We can’t help noticing that AskMen’s list of Top Ten Cheap Dates [via Lifehacker] seems to rely heavily on going somewhere for small amounts of food. The coffee date, the brunch date, the picnic, cut-rate dinner at a friend’s bistro…
The Home Cooking Date
A home-cooked meal at your place also makes it onto the list of best frugal dates — and it’s a great date idea — with the caveat that this is not a move for the first time you invite someone out! AskMen’s Matt Forsman suggests waiting for the third date to propose a little home cooking, and I’d agree.
But what if you can’t boil water without burning it?
If you’ve never cooked before, learn fast. Watch a few episodes of Rachael Ray’s 30 Minute Meals on the Food Network, take fastidious notes, and you should have enough in your arsenal to seduce the girl’s palate. Three simple courses and some good wine should be sufficient.
Again, I agree with the AskMen guru. And by “three simple courses” we don’t mean laying on a gut-busting Roman banquet. You can do salad for starters, a very basic main course of some sort, and a dessert. How hard can that be?
Salad
Trot down to the market and buy yourself a little bag of mixed salad greens and a bottle or two of salad dressing. Low-fat dressing is probably the safest choice, with half the women on the planet on-and-off-and-on a slimming diet nowadays — and actually I’d spring for two bottles here, to give some choice: one a vinaigrette and the other a creamy dressing. If you get a store-brand dressing, you may want to hide the bottle(s) so as not to look like a total tightwad. In that case, just serve the dressing in your smallest bowls or deepest saucers, with a teaspoon on the side, or even in a small cream pitcher.
Main Course
Don’t even think about making spaghetti. Sure, it’s easy enough to cook up something edible in that area, especially with the aid of a commercially bottled sauce (or the kindness of your mother), but — write this down, my dear — spaghetti is not a date food! It’s almost impossible to look suave and sexy while wrangling a forkful of dangling pasta strings, trying to keep the dripping sauce off chin and chest.
Of course, if you’ve both got a great self-deprecating sense of humour, you could conceivably make a messy meal work for you…
You will, of course, have already made a point of discovering (in conversation on your first two get-togethers) if your date is vegetarian or vegan, or if she is subject to any life-threatening food allergies. Plan the menu accordingly.
But I won’t make really specific menu suggestions beyond that, because by the third date you’ll have (we hope) some ideas of what her taste might be, and you know better than I do what foods you yourself will enjoy. You can always browse the cookbook section of your public library for inspiration, if my recipes or Rachael Ray’s You Won’t Be Single For Long Vodka Cream Pasta [Food Network via Daily Candy] aren’t doing it for you.
Dessert
Fortunately, quick fancy desserts are the easy part. And if your date is not much into sweets, you can’t go too far wrong with a nice selection of fruit and cheese, served with a decent coffee.
Pulling It Off
Oh, and presentation does count.
- If you’re serving wine with the meal, do use wine glasses. You’re a grown-up now, and drinking your plonk from juice glasses just won’t cut it any more.
- Put a candle on the table if it’s an evening meal.
- Cloth napkins are best for making a good impression, but paper napkins are better than nothing: just don’t forget to set out napkins of some sort.
- Tidy up. Open a window. Put yesterday’s socks in the hamper. And it wouldn’t hurt to put clean sheets on your bed, you know, just in case…
The main key to doing the home-cooked meal date without having a stress-related breakdown is to prepare as much as possible in advance. That way you can chat and enjoy the company of your companion, while casually tossing together a few last minute items or gently warming a pot on the back of the stove… It beats a frantic scramble to get the cheese grated before the bruschetta goes soggy.
Alternatively, you can make the date all about cooking a meal together — especially if you’re an inexperienced cook and she’s a total domestic diva. Truth be told, women usually don’t mind at all being begged to help the helpless male improve his domestic skills.
And we don’t mind a cheap frugal date, either — if the right guy puts some originality and effort into making it happen.
Tags: cooking, dating, men, thrifty
