Food News: Dollar Tree Date Night

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

By Sam Petri

JACKSON HOLE, WYOMING - Cooking dinner for your new lover for the first time can be stressful.  If you blow it, at the very least the night is tainted.  But chef-up something incredible and you’ll have the golden ticket to their heart.  In these trendy times we live in, you’ll probably feel obligated to incorporate organic bok choy, goji berries, or some sort of curry paste that was blessed by a monk. Everyone knows the fresher the ingredients the better the meal, but wandering the aisles of Whole Foods could mean your Whole Paycheck. So why not hook something up at the Jackson Hole Dollar Tree?  After all, you just met this person.  
The key to a Dollar Tree dinner is a series of white lies. You can’t let your date know that you are cooking a meal that mostly came from cans. Smoke-and-mirrors style presentation is essential. That means preparing 95 percent of the meal before your date arrives and hiding the packaging deep in the trash. Any evidence of being the dead broke cheap-ass that you are will surely ruin everything.  

Of course, there is no fresh produce at the Dollar Tree. For the best results, purchase individual canned ingredients, put them together yourself, and make something uniquely your own.  Let’s get started.

The menu: Cheese and Crackers appetizer, Beef Stroganoff with Seasonal Beet Succotash, and Mom’s Homemade Apple Crisp.  
C
heese plates are essential to any gathering. Purchase “Monet Stone Ground Wheat Crackers,” and “Old World Flavor Sharp Cheddar Cheese Snack Spread.” Arrange the crackers on a plate and dump the cheese spread into a small glass dish in the center. If your date asks what kind of cheese it is, say it is Camembert from a goat farm outside of Victor, Idaho.  

All the while you should have “Hartford House Beef Stew” simmering on the stove. This is your Beef Stroganoff. To disguise the stew, Planet Jackson Hole recommends adding a can of green beans to the stew. This will add color to an otherwise brown dish and make it look fresh.  Dump this concoction over a plate of lightly buttered egg noodles. If your date questions the style of your Stroganoff, say that this is the way your Russian Grandmother made it.

For a side, the seasonal beet succotash is easy to make.  One can of “Breckenridge Farms Whole Kernel Sweet Corn,” plus another can of “Breckenridge Farms Sliced Beets,” mixed in a serving bowl, tastes alright.  Tell your date you roasted the beets yourself and that they came from your friend’s sustainable garden in East Jackson.  
Finally, dessert. Set your oven to bake at 300 degrees.  Empty a can of “Mussleman’s Apple Pie Filling” into two small oven-safe dishes. Bake it in the oven while you eat the main course.  When it’s hot, crumble gram crackers over the apple pie filling. Top with a dollop of “Solo Brand Marshmallow Creme.” Put back in oven for 2 minutes.  The result is a low-rent apple crisp dish.  Say you learned how to make this when you were a volunteer at a soup kitchen in Brooklyn and that you “just got hooked on it.”  

For a total of $7.50, you can’t beat the value.  And remember, 15 minutes before your date arrives, call and say, “Dinner’s almost ready. Could you swing by the store and pick up some wine or something.” Then you’ll get drunk and nothing will matter.

PERMALINK:
Food News: Dollar Tree Date Night | Planet JH News Article: Restaurants And Dining

Leave a Comment