What’s the most money you’ve ever spent on a meal? Was it worth it?
Meals are pretty expensive these days. When I was in high school and went on this youth trip to Washington, D.C., the tour leaders gave us each a $5 bill when we would stop at McDonald’s or some other fast food place. That $5 got us a meal and change left over. Five dollars now at McDonald’s will get you some French fries, maybe? And not even the large fries I’m sure. Of course, that’s American dollars. That whole hashbrowns thing that was trending yesterday was based on what someone paid for hashbrowns at a McDonald’s in Australia.
As far as the most expensive, I was tempted to say the meal my husband and I had at Bonefish Grill on Good Friday. We only ordered an appetizer and two main dishes. Didn’t get anything fancy to drink, just soda and our bill was over $90, before adding the tip. It wasn’t even that good! It was edible, but it was a plate of tiny portions and really nothing special about any of it.
Thinking farther back, I think the most we have ever spent on one meal was the meal we cooked for our wedding reception. We had a small ceremony. Maybe 20 people total. That size group was small enough to have the reception at my sister-in-law’s house. My husband and I decided to make all of the food ourselves. It took about three days. One day and well into the night was for making the side dishes and then two days were for smoking the meat. Which my husband did the night before the wedding. And by night before, I mean he was up all night. We were living in a tiny, no-grills allowed apartment at the time, and so he stayed at his mom’s house that night and kept a close eye on the smoker in the backyard. He stayed there for that reason, but also, you know, the whole superstition of not seeing the bride before the ceremony thing.
I don’t know how much money we spent on the food, but I know that this year when we bought a brisket to recreate part of the meal for our anniversary, that alone was $70. The funny thing about our reception meal, is that we don’t remember exactly what we had. We know there was a smoked brisket and a pork butt that he shredded so that there could be pulled pork sandwiches. But honestly, we’re taking our best guess at what else we had.
For a wedding album, I had our pictures from the photographer printed, but when I put them in the album, I left space for me to put picture sized index cards. On the index cards I wrote commentary about the day. What I was thinking in a particular picture or the story of my dress put next to a picture of my dress hanging up. I remember that I used to love looking through my parents’ wedding album when I was a kid and I would always ask my mom questions. So I figured, one day, my kids could look through our wedding album and read the stories from the day that went with the pictures. The thing is, I haven’t finished it yet. We got married 12 years ago. I worked on it a little each year, but still haven’t finished. The pictures from the reception are at the end of the album, which means I haven’t gotten to those yet to write out my narrative. And as every year went by that I didn’t get to that part of the album, the more and more the details became hazy. Until one year recently, I told my husband that I needed to write down what we cooked because I couldn’t remember everything. We still don’t remember. This is the list as it is from two or three years ago when I finally wrote it down for the time I would eventually get to the back of the album:
We don’t remember the shrimp, presumably shrimp cocktail. We also don’t know what two types of pasta salad we made. Josh seems to think one of them had asparagus tips in it, but asparagus is listed separately. So…?
There’s also no really good picture of the actual food. This picture, taken from a distance, is the best we have:
Don’t ask me to explain the look on my face, I don’t know why I looked angry.
All I know is, we took the leftovers home and ate on them for several days after the wedding. Even after several days, there was still a lot left that we eventually threw out because we just couldn’t fathom eating any more of it.
So, to answer the original question, actually, I don’t think I answered any of the original question. It didn’t ask what the meal was, just what we spent on it and was it worth it. Well, I don’t know how much we spent. I’m assuming it was a few hundred dollars. It was definitely well worth it though. It was also the last time we’ll probably ever do that. Josh said so himself. When we got home from the reception, and after multiple trips from the car to the apartment carrying in the coolers and other containers from the reception, Josh shut the front door, leaned his back on it, and said, “That’s the last time we’re doing that.”
Leave a Reply