Last week, I talked about how my husband and I are saving money as we celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Last year, we celebrated our wedding in France. This year, money is much tighter and we came up with a much more reasonable (but still fun!) plan: we'd each take a night over our anniversary weekend (my husband got Friday night and I got Saturday) to cook a great meal and enjoy it together by candlelight in our apartment. We figured that we'd get two great meals for less than the price of one meal out in a fancy restaurant -- and our hard work could count as our gifts to each other, so we didn't feel compelled to spend even more money on gifts. It's a good thing we both love to cook!
Now that the celebrations are over, I thought you'd like to hear what we created and see just how cheap a fabulous three course meal could be.
Friday Night:
Starter: Vichyssoise
Notes: It sounds intimidating, but vichyssoise is nothing more than potato leek soup, served cold. Potatoes and leeks are pretty inexpensive, so we got an impressive sounding starter for less than $5 (the recipe is here, we scaled it back to two servings). The lesson learned here is, if you call something by its french name, it instantly sounds more impressive.
Main Course: Grilled, marinated Flank steak and roasted asparagus
Notes: Flank steak is one of the best deals in the meat department. We got a pound (more than enough to feed the two of us) for about $2. The trick with this meat (it can be tough) is to marinate it for a long time (all day) and cut it against the grain after grilling. The roasted asparagus is easy and cheap too, just put it in a pan with some salt, pepper and oil and roast in a 400 degree oven until tender (just a few minutes).
Dessert: Creme brulee
Notes: This one sounds intimidating too, but it really is just egg yolks, cream and vanilla (we used extract instead of a vanilla bean because it's less expensive, the recipe is here). Yummy!
Saturday Night:
Starter: Bacon-wrapped scallops
Notes: This was obviously a bit of a splurge. But I bought frozen scallops for about $10/lb and only used six of them (three each) so I'll definitely get another meal out of them. I used store brand bacon (which was actually pretty good) to offset the splurge a bit. They're easy to make, just wrap the bacon around the scallops and sear in a very hot pan for a minute or so per side.
Main Course: Roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans
Notes: One of the greatest deals in the supermarket is buying a whole chicken. They're pretty easy to roast (I stuff mine with rosemary, garlic and lemon, it's sublime) and you can get them for about $1 to $1.50 per pound. My bird cost about $3.50, and we're getting a whole new meal out of the leftovers! Add some sauteed green beans and simple mashed potatoes (add a little parmesan or asiago to them an they taste gourmet) and you've got a full meal!
Dessert: Blueberry tarts
Notes: I used a store bought, refridgerated pie crust for the shell of my tarts (buy store brand, you can't taste the difference) and filled them with blueberries cooked in lemon juice and sugar. Blueberries are in season, so they were on sale here for $2 a pint. These were awesome and pretty simple to make.
All in all, we had a pretty great weekend. The food was great and affordable and we got to celebrate twice. What could be better than that? This might become a tradition for us, even when we do have more money because making these fabulous meals for each other was really rewarding and made the food taste that much better.
This post has been selected to be part of the latest Carnival of Pecuniary Delights.
Comments