Date Night In - Valentines Day

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Is Valentines Day a holiday you look forward to? Going out for dinner and a movie? Do you have flowers waiting for your significant other at work or at home? Valentines Day for us has never really been a thing in our relationship. When I really thought about why that is, I think it is because we were servers in the beginning of our relationship, and as a server, you are expected to work on busy holidays. And as you can imagine, Valentines Day is a big holiday for eating out. And as a previous server... I recommend not eating out that day.

 JP and I planned a nice dinner at home for this Valentine's Day. We had wine, a charcuterie board, mussels, oysters and some chocolate dipped strawberries.

So, like all my date night in posts, let's break down the costs.

Wine $53.36
8 Kumamoto Oysters $8.00
2.2lbs Black Mussels $10.93
8oz Chorizo $3.47
3 Meats $6.00
Cheese $2.50
Heavy Cream $2.99
Red Bell Pepper $1.25
Lemon $.50
Onion $.30
Shallots $.15
Serrano $.08
Fresno Peppers $.44
Habanero $.08
Cilantro $.50
Strawberries $3.99
Chocolates $2.50
Garlic $.50
Total $97.54
Plus ingredients not above that I already had... $105.00 grand total

If you are a lover of oysters like I am, Whole Foods does $1 oysters on Fridays. Highly recommend. If you live in the Denver area and want to learn how to shuck oysters, check out The Blue Island Oyster Bar Class. It is so much fun and you end up eating so much while there. Definitely a great date idea.

If we had gone out to dinner and ordered this exact meal, below is an estimate of what that meal would have cost. For this meal, I chose to use a variety of restaurants since this meal I could not find all in one place. I also doubled the wine price since most restaurants will double and even sometimes triple wine prices.

Faust Wine $120
8 Kumamoto Oysters $4.95/pc $39.60
Charcuterie Board (3 meats, 1 cheese) $18.50
2.2lbs Chorizo Mussels $34
Chocolate Dipped Strawberries $8
Total before tax and tip: $220.10
After taxes and 20% tip: $285.00

So, the difference for this meal is $180... that doesn't even include the Uber driver we would have had to call. Plus, we were able to stay in our pajamas. Now, I know a big part of eating out is being served on and not having to clean up a mess, and I get that. But eating in can be fun too and the leftovers are so amazing the next day. When you cook at home, you usually end up making way more than what you would you have received in a restaurant. And when you eat out, be sure you are budgeting in the servers tip and a good tip is 20%, nothing less.

What did you do for Valentines? Do you budget for Valentines Day because you go all out? Or do you stay in your pajamas and cuddle watching a movie with a glass of wine like us? Comment and subscribe.

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