The birthday dinner this year was a little more tricky to pull together than previous years, as there was very little wiggle room for "special" ingredients. However, my daughters and I brainstormed what we could do with what we have and still make the meal a special one. Now, you need to understand, "special" to my daughters does not mean steak, lobster, roast or anything that you might normally think of for a special, home-cooked meal. "Special" to my daughters meant burgers and fries for this birthday. So, for their birthday dinner, that's exactly what we did.
I had ground beef in the freezer, the ingredients to make buns, plus ketchup, mustard, canned tomatoes, garden watercress, a tiny amount of onion, plain yogurt, garlic powder, a packet of au jus mix, and cabbage (for a slaw-style salad). I did splurge and bought one 2-lb bag of seasoned French fries, for a little over $2 at Walmart.
I baked a batch of burger buns on Saturday, so the basic burger was covered. Because this was a special burger meal and because our selection of on-hand ingredients didn't match what one would think of as usual burger toppings, we put together some different toppings, which we billed as "gourmet." Here are the toppings from our "gourmet" burger toppings bar:
- au jus for dipping French dip-style (surprised me, this was very popular with all)
- tzatziki, without the cucumber, using strained yogurt, olive oil, mint (didn't have dill), lemon juice, garlic powder, salt (also very popular)
- salsa made from canned tomatoes with jalapenos, to which I added fresh onion, garlic powder, chili powder, salt, chipotle powder, pa inch of sugar, and vinegar, cooking it down for about 20 minutes
- watercress
- rosemary mustard, made last summer
- plus the usual ketchup and yellow mustard
Our birthday dinner menu was as follows:
- burgers with our "gourmet" toppings bar
- seasoned fries from a package
- cole slaw, made with a vinaigrette mixed with yogurt
- cookies and cream birthday cake
- 1 bottle of sparkling cider to toast the birthday gals
- 1 bottle of homemade lemonade
- 1 bottle of water
We served the lemonade and water in empty sparkling cider bottles, as we did for one daughter's graduation reception last June. I have saved the quirky-shaped or nicely-colored cider bottles that we've received over the years. They make nice bottles for water on the dinner table or for taking lemonade on a picnic.
The entire meal used an extra $4.12 out of our grocery budget for the Oreo-style cookies and the seasoned fries. That's considerably less than what we had originally planned for their birthday before we knew about the upcoming income reduction.
