The Blonde Diaries

Two years ago if you would have told me surf and turf would be one of my favorite things to eat I would have laughed you out of the room. I was not a huge fan of beef at all nor did I like crab meat back in the day. But over the years my taste buds have changed and I have learned to love a good steak and I’m still coming around on the crabmeat part.

So earlier this week, Mike and I decided to cash in his Christmas gift from work since we had finally made some room in the freezer. As promised, Omaha Steaks delivered our order via UPS Friday afternoon: 4 top sirloins, 2 lbs King Crab legs, 1.5 pounds shrimp. We decided that on Saturday we would attack 2 of the steaks and the 2 pounds of crab legs which gave me exactly 24 hours to figure out what I needed to do to cook these suckers. All in all everything turned out pretty well Saturday night. Talk about being Yumm-O!

I did a little price checking and much to my surprise, Omaha Steaks is a tad out of our price range. But the food and the concept was so good that I decided to start looking for budget ways to make this at home. Here is what I have found:

1. My local Kroger has been putting steak on sale quite a bit lately. Mike actually was walking by the meat counter last week and found 2 steaks marked down for $5 with the Kroger card. These were not about to “expire” nor were they turning brown. So lessons learned: Join your grocery store’s reward program and check for sales every time you go!
2. The surf part can be made with any seafood really – shrimp, crab, crawfish, etc. So not only check for what is on sale but don’t be afraid to either cut the poundage down (2 pounds for 2 people was an insane amount of crab) or go for the imitation stuff. Imitation crab meat is not all that scary and it tastes pretty much like the real deal – the bonus is that its half the price!
3. Its all about how you season each part of the meal. Here in Houston, garlic butter is used as your “steak sauce” not A1. So either make your own at home by simmering minced garlic in some cheap butter on the stove or ask next time you go to a steak restaurant for them to pack a little extra with your to-go boxes. Its very yummy and you don’t have to worry about figuring out the recipe.

I hope this helps you in planning your next surf and turf night as I know I will be referring back to this thread when I finally defrost the $5 steaks Mike bought for us. Happy budgeting and cooking!

Tags: budget, cooking, dining, seafood, steak