62. December 3rd, 2010 Picture.

Because the holidays are always an expensive time, not to mention the fact that we just got back from a 3 day stint on Nantucket, Ratty and I were in the mood to penny pitch.  Not as if we had a say in it really, it was more like our bank accounts were calling the shots.  The weekend following our trip we decided to lay low and try to spend as minimal money as possible.  I had a few great ideas for this, specifically stemming from my poor college student days.  My credit card once got declined for an $8 box of Franzia my senior year, that may have been my lowest point, but it makes for a great story now.

I told Ratty that I would make him dinner, which would give me the opportunity to show him how domestic I am.  I decided that I’d make chicken piccata mainly because it takes all of 5 ingredients and is a relative 1 pot meal, considering Ratty has 1 frying pan and no measuring cup.  I will never let him live that fact down, never. 

I got his apartment after work, put the groceries away and headed out to the store down the street to grab some wine.  Keeping in theme with cheap date nights, I told him we should get a box of wine.  For $15 (the same price as a decent small bottle), we could get 5 liters, which equals more than 2 magnums of wine.  That’s a lot of wine, that would last us all weekend and then some.  That is exactly what we needed at a price that was perfect.

Ratty had never really had Franzia before, well actually he’d had it but never probably chosen to buy it before.  There was only the blush kind left, which was better than sangria, so we picked it up and we were on our way.  The most hilarious part is that this particular store leaves a piece of paper at the register for customers to request things, special kinds of ice cream, new brands of cleaning supplies, bigger boxes of crackers, and right at the top of the list was more boxes of Chardonnay Franzia.  We were definitely not the only ones buying boxes of wine in the North End.  Apparently everyone was in the same cash-strapped boat.

We got back to the apartment, tapped our bag o’ wine, and settled in to do some cooking.  Well, I cooked, Ratty took pictures of the things I cooked.

Once dinner was made, we fired up On Demand and watched ‘National Treasure’.  I’d never seen it before, it was actually really entertaining and interesting, PLUS is featured a cameo by Christopher Plummer, scratching that one of my list!  

{SWOON!}