Sorry to hear about your father. Mine went the exact same way.

As far as expensive, we bake with cannabis. Every bake starts with $160 worth of flower. It's easy to have a mishap in the kitchen and when it's a $160 accident, you just have to bite the bullet and start over.

My other high ticket meal is brisket. Most of the briskets I cook are around 20 to 24 pounds. At $5 a pound, it's not a cheap meal.

What a sweet gift for your dad. I'm sorry to hear you're losing him. Mine also died from emphysema, but much younger at 67. Can't believe it'll be 36 years this month.

As for pricey food at home we have filet mignon a few times a year and occasionally Royal Reds or shrimp to boil.

The cake looks great!

When I wasn't able to cook, I hired the caterer for a couple of small (under 20) family holiday dinners. The last one, a quarter of the guests got sick and didn't come at the last minute. The leftovers were pretty darned pricey! But unlike a lot of people I know, I spend the most, nothing but the best, on food for entertaining (when I'm cooking), whereas I'm more conservative with the weekly food budget. Even the little weenie roast on the 4th, the hot dogs were fancy, organic, celery nitrite (though I know the argument about why this might be worse), etc. Really good hot dogs, not just fussy. Not cheap. And pretzel buns.

But the what they most love, most work, most price for what you get is probably the borekes. The only cheap thing there is pure potato flakes binder. The rest is fancy cheese and top quality filo, and a lot of work.

The cake for your dad is very touching.💕

Regarding pricier food, we served hanger steak at a special gathering a couple months ago. As I recall, it was a little over $100 for 3.5 lbs. Not something we do often but it was really good.

Brisket can be a bit pricey but it can serve many. I remember cooking a lump crab & gruyere cheese casserole a few years back for three. Those two ingredients alone were $50. There were leftovers, though.

I buy fresh King salmon from Alaska year around (when available on a limited basis in winter, too). Also already shelled fresh Dungeness crab. I don't want to mess with shelling it any more, but love to eat it in salads or crab cakes. My fish market also sells pre-made crab cakes that are quite good, made from the same fresh crab, so I sometimes buy those when I feel too lazy to make my own.

Aww, thanks y'all!

I think most of us would agree that sharing a meal is probably the most important and tender thing you can do for your friends and family. It's the memories you make when you do that very special time, that makes it even more special. I will say, today was pretty enjoyable. We went to eat at the dock and somebody decided they would go through the no wave zone pretty quickly. It was like an amusement park ride for a little bit. Created a lot of giggling and a memory I'm sure we'll think back on.

Y'all's extra special meals sound genuinely delightful. Undoubtedly, your guests really enjoy the whole event.

When we do big dinner parties, it isn’t cheap. For example, during the holidays we do a crab feed with 14-15 live Dungeness crab for as many people, the crustaceans alone cost a couple hundred dollars. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Covid put a stop to the big dinners, and we haven’t resumed with the same gusto.

At this point, I think that we've rested, long enough. So I think your thing is unfortunately, John Liu. 😉

Ha - nowadays, anything involving meat isn't cheap, is it?

For me it's usually the holidays - free range or organic turkey, lots of organic butter - which costs about as much per pound as some meats - and cheeses are even more - along with nuts and chocolate. I mostly buy organic everything, if possible, so it often adds up to more than conventional.

That cake looks yum 😋

Happy Birthday to your father, Rob, give him an extra hug for me. As you know, both my parents and both my siblings are now gone, so trust me when I tell you to wring every bit of enjoyment out of each moment while you can.

That cake looks amazing, I'm sure it was delicious.

The most expensive meal I do has to be the Christmas tenderloin, followed by one of my favorite fish, halibut. I buy that about once a year, as a splurge, usually for Elery and I for his birthday or mine.

Annie

That cake is beautiful. It's wonderful that you can make him a lovely treat that he will enjoy.

Yes, it's for family, mostly. Our favourite is a rib of beef on the BBQ. Often at Christmas LOL.

The Christmas goose. Well over £100. but very special.

I guess our most expensive home food would also be a whole tenderloin and also a large lobster.

As also mentioned, good cheese is pricey but bought in smaller amounts it works out quite reasonable.

Most expensive for me is the $15 for a 4 oz smoked salmon from Sea Bear. Has to be bought in a trio, so $45 for 3 plus shipping. I use one filet in a flour tortilla with a shredded cabbage lime juice slaw. It makes 3 tortillas. Quite expensive home meal for me.

In the summer season I buy produce from a local farm. It is expensive but hubs and I see it as an indulgence of fresh seasonal produce. It is a luxury that we allow for. If the farm does not sell it, I am not likely to buy it in the summer.

I also buy high quality meat from a local source. I would rather have less of better quality than mass quantities of cheap stuff.

But it is just for the two of us. It must really cost to feed a family, especially a big one!

I take back tenderloin being the most expensive thing I cook. It is probably crab cakes. Where we live, fresh jumbo lump crabmeat is $50/lb. I use only enough bread to make the crab cakes stick together (2 crustless slices of bread per pound*). I generally get 4 crab cakes per pound.

*Tried using one slice of bread per pound once. It turned out to be crab hash. The taste was fine, but it wasn’t pretty.

My Seafood Lasagne.. It makes a huge pan and freezes well, so that helps.

I'd probably be better at saying how much I'm not spending, lol. I am big on not spending if I can grow or make my own. Or hit a local discount store and find things. But of buying stuff... Crab is probably pretty high, we don't do it very often though. Gyro loaf is for sure expensive, since there's a lot of lamb in there. I make big batches in a half sheet cake pan. I try to defray by getting legs that I can grind myself and then use the bones for stock, but that's still 10 pounds of lamb in there. I don't do just lamb anymore, and the other half of it is usually good beef or sometimes some veal in there if I can get it. But it's still cheaper than buying the gyro slices or kits from the store. Cheese is high up there too, we eat a lot of cheese.

And random... 4 oz canned mushrooms. They used to be pretty cheap. Now around here average is 1.19-1.29 a can. I just picked up 8 oz tubs of fresh ones at Aldi on sale for 1.29 a tub. I used to use a lot of canned mushrooms in a lot of things, now it's more of a lux canned good.

Our Christmas prime rib, and very good one, costs well over $100 for a small one.

Fresh halibut or salmon, usually for a special dinner with friends. Mostly, though, I've started inviting friends for brunch instead of dinner. The ingredients are less expensive, although not the champagne.

beesneeds, I buy fresh mushroom, slice, and cook. I freeze flat on a sheet pan and put in freezer bag. They are cheaper and better than canned and just as easy to use.

I do the same as Sherry…cook up a batch of fresh mushrooms and freeze them flat in a zip-lock bag. Same with onions. I caramelize a big batch of onions in the slow cooker, freeze flat in a zip-lock.

I freeze mushrooms too. And I dehydrate and pickle them :) I also make a couple different stewed mushroom powders. Have done so for years. But the topic is about what is expensive, and the canned ones have gotten noticeably more expensive over the last few years. The 4 oz can used to be cheaper than a 15 oz can of other regular veggie- now mushrooms are more expensive than regular canned veggies. I don't do much canned veggie- I tend to home can, freeze, and dehydrate most of my own. But I still pay attention to the pricing on things.

Is there a reason people use canned or frozen mushrooms? Mushrooms are not expensive and are available fresh all year round.

For me, some of it is convience and different dishes can have different mushroom applicaitons. Some if it is also I get into town around 1-2 times a month, and fresh mushrooms don't always last between shopping trips. So having some preserved and on hand is nice. It used to be that when 4 oz canned mushrooms were 59 cents and 8 oz fresh was 2.99, canned was cheaper. Now 4 oz canned is 1.19-1.29, and 8 oz fresh is 3.99 when not on sale. So when fresh is on sale for 1.29, I pick up a few extra tubs to process up into whatever and also some fresh eating.

The fresh tubs I just picked up... one will go into a saute with summer squash for tonights dinner- I pulled a pound of gyro loaf out of the freezer yesterday. A couple tubs are going to get made up into some burritos for the freezer since we are out. The other couple are going to get prepped for just regular freezing.

I

I see. I get a fresh veg delivery every week. If I need anything else there's a greengrocer 5 minutes round the corner. I've never had to eat a canned mushroom.

Yeah, I live in the boonies. It's a drive to the store for me. Though when I lived in town it wasn't much better, it was still a drive out to the store. I just never developed the weekly shopping habit.

I love mushrooms in almost all forms, including canned. I grew up eating canned and in Cream of Mushroom soup (served as a soup, not as a casserole additive). I prefer the canned in a few things but especially in omelets.

Floral, both from the farm and from the semi-snooty store which has a much larger varaiety, mushrooms aren't cheap here. At all. The cheapest are ordinary white or brown mushrooms, non-organic, for $6 for half a pound. Better mushrooms are more like $1+ per ounce.

I do remember using canned mushrooms for something in my teens. Button mushrooms and sliced. They were pretty good. Better were marinated mushrooms that came in a jar and could go right on a relish plate. They were delicious! They don't have them anymore. Just a cheaper brand of what look like the old canned mushrooms but in glass jars, which cost slightly less than fresh, but not much, though other places have more. As well as dried or frozen. Dried are often great.

Dang! I pay around $2.50 for organic white mushrooms here.

Thinking back, I used to buy dried black mushrooms at Asian grocery stores and they were so inexpensive for the amount you got. They were delicious too.

When I was a kid in the 1960s, we could not get fresh mushrooms here - canned/ jarred was the only kind available. I don't think stores had fresh ones until the mid to late 1970s

Snake River Farms, Prime grade, boneless rib-eye roast. About 6 lbs, somewhere around $225 after 'first timer discount' but before shipping. I can get Choice grade retail here, but not Prime grade. It was a special treat for Spouse, who adores prime rib. Me, I'm a filet mignon fan because I adore Filet Rossini, which I only order in restaurants because it's a major pain to make a true Bordelaise and foie gras is illegal (grrrrr!) in CA.

But the best we've eaten is Creekstone Ranch. Unfortunately, they sell so much to steakhouses that their mail-order choices are relatively limited. They only sell an entire rib-eye - between 12-18 lbs., for about $350. They do have a good selection of standard steak cuts, as well as Duroc pork.

Snake River offers Kurobuta pork, which is also excellent. I can easily get the standard Kurobata bone-in pork loin chops at our local Japanese fish market, which is where I also get the fish for sashimi. They only carry the chops however, not the pork butt which is the cut I most like to cook. That cut makes great pork chile verde - yum!

Snake River sounds awesome jakkom!

I freeze the mushrooms for the same reason I freeze chicken breasts, chicken thighs, and hamburger patties. I do not do it to save money. I do it to have on hand without having to go to the store. I also freeze chopped onions and chopped bell peppers of all colors.

Leaving in the next hour and a half to take the two ugliest cakes I have ever made to a co-workers going away party. It's a good thing they have good personalities, because they are so lopsided.

I made Crab Louis yesterday with Alaskan King Crab legs that Kevin happened to find at the grocery store. They were $49 a pound but I like them so much better than dungeness crab, which is what I used the time before, and it took me an hour and a half to remove all the meat from the smaller crab legs.

I already had a large ripe avocado in the fridge that I wanted to use, and it was perfect for the salad that I made.

Lars! that sounds delicious.

That does sound delicious. If I wasn't so full from our tapas dinner, I could go for it!

I wonder why mushrooms are cheap here. I've done the conversion and they're about $4.5 per kilo (2.2lb)

The cakes look amazing. Often pristine cakes lack in flavor. Some bakeries cut corners. I don't bake sweets but often order from a few excellent bakeries.

Live lobster is our special occasion high ticket meal. I don't blink at the price mid August. And again in early September. We purchase three. One steamed at 4-5 minutes, then on ice. Two steamed served whole outside. Pick the third after dinner for next day lobster rolls.

Many Maine lobsterman/and women, have a captain and two crew. 200 traps set and pull one hundred per day, then rotate next day the other 100. We have had so many storms all Spring and still, often every day, every other day. Keeps them off the water. Prices reflect that.

Same with blue crabs on the ChesapeakeBay.

These are last summer prices...

I doubt we will see 8.99lb this year.

High prices are due to area and where you live. Mushrooms, cremini, are 4$ a pound. Lots of mushroom farms on the East coast. A dozen fancy varieties of mixed mushroms are 15$lb.

Steaks from the local butcher -- New York Strip for me, ribeye for DH. $$$$ but worth every stinkin' penny -- melt in your mouth tender.

Fresh live Maine lobsters last week were still 19.99 a pound. Last year this time were 8$ a pound. Just checked and now 9.99$ a pound. So we will enjoy again. 3 live lobsters for 35-36$. Last month would be 75$.

We will have lobster 2-3 times the next few weeks...until next year.

We usually have a whole Prime Rib for our whold family during a holiday. That will always cost a lot of money, but it's worse now... as is all meat. I got a couple of lamb shanks and could hardly believe the price! Usually it's just one of me , so I make something and only eat half at a meal and have the other half next time.

A triple chocolate hazelnut cheese cake that cost me 90 bucks to make.😬

When I make chocolate hazelnut cheesecake, it does not cost nearly that much.

canning stuff; seems like i always need new jars ... but have a lifetime supply of lids and rims.

I actually have to double check the cost of the SureJel I got at the store - $6.95 per box! I will cost even more to make the jam.!