The Cost of a Five-Star Dinner at Home

Difficulty rating for making Julia Child's Beef Bourguignon: DIFFICULT.

Why I chose to make this for Mayet's birthday: I'm CRAZY.

When I told the butcher where I buy my meats, and the physical therapist who's making my bum knee better this, stopping for a moment of impressed curiousity, they replied "Tell me how it turns out!" My PT also asked me to estimate how much just the main part of the dish cost.

Here are the ingredients for Beef Bourguignon, adapted from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck. I bought these ingredients at Quality Food Center in April 2013.

6 oz. piece of chunk bacon	$2.55
3 1/2 Tbs olive oil	$1.77
3 lbs lean stewing beef	$27.65
1 carrot	$0.17
1 onion	$1.21
Salt & pepper	$0.05
2 Tbs flour	$0.07
3 cups red wine	$5.99
2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups beef stock	$3.69
1 Tbs tomato paste	$0.17
2 cloves garlic	$0.10
1/2 tsp thyme	$0.62
Bay leaf	$1.00
18-24 white pearl onions	$5.98
3 1/2 Tbs butter	$0.65
Herb bouquet (4 parsley sprigs, 1/2 bay	$1.50
bay leaf, 1/4 tsp thyme)
1 lb mushrooms	$4.03
Total	$57.20

Cook time: over 120 minutes. More like four hours for me! If my time is calculated into the total cost of making this dish, at minimum wage, the total would be $93.96.

The vegetables and noodles that were served with this dish were made by Mayet's future parents-in-law, which took them 30 minutes to make, and $10.00 worth of ingredients.  Bringing the grand total to $103.96.

Servings: 6. But there were seven of us, and we ran out of every bite of the meat before everyone, the teenager especially, got their fill. Need I say more how the dish turned out?

Boy, am I glad the red velvet cake was a hit that night! (This is a whole other story.) Otherwise, there would have been one or two unsatisfied dinner guests, and definitely one grumbling tummy. Mattie's. He looked longingly at the serving dish left only with noodles laden with the sauce of the beef stew.

The sauce was what made the dish! The spices were what made the sauce. No wonder sailors and explorers sailed to the far reaches of the East for spices. And just because we have jet liners and state-of-the-art ocean liners doesn't make the spices cheap.

I will say, though, that it cost an average of $14.85 per adult to eat just this dish. Very, very, very scrumptious $14.85 per person.

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