Week 4 : Dropping Quarters in Niagara Falls
Week 4: Dropping Quarters in Niagara Falls
Husbands, Fathers, do you ever get home from work, stand outside the front door, take a deep breadth before opening it and say, “Here we go”? If you said yes, we have nothing in common. I’ve never done this in my life. After a full day at work playing with my friends, I can’t wait to jump inside, get tackled by the kids which eventually turns into giant hugs with them saying, “I’m so glad you are home daddy, we missed you so much”, then showered with praise from my wife on how amazing I am.
“OUCH !! why did you smack me?” I said to my wife. She said, “You were daydreaming while I was talking…snap back into reality buddy, and by the way, pick up your shoes please.”
Ok, so maybe I do take some deep breaths before going inside, but honestly, my kids still run to say hello to me and hug me and they are happy I’m home and I’m sure they missed me because I rock, but shortly after that they start in with the, “Can I have XYZ please?”. My wife always greets me with a kiss. We chat about our day but that usually turns into all the stuff we need to get done. Family life can be overwhelming at times and that is why At Home Date Nights are so important. I guarantee when it’s At Home Date Night you won’t be hesitant to start the evening shift of life, but eager to dash into the house, ready to enjoy some sweet special time with the love of your life.
Tonight, was no different. I was super excited about At Home Date Night. I was making something I usually suck at, but I felt I was going to finally conquer it. I was also excited because it’s week 4 which means I’ve stuck with this for a month now and my wife and I are enjoying the time. I can see a difference in our relationship.
I walked through the door with a pep in my step, but just as I was fully in, my wife comes out of the kitchen to greet me with a kiss…but wait…she isn’t making kissy face..that’s frustrated face. What is going on. “The Dessert is a total disaster! I’ve even cursed twice, fudgsicles and butter squash!” I knew things were serious because she only uses that type of language when something has really gotten to her. I said, “Don’t worry babe, we can scrap the first batch and try again.” She said, “I already did that, this is the second batch!”
Oh boy, this was going to be rough. I offered to scrap it and swap with her. I’d make the dessert and she could make the main course. Now remember, my wife is a part of the bra burning parade, so she wasn’t about to have a man come in and “fix” her dessert. “No, we are eating this, I don’t care what it tastes like.”
I knew something else to be true, my wife is also a perfectionist. I figured the dessert wasn’t really that bad, it was probably going to be delicious, but since she has such high standards for everything she does, she was frustrated because it wasn’t exactly the way she thought it would be in her head.
My wife also prefers to do savory vs sweet dishes. Don’t get me wrong, my wife can make sweet dishes with the best of them, but her savory dishes are untouchable.
My wife was making Nanaimo bars because this week we are visiting Niagara Falls. These chocolate bars, according to the inta-net, are a classic French Canadian dessert. From what I could tell they looked like they were going to be delicious. She mentioned she might have made some wrong measurements. I didn’t care. I haven’t had something sweet in a while and I needed some chocolate.
I was attempting to make a Tourtiere, French Canadian Meat Pie. I was confident with the filling but every time I make a pie crust it doesn’t turn out well. My wife had started early on her dessert because it needed to sit in the fridge for at least an hour. She wrapped up the last parts of it and stuck it in the fridge. I’m like, “Wow, you are done, and date night hasn’t even started, you going to help me?” You can guess her answer.
The kids were busy watching TV so my wife and I actually had some time to sit down and talk before date night even started. I popped in some pizza bagels for the kids and started earlier on the Tourtiere, since the dough needed to sit in the fridge for 20 minutes or so.
My wife put on some music. We usually listen to music genres from the places we are going to visit. I don’t know what my wife said to Alexa, but she started playing the song Jolene, by Dolly Parton.
I’d never heard the song before. It’s about this chick worrying about this other chick stealing her man, and she is pleading with her not to because she knows the other woman could steal her. I said, “Awe babe, you are so sweet, but don’t worry, nobody could ever steal me away from you.” She gave me one of those What have you been smoking type looks. “Please babe, I’d have to pay her to take you.” She said. I pretty much tossed that one up to her and she knocked it out of the park.
“I’m too good for Jolene anyways” I said, then I began to prepare my meat pie. We talked more about travel plans for this year. Niagara Falls was near the top of our list for family vacations. The Canadian side of course. We’ve never been, but everyone we know says the Canadian side is way better. I don’t know what that’s all a boot, but I hope to find out one day.
As I was browning the ground beef/ground pork mixture you need to add a spice called ground cloves. I wasn’t familiar with this spice, but it smelled amazing. It smelled like the holidays. I learned from some of my research that Tourtiere is to be served on Christmas Eve, and is a New England area / French-Canadian tradition. I can see why, I wanted it to be Christmas again the whole time I was cooking it.
When the meat mixture was cooked enough for me to taste, I quickly realized the recipe I’d taken had a major flaw, this must have been cooked by somebody with no taste buds. When I was seasoning it from the directions, I had a feeling it was going to taste bland. I was right. While it smelled divine it did not taste good. I’ll go over it later, but you need to add a lot more salt, ground cloves, and the rest of the seasoning to make it pop. “Taste, taste, taste!”, I heard in my head with the voice of Master Ramsey. I added a lot more seasoning until my wife and I both agreed it was good to go.
When you marry a Puerto Rican, you are going to learn quickly how food is supposed to taste. Latin Flavors are no joke. I don’t want to live with Jolene and eat her dry meat loaf.
The meat was finally ready, it was time to roll out the dough and create the crust. My arch nemesis is pie crust, but this time I owned it. The dough rolled out easy and went into the pie baking pan. I poured the meat mixture in and rolled out the top piece as well. That went smooth. I can’t take credit for this. The recipe was spot on and I realized all my other pie crust recipes have sucked. It wasn’t me after all, it was the recipe. I knew it couldn’t have been operator error.
It came time to show off my master skills to my wife. I said, “Ok, now I’m going to flute this bad boy”. Her eye’s rolled, and for good reason, I’d never fluted a pie crust. How hard could it be? Well, apparently hard for Mr. Fat Fingers. “I’m just not used to pinching and tucking things so small.” I said. “That’s what she said!” my wife blurted out. Yeah, she’s awesome. It’s funny though. She has only seen The Office once or twice. I keep telling her she will love it, but she can’t get into it. Leave a comment below on how I can get her to watch the series. I know she would love it.
My fluting job didn’t turn out too bad. It was my first time fluting a pie. I was a proud papa pie fluter. We shoved it in the oven to let it bake.
While it was baking, I explained to her the activity. We were going to play quarters, the non-drinking version, which probably isn’t a real thing, but I’m not 21 anymore, my body can’t handle that abuse. If you were in the military or went to college, you probably played this. The basic premise is you have two coffee cups filled with “liquid”. You separate these coffee cups about 20 feet apart. Then you each take turns trying to toss a quarter into the other person’s coffee cup.
The look on her face was like, “Are you for real?” I was dead serious. It really doesn’t matter so much what you do on Home Date Nights, it’s the time you spend. It doesn’t have to be something crazy each week. This game cost nothing, ok, well, that’s not true, for us it costs something because the prize was going to be a gift card to the person who won, but for you it could just be for fun.
Once the pie was done, we sat down to eat. My wife loved it. I liked it. I wasn’t super wowed by it, but I was proud of my fluting job and pie crust. I still thought the pie filling needed even more seasoning. We made a special ketchup sauce to go with it. My wife loved that too with the pie, but I thought it just masked the taste of the pie.
It was time for the disaster of a dessert. You know what, I LOVED IT !!! To me it was amazing. My wife didn’t like it so much. She thought the chocolate was too bitter and we should have gotten a sweeter chocolate. I thought the bitterness went well with the filling. I could have eaten the whole dish, but a las, this stupid diet. I restricted myself to only 6 bars because I have self-control. The rest we planned on bringing to church the next day. If you are reading this and tried them, leave a comment below and tell us how they were.
“Let the games begin!” I shouted. She wasn’t too excited, but after playing for a while she really got into it. We decided to play to 10 points. 5 hours later the score was 1 to 2 and I was in the lead. Ok, not 5 hours, but man we sucked at this game. My skills had really diminished. At one point my wife said, “I think I need bumpers for this game.” She had me dying all night with what she was saying. After around 25 minutes of play we knew there was no way we were going to make it to ten. So, we lowered it to 5. I was starting to get into my rhythm. I was hitting the cup left and right and knew I was almost there. The following one I launched I knew from the moment I released it, it was going in.
“That wasn’t going in.” my wife said as she put her hand right above the cup to catch my quarter. I was furious, and when I say furious, I mean not furious at all. My wife is Puerto Rican….you don’t get furious with a Latin lady if you want to wake up in the morning.
“BS that wasn’t going in, your hand was right above the cup.” I said, while she smirked and laughed. She fought dirty. I let it go because I knew my skills were far superior. I mean, every throw she was hitting the back wall, or like 4 feet away from the cup. I’m like, “what are you doing?”. She said, “I think I have a weird curve in my arm.” Yep, it’s called an elbow….I didn’t say it out loud, I choose life.
Her next throw the quarter bounced off the carpet and into the cup. Crap, tie game. She then says, “While I am having a good time, this is going to take another hour for us to finish and I’m getting tired, how about we make it, next shot wins.” Of course you want to make next shot wins, I thought.
We played for a little longer with both of us getting so close to sinking the last shot. “You are going to be buying me that gift card, I can feel it.” I said. She said, “Yep, I’ll buy you the gift card with your own money.” She wasn’t wrong. I didn’t care about the gift card, I wanted to win.
A few shots later I sunk one and put the nail in her coffin. “I don’t care about winning” she said. “Me either but it sure does feel good.” I said. I had redeemed myself. She usually wins at home date night competition games. I am the master of quarter throwing.
I took my victory lap around the living room, into the kitchen, up the stairs, and back down. She grabbed me tight and whispered into my ear, “You aren’t going to win every time.” I replied, “I have already won every time because I have you in my life.”
And that’s how you seal the deal folks….BOOM !!!
Thanks for joining us for At Home Date Night. If you are reading this today you know it’s that once a year special day that every woman in the entire planet, except for last week’s guest, wants something special done for her. Yep, it’s Valentine’s day. So, if you suck and haven’t planned anything you have 4 At Home Date Night ideas you can run out and get items for to surprise your wife with.
I hope you enjoy following along with our At Home Date Nights. We encourage you to do this on your own. You will see a difference in your relationship, I promise. Let us know in the comments how your date nights are turning out. Also, we post updates in our Facebook group, Instagram, twitter. You can find those links to the right under the “About Us” section.
Thank you again and remember, your marriage is worth it !!
Main Course Cost: $18.85
Dessert Cost: $18.00
Activity Cost: $0
Week 4 Total At Home Date Night Cost: $ 36.85
Tourtiere French Canadian Meat Pie
Ingredients
Pastry
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon kosher salt
- ⅔ cup butter
- 6-7 Tbsp cold water
Filling
- 1 lb ground beef
- 1 lb ground pork
- 1 onion finely choppedd
- 2 cloves garlic crushed
- 2 large potatoes
- 1 tsp Bells Poultry Seasoning
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp ground cloves
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 tsp salt maybe less, maybe more
- ½ tsp black pepper
- 1 egg scrambled for glazing
Instructions
Pastry prep
- In a mixing bowl, combine flour and salt. Then mix in the softened butter untile the mixture is crumbly.
- Add water and mix until the dough starts to come together. Then shape the dough with your hands into a rough disc shape. Wrap it up and stick it in the fridge until you are finished with the filling.
Filling (the good stuff)
- Heat up a pot of water to boiling. Remember to add some salt to the water. Peel the potatoes and chop into even pieces then boil the potatoes until tender. Before straining the potatoes, save 1/2 cup of the potato water. Strain the potatoes and mash them up roughly.
- In a large frying pan or skillet, cook the onions, garlic, beef and pork over medium to high heat until it's no longer brown.
- mix all the spices into a small bowl, then add them to the meat mixture, mix the spices.
- add the potato water and continue to simmer until all the water has evaporated mixing quite a bit through the process.
- Add the mashed potatoes and mix everything together
- Preheat the oven to 400°F while you make the pie.
- Remove the pastry dough from the fridge and lightly flour a wood cutting board or counter-top surface. Cut the dough disc in half and roll out the first half to about 1/8 inch thick disc. Then lay the dough over your pie baking pan. Add the meat filling.
- Take the remaining dough and roll it out into another disc and lay on top of the meat pie. Now, raise your fist in the air and call upon the powers of Gordon Ramsey to electrify your fluting ability.
- Cut some slits into the top of the pie any way you want. We tried to put HDND because I'm super creative and artistic…as you can tell.
- Brush the top of the pie and all around the edges with the egg wash. Throw it in the oven and bake for 30-35 minutes. After it's done let it sit for about 10 minutes before serving.
- Don't worry if it falls apart when getting it out of the pie. I probably should have pressed in the meat and maybe it would have held together better.
Notes
Nanaimo Bars
Ingredients
Bottom Layer
- ½ cup chopped almonds
- ½ cup melted butter
- 1 egg
- ¼ cup sugar
- 5 Tbsp cocoa powder
- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1 cup graham cracker crumbs
Filling
- ½ cup softened butter
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 2 Tbsp + 2 tsp heavy whipping cream
- 2 Tbsp vanilla pudding powder
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Top Layer
- ½ cup chocolate chopped
- 2 Tbsp Butter
Instructions
Bottom Layer
- Melt the butter in a saucepan, add cocoa powder and sugar. Stir until everything has dissolved
- Add a beaten egg while stirring a lot to make sure the egg doesn't scramble in the hot mixture.
- Remove from the heat and add in the coconut, chopped almonds, and graham cracker crumbs. Stir everything up until well combined
- Line an 8×8 or similar baking pan with parchment paper. Spread out the bottom layer mixture and put in the fridge while you make the other layers.
Filling
- In a bowl, cream the softened butter, powdered sugar, heavy whipping cream, and vanilla pudding mixture. Beat until it's light and fluffy.
- Pull the bottom layer out of the fridge and spread out the filling, then add it back to the fridge
Top Layer
- Melt the chocolate and butter on the stove top. I recommend using a double boiler method for this. When it's nice and smooth pull out the pan from the fridge and add in the chocolate mixture.
- Set it back into the fridge and let it chill for about an hour. It's best to do this dish a little ahead of time. When it's finished cut it into bars and take a ride on the sugar rush to a diabetic coma.
