A few quick tips for your reading pleasure:
1. Everyone loves potatoes: Forget polenta… fancy sides that no one knows the name of, seriously. When it comes right down to it, we are all meat and potatoes people. Feed a crowd and make them feel like they had something really special all at the same time. My New Year’s Side? Potatoes Daphuionais (aka potato casserole)
Potoato
Cream
Gruyere Cheese (ahem… otherwise known as swiss)
2. There is Fillet and then there is fillet: I wanted to serve Steak Au Poivre for my New Year’s Dinner. Sadly fillet mignon is very costly. At over $25 a pound… well I love my friends. But who am I kidding? I can’t afford that! Enter the Beef Fillet Tip. The actual beef fillet is not a perfect cylinder. It tapers on the end. You can’t get perfect little circles of beef out of it… but the flavor is the same… its the same cut of meat. Just not as pretty. At a mere $14 a pound. I’ll take it! Still not your cheapest cut of meat. But I’ll take a $10 a pound savings any day.
3. Not everyone wants Veuve Clicquot: Talk to the folks at the wine shop. You can get a lovely sparkling wine for less than $12 a bottle and still have a lovely evening. If you must have champagne. Let them know how you like your champage and what you are serving… and how much you want to spend. They want you to come back; they are not going to sell you something you won’t enjoy.
Non-Champagne options:
Cava (Spanish)
Prosecco (Italian)
Espumante (Portuguese)
Sekt (German)
If you really want Champagne there are many affordable options, and if you buy 3 or more, many shops will give you a 10% discount on the wine. American Sparking wines are very good. If you buy a Champagne style American wine, you probably won’t even be able to taste a difference. So shop around and enjoy those champagne tastes, without blowing your beer budget!
Happy New Year!!
