My Own (Almost) 30-Minute Meal.

The fiance and I have decided that, in the interest of budgets and impending onslaught of expenses (namely, a move, grad school, a wedding, a honeymoon...all in the next year), we're giving up dining out for a while. However, since we're both budding gourmands, we don't want to abandon fine dining, so we've decided to try whipping up a fine new meal once a week. I began this tradition a few weeks ago, with a pomegranate-glazed chicken with caramelized onions and steamed broccoli with garlic, topped with a touch of goat cheese. Ohhhh, baby. It took an hour and a half, but it was superb.

This week, it was sirloin and chicken breast (red meat for him, white for me, due to my unusual beef allergy) marinated in red wine vinegar, molasses, chili flakes, garlic, and cracked peppercorns, served with caramelized onions, steamed broccoli, carrots, and mushrooms, and topped with some crumbled boucheron chèvre. We put the meat in the marinade around lunchtime and let it sit all day, which made it moist and insanely flavorful.

But here's the best part: not counting the marinating time, preparing the whole meal (including prep time!) took me just 37 minutes. That's right. I started the onions first (getting that delicious, melt-in-your-mouth golden result takes some time), put the meat on my trusty George Foreman grill, and steamed the veggies in a double-boiler. And this time included my demonstrating to the fiance how to properly wash and slice mushrooms, something he'd never done before. The pricetag came in at under $20, too. I couldn't believe it; a fine-dining meal that took less than an hour to cook and less than $20 to purchase! Take that, Rachael Ray! You don't have to make a "sammy" to have a delicious (and genuinely healthy - no buckets of "EVOO" here) dinner in around 30 minutes.

Here's hoping next week's birthday bash is just as successful!