When a restaurant meal sounds too expensive, but you still want to have a restaurant-type celebration . . .

Our quasi-frugal birthday celebration this past weekend

This past weekend, we celebrated both my husband's and my birthdays. Our birthdays are 6 days apart. Now that everyone's schedules so much more complicated, we just lump the two birthdays together for celebrating. 

Last month, we began talking about eating in a restaurant to celebrate. In case you hadn't guessed by now, dining out is exceedingly rare for us. Anyway, we talked about which restaurants all 6 of us might enjoy. We have a favorite, locally-owned Greek place that we all enjoy. I went online to check their menu prices, and man oh man, has there ever been some inflation. I knew I wouldn't enjoy the meal if I was thinking about the final bill the whole time. 

After about an hour of brainstorming with my family, we decided to just do a Greek meal at home. However, I didn't want to be the one cooking, and I didn't want my daughters to be saddled with a lot of unfamiliar and time-consuming cooking. That's when I thought to check the website for our local restaurant supply. Between the restaurant supply and WinCo we could pick up everything we'd need to put together gyro sandwiches, a tossed salad, fried mushrooms, and baklava for 6 of us with minimal effort (my daughters put it all together) and for less than half of what a comparable meal would have cost at the little Greek kafé near us. As a bonus, we had a bunch of leftovers, notably the seasoned gyro meat. 

This is what we bought:

5-lb box frozen cooked and seasoned gyro meat

6 ct pita bread

10-oz tzatziki sauce

large head Romaine lettuce

3 Roma tomatoes

1 red onion

12 ct frozen baklava

1 box frozen breaded and fried mushrooms

Everything was delicious. And my daughters were even able to push a birthday candle into my and my husband's baklava. So no "wishes" were lost by not having cake. And as I mentioned, we have a lot of the flavorful meat slices left in the freezer. Our Friday pizza nights just became Friday gyro nights (until the gyro meat is gone, that is).

One of the shocking discoveries I've had shopping in a restaurant supply store is how much pre-prepped items they sell. My guess is that many restaurants are using these items to speed up production and shave costs on kitchen help. This makes a lot of sense. For example with our Greek dinner, I can't imagine how involved it would have been to actually make baklava from scratch or the amount of time saved with the meat, all seasoned, cooked, and sliced for us. Knowing this, when my family next wants a restaurant style meal for a celebration, we can buy some ready-to-assemble ingredients from the restaurant supply, and put in a little effort on our part, to save about 50% the cost of a comparable meal out and not suffer any taste or quality.

Not as cheap as a scratch-cooked meal, but much more enjoyable for the cooks and without the high price tag of a restaurant.

Shallow Soil Carrots Planted in Pots

I planted our carrots this afternoon. As I've done for the last 3 years, I'm growing carrots in large, 13 to 15-inch deep pots. Growing root vegetables in pots sounds like it could be problematic. However, I've found that by choosing varieties that don't need as much soil depth, I have more success with root crops in large pots or trough planters for 3 main reasons:

• control the soil -- Where I'm kind of stuck with the soil that is presently in our raised garden beds, I can affordably add whatever type of soil a particular plant might need to a pot.
• control the pests -- slugs are one of our biggest pests when it comes to carrots. I tried some of our carrots in one of the beds last year and lost every single one to slugs eating the tops before roots could form.
• control the sunlight hours -- a pot can go on a deck, a front porch, a back porch, lining a walkway, set into a flower bed. Wherever there is ample sunlight, a pot can go there.

I've planted Danvers Half Long carrots in 6 pots this year. Judging by previous carrot harvests from pots, I expect the yield to be around 20 pounds or maybe a bit more. Other varieties of carrots that can be grown in pots include the small round carrots like Parisienne Market carrots and short and fat carrots like Chantenay Red Core carrots. I've read recommendations that pots should be a minimum of 12 inches deep for success with these shorter root carrot varieties. 

The primary drawback to growing veggies in pots is the need for constant watering. A pot  can't hold the amount of moisture that an in-ground bed can, and therefore dries out faster. Once our rainy season comes to an end, I'll have to water these carrot pots every day.

In addition to growing my carrots in pots, I have other root veggies growing in containers this year, turnips and beets in trough planters on the deck. The troughs are deeper than my large pots, which means they will hold more water as well as provide more root room. I didn't have to find specific shallow soil varieties for the beets and turnips.

Another money saving tip -- I bought these seeds at the end of last year on clearance. The overwhelming majority of vegetable seeds have great viability in year 2. The "packed by" date is simply when the seeds were packaged, not when they expire.