Challenge savings put to use

April 4, 2013

Did you miss my posts during the past few days?! Of course you did. We decided to take a little road trip to the East coast. We have been saving money with this challenge since October and have not spent any of our savings yet. I couldn't decide if I wanted the challenge to pay for the entire trip or just the food. I finally decided that the challenge savings would pay for our food expenses during our trip. This way we can splurge on other times and not feel bad. Do you want to see the awesome food we enjoyed? It totally validated my challenge. Save a little here and there in order to save up for a nice splurge!

The first day of our trip we ate lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. We shared an appetizer of Ahi Carpaccio. I had seared Tuna Tataki Salad. My hubby had a Monterey Cheeseburger with avocado. My daughter had pasta. My son had corn dogs.

We had dinner at The Melting Pot. We had the four course meal. We started off with a cheddar and a traditional swiss fondue with apples, bread, and vegetable dippers. Our next course was salad. We had the tangy house dressing. Next up was the main course. We had two different cooking styles: mojo and bouillon. We cooked teriyaki marinated sirloin, honey orange duck breast, andouille sausage, citrus infused pork tenderloin, pacific white shrimp, chicken breast, and chicken potstickers. This course also came with more vegetable dippers. We chose two dessert chocolates. We had cookies 'n cream marshmallow dream fondue and bananas foster fondue. The dippers included: strawberries, bananas, cheesecake, rice krispies treats, marshmallows, pound cake, and brownies. 

Our second day we went to the number one seafood restaurant in town. I started off with a cup of clam chowder. We shared a sesame seared tuna appetizer (we dug in before I remembered to take a picture!). I had one of their daily specials. It was a salad with beets, seared scallops, pink grapefruit, and local feta cheese. All the tuna at this restaurant is caught locally and brought to them each day fresh. My hubby had sesame seared tuna with jasmine rice and seaweed salad. The kiddos shared an adult order of lobster ravioli with basil pasta, charred tomato coulis, and basil oil.

Next we hit up a frozen yogurt place that I have always wanted to try: Pinkberry. I had coconut. My hubby and son both had key lime. My daughter had passion fruit. 

For dinner we went to Legal Sea Foods. Three of us started out with clam chowder. I had their special of tuna and shrimp. My hubby had stuffed shrimp with a crab stuffing. My daughter had fish shaped ravioli and my son had macaroni.

What day would be complete without taking dessert back to the hotel? We picked two to share from the Cheesecake Factory. We had ultimate red velvet cake cheesecake and 30th anniversary chocolate cake cheesecake.

We decided to come home a day early. Today we did a little shopping at some outlets and just had Subway as a quick lunch. We had a great time and had delicious food. Nom nom as my daughter says.