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Lifestyle

How to Make a Gourmet Valentine’s Day Dinner for $25

This article is written by a student writer from the Spoon University at JMU chapter.

‘Tis the season for love. Valentine’s day is an extra special day to celebrate the love you have for someone. And since many celebrate the day with a significant other (or friend), the topic of a celebratory dinner seems to creep up. 

Now, if you’re like me, the thought of blowing $25-50 on just one meal sounds terrifying, and the places that would be in my budget are going to be packed-filled with children crying and families fighting over who gets the last breadstick–removing any hope for a romantic evening. So, I set myself a challenge, to make a gourmet meal for two under $25. 

The meal I decided to challenge myself with is risotto. An initial fear struck me because of the scary things I have heard about it being super labor-intensive and temperamental. However, I thought if you want to impress your loved one might as well try to make something different. I used a dope recipe from food network as my ‘frame work’ and altered it to fit my taste.

In my version, I added sautéed chicken and mushrooms. I also substituted the dry white wine with white wine vinegar because not only is it more friendly on your wallet, but I couldn’t force myself to waste a glass of wine that I could have been drinking while eating this glorious meal. 

Parmesan Risotto

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 10 minutesCook time: 40 minutesTotal time: 50 minutesServings:4 servings

Ingredients

Instructions

  1. Madison Pessel

    After preheating the oven to 350° Fahrenheit and heating up the chicken broth, put the rice and 4 cups of the chicken broth into a baking dish. Cover the dish with tin foil and bake for 40-45 minutes.

  2. Madison Pessel

    In my version of the recipe, while the rice was baking, I sautéed chicken breasts and mushrooms with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, and red pepper flakes.

  3. Madison Pessel

    After baking for 40-45 minutes or until most of the chicken broth is absorbed by the rice. Stir in the remaining warmed chicken broth, Parmesan cheese, peas, butter, and white wine vinegar into the dish.

  4. Madison Pessel

    Add the chicken, mushrooms, salt, and pepper to taste. Garnish with shaved Parmesan, if you desire. Enjoy!

The price of this meal came out to be $21, leaving me only with 4 dollars. So, I decided to try and make a dessert. 

My dessert of choice was a take on my Grandma Lorraine’s cannoli recipe. I made the filling of her recipe and put it between chocolate wafer cookies

Cannoli Sandwich Cookies

Difficulty:BeginnerPrep time: 2 minutesCook time: 4 minutesTotal time: 6 minutesServings:8 servings

Ingredients

Instructions

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    In a bowl, combine ricotta, powdered sugar and vanilla until it is smooth

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    Spread filling in between 2 chocolate wafer cookies and serve. You can also add fruit or chocolate chips into the sandwich, if desired.

This sweet treat finished my budget off and resulted in me going over by 50 cents. But what can you do? 

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be about expressing your love of someone. So, whether you can afford a $99 steak or a 99 cents burger, it’s the thought behind it that counts.  

Hi, I'm Maddie, the editorial director at JMU Spoon and a biology major with a pre-physical therapy focus. I am an avid italian food enthusiast and I olive a tasteful amount of food puns (see what I did there?). Make sure you check out some of our dope articles at JMU Spoon!