Those Magical Coupons: McDonald's Fall 2012 Coupon Book [Волшебные Купоны]

Last week  McDonald's coupon booklets came-in the in the weekly circular pack, so here they are above. I was able to get 37 of them from all the circulars that were available in my building, so my coupon supply is well-stocked. Let's take a look at what is being promoted for the next couple of month [coupons expire at the end of the year]:

Front of the booklet with this month $1.00 promo Hot 'N Spicy McChicken Sandwich. Its pretty much like a standard McChicken sandwich but a bit spicy, not too much.

Back of the booklet with an ad for 2 for $3.00 Sausage, Egg & Cheese McGriddles. Its a pretty good deal and I've tried it 2 weeks ago for breakfast: they taste good, are filling, and a good value.

Coupons for BOGO burgers: Big Macs, Quarter Pounders, Filet-O-Fishes, Premium Chicken Sandwiches, Angus Third Pounders and the new CBO sandwiches.

Different free with purchase coupons: pretty much fries and fries with soda. Not really worth unless you really want a meal type of a deal.

Coupons for coffees: I am not into them but the middle one sound like a good way to try the Cafe Con Leche.

Apple Cinnamon Walnut Oatmeal kasha. I hate this kind of food.

Coffee advertising. I'm not into coffee, so it ain't for me.

Dollar menu items. McDouble is excellent for $1.00, then McChicken. Sweet Tea is also great.

Homemade McDonald's Sweet Tea

I ran out of soda yesterday and did not felt like mixing Kool-Aid or FlavorAid, so I decided to make some iced tea. I have a bunch of 32-ounce thick deli containers from all the Chinese joint soups, so I decided to use them for the iced tea storage, just like they sell them at the Chinese joint.

For the tea I choose standard Lipton tea, because that's what I have on hand and its pretty standard tea that does the job. McDonald's use it in their $1.00 ($1.09 after tax in NYC) Sweet Tea, so its out to be a quality product.

I started heating 64-ounces of water as the base in which to make the tea in.

Then I removed the paper tabs and strings so they won't spoil the flavor.

I turned the heat off just before the water began to boil and let it stand for 5 minutes, only then I added the tea bags. I heard somewhere that the boiling-hot temperature makes certain teas bitter, so I decided to make the tea in not so hot temperature.

After 15 minutes I removed the tea bags.

2 cups of sugar should go into 6x 32oz servings of sweet tea. I figured that 1 cup of sugar will  be not enough and 3 cups will be too much/sweet, so using 2 cups made sense to me, without fucking around with math. I added all the sugar in 64-ounces of tea, and mixed it with every additional 32-ounces of cold water that I added into the pot.

In McDonald's they often use slices of lemons in their sweet teas, and recently they began the practice where you specifically have to ask for lemon in your sweet tea. I bought 5 lemons for $1.29.

From each lemon I cut 3 slices of lemons, so that like $0.09 per slice of lemon.

Almost done now.

Close-up shot.

All done! Now into the fridge for cooling. The end result tasted just like McDonald's Sweet Tea with a slice of lemon.

Snack Size McDonald's Chicken McBites

The Spicy Chicken McBites is the newest product by McDonald's that is currently being promoted throughout the nation. I think of it like of a popcorn chicken product and I was eager to get my hands on it and try it out, but thanks to McDonald's coupon, I was able to try a bunch of these for $1.09 per snack size container (small size). There are 3 sizes in all to buy McBites in: snack (small), regular (medium) and shareable (large). I am not 100% sure on the prices but I think that they cost somewhere around $2.00, $3.00 and $4.00 respectably. The first place that I tried them at was at the 86th Street location of McDonald's; right across the Deals store. I took the photo on the lamppost pedestal because some old dude with a walking cane came in and sat on the bench that I was sitting on, like 15 seconds after I got there, and then he began talking about some random shit. Don't you just hate it when random people just have to talk to you about some random stuff, and they can't seem to shut up? As soon as he sat there on the bench, I knew that it was time to leave the premises and take my McBites elsewhere for the photo-op, so the corner lamppost made a decent area to the photo on.

The whole spiel on the container sounds pretty promising.

Box-O'-Vision.

Overall I ate around 8 or so snack size McBites throughout the month, and once I managed to keep my hand off the McBites so I could get them home so I could take some photos of them.

Close-up of McBites.

Inside of McBites.

Tangy BBQ sauce.

Dipping McBites into sauce can be pretty tasty, especially the larger pieces, but for smaller size pieces I prefer to eat them without any sauce, just like popcorn chicken. I think that these McBites are excellent in terms of taste and quality and I can't think of any other restaurant chain that has a product thats better than these McBites. The outer breading is very crisp and crunchy, while the chicken on the inside is slightly moist and tender. There is a spicy kick to McBites, which I think is a notch below mild spicyness. The snack size for $1.00 was a great value for such quality chicken product that I enjoyed eating, and like I said before; these McBites are like McDonald's version of popcorn chicken. The only thing that I did not liked much was that with different orders the sizes of chicken McBites were inconsistent: sometimes I received containers with all McBites being too small, while other couple times there were too many large pieces. I rate McBites at 4.8/5.0 and value rating is 4.4/5.0. I don't know for how long these will be offered at McD's, but I recommend them to anyone who likes breaded/battered chicken.

You can also try scoring a slam dunk with the empty container. I guess that this is a registered Ronald-approved trademark of McD's.