Frugal Dates

Date night is definately the favourite night of the week for my Husband and I. We like to have a bit of variety without breaking the bank. During the cold, wet, Winter months we are more likely to stay at home, turn off the lights, use candles and sit in front of the woodburning stove eating a home cooked meal or watching a dvd.

Two weeks ago on date night it was hot and sunny and as we were already in Exeter on business we drove a bit further to the beach at Exmouth. After a walk along the seafront and on the soft sandy beach, we went to eat in for a treat at 'The Bamboo' which is our favourite Chinese restaurant. The curry is served on burners and steams through the whole meal. Chopsticks are provided but we're not really patient enough to eat the whole meal with them, it takes us so long to eat the rice! I asked for tap water to drink and was pleased to get lemon and ice. We had a water jug with the meal too. While munching prawn crackers we ordered beef curry, chicken curry, a portion of chips decided to try to manage on one portion of rice but had forgotten quite how much curry they gave you there and had to order another portion half way through the meal. Never mind, it was good to experiment. (Maybe next time we will just have one curry between us then we could manage on one portion of rice, this would be easier if we had a small snack a couple of hours before, it's hard to cut down when you go out to eat if you are already starving!). We didn't order dessert but got given two after dinner chocolates, one was orange chocolate and the other was mint chocolate. We ate these in Exmouth park while sitting on the bench admiring the flowers.

Last week we got a takeaway from our favourite chip shop then parked at a pictureque location nearby to eat. We took our own drinks and went for a country walk afterwards. We found some unusual wild yellow flowers there. This cost about £10 for the two of us, £5 each, plus a little diesel but we didn't drive far.

Last night we decided to have a bedroom date, I changed into a pretty nightie while the dinner was cooking then brought it up to eat in bed. A simple dinner of home-made quiche, potato and a full salad with creamy dressing. We watched a free film downloaded from the internet while eating a Magnum ice-cream and sipping Bailey's and ice, lovely! The meal was the same family meal that we would have eaten if it hadn't been date night, the only cost was 50p each for the Magnums which were on special offer and part of a multi-pack and the Baileys which was a tiny part of the litre bottle which was on special at £15, so very hard to price, 50p each? That would make the cost of this date about £2 for both of us! The novelty of eating, drinking alcohol and watching a film in bed made the date special for us as we don't normally do this. We don't need to spend pounds to enjoy our night together, we certainly didn't feel deprived!