Cuz Dollar Tree, it's hard to find fresh vegetables. So, we always try and go to like see how we can stretch cans and and freezer broccoli to give people some good ideas of what to cook. I'm also really bummed the 99 cent only stores are gone. Cuz that's [snorts] what I grew up with. For a long time they were not only 99 cents anymore. I'd mess with their their produce section. Same. Pretty solid. I'm ready to move on. I'm not. I will I can't explain exactly why I love this stupid salad so much. >> It's a good salad. >> So good. I think Ralphs actually has a pretty good dupe of this salad, too. >> Mhm. Are you noticing any immediate difference in quality? The broccoli is definitely feeling different. I can see a color difference in the broccoli and like the stems. This is a greener and this is a whiter one. But I like I feel like this one I'm enjoying the broccoli flavor more. Yeah, interesting. What about the mac and cheese? Um yeah. So, this is where I definitely remember why I don't do the cooking anymore. It's cuz I don't know what my tongue feels and how to describe it. >> [laughter] >> And also, I can't keep food >> your technique eating it with your hands, though. >> I I keep trying with the fork, and then it just doesn't work, which is I promise in in daily life I can do [clears throat] this. Okay, I could use a fork over here. You're not better than that. >> This one does feel creamier. But I think I like this one more. Got your final answer? You like the plate on the right more? I like this one more. I don't know. This one definitely feels more like for the dishes that we have, like the comfort foods that I want. >> Yeah. >> Maybe that's because it's I don't know. I think this one's more expensive. That's my gut. My gut says this is more expensive, but I like this more. I just like the flavor here. Chase, what if I told you that this is from Dollar Tree? Did I do that right? Yeah, that's the Dollar Tree. >> [laughter] >> I was trying to do a rope-a-dope. This is the one from Dollar Tree. This plate cost $3.73 to make. This plate cost $7.77 to make. Overall, we spent four times more on the groceries at Whole Foods than we did at Dollar Tree. We kind of started with a thesis of maybe mac and cheese is one of those things that as it gets more expensive, it does get worse. I think you did prove that thesis. Good science means that we can repeat this at home. So, I'm hoping to be back >> Exactly. Yeah, yeah, [laughter] yeah. Yeah, you go spend $200 at Whole Foods make a freaking tray of mac and cheese. It's funny cuz you like these noodles are obviously like a higher quality. They have more chew to them. It's more al dente. I don't want that in a mac and cheese. Yeah, it had more more of a punch, more flavor. It might have been, yeah, a little bit more of a base palate, but it is a palate that I really am into. >> you this one didn't have hot sauce in it made by one of the Spice Girls' sons? That one did. Can I change my mind now? >> Yes, you can. >> [laughter] >> I'll give you a hint. It's not ginger. Get more Mythical Kitchen in your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter now at mythical.com/mknewsletter.