21 Mar, 2012
Burgers and fries, for our favourite gals and guys
Posted by andrea tomkins in: Easy ways to make kids happy|Ottawa|Publishing/writing/career stuff|Recipes and Food
I’m not a huge meat-eater. The only thing that’s standing between my becoming a vegetarian is bacon. I do however, appreciate a good burger. Especially a well-dressed, good quality (read: non-drive through) hamburger.
Last week’s Ottawa issue of SavvyMom profiled three of our family’s favourite places to get a hamburger and fries. You can read it here!
When the weather is nice I do find myself experiencing burger cravings. Sadly, the budget does not accommodate eating out whenever the craving hits. I’ve been trying to teach the girls that eating at home is less expensive than eating out. And I got to thinking, why not illustrate it by replicating our favourite dinner from The Works?
When we go to The Works it usually looks like this:
- I order a burger. (Each adult burger is about $13.00.)
- Mark orders a burger.
- Emma orders a burger (not from the children’s menu).
- Sarah orders something from the children’s menu.
- Both girls order a small milkshake.
- Mark and I both have a beer.
- We all share a Tower O’ Rings.
This dinner nears $100 once you include taxes and tips. It’s not something we can afford to do very often. So when the craving hit, I went to the grocery store:
I know part of the benefit of eating out is (a) it’s fun to eat out and (b) it’s nice not to have to cook. But this kind of dinner isn’t actually lot of work to prepare.
In addition to this I went to Saslove’s (the local butcher) and bought a package of lean ground beef which cost around $7.00.
My goal was to recreate the “Sexy Burger” (my current favourite from the Works – hence the purchase of pineapple and cream cheese). Add to that two bottles of beer and the cost of ketchup and mustard (which is negligible) out of our fridge. Mark made himself a regular burger, as did Sarah, and Emma smeared peanut butter on hers (it tastes great!). I made some chunky home fries instead of onion rings, and using the ice cream (along with a bit of Camino cocoa, peanut butter and an overripe banana or two) I made us all some great milkshakes. Dinner was delicious… a real treat!
We had leftover milk, ice-cream, hamburger buns, potatoes, cream cheese AND jalapeño (did you notice it only cost three cents?). That’s the other thing about this experiment – we had groceries we could use another day.
It was an interesting lesson for the girls, not just for the math, but a good life-lesson as well, don’t you think?
Now. What other restaurant dinners can I recreate? :)