Date Night: Sherlock Holmes and Beef with Stout and Dumplings

Rural Hubs and I rarely get a chance for date night and when we do, like you, we live in an area that’s not conducive to finding options rather than a quick bite at the local diner unless we want to drive at least a half hour to see a movie, go bowling, or find a chain restaurant.  The drive alone makes date night an event we need to save up for, let alone the sky-rocketing movie theater prices and an expected $30-$50 dinner bill.  Added together, one date night can equal our weekly grocery bill!

Having date night at home offers a practical solution to keep the costs low, but it can be a challenge to keep things from being too mundane, which is why I love themed date nights that encourage me to think outside the box to come up with clever, indulgent dinner options and coinciding movies (that we wouldn’t normally watch with the kiddos, but really want to see.)

To create this weekend’s date night, I was challenged to create an evening for under $25 that incorporated the new Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (a movie I really, really want to see.) #CouchCritics 

Movie rental – easy, Redbox is convenient for us and super low priced.  Dinner – again, simple.  Walmart has the selection and pricing to keep my dinner date in budget (though I will go slightly over… stay tuned for why!) 

My favorite thing about Redbox is their online option which allows me to not only reserve my movie choice ahead of time, but to find the location closest that has it.  Our Walmart has a Redbox inside and per usual, I lucked out to find they had Sherlock Holmes available on both DVD and BluRay at that location.

Selecting dinner options is a treat.  Naturally I thought of English-inspired dishes like Shepherd’s Pie or Fish ‘n Chips, but I wanted to try something we haven’t had so I looked to an Irish pub cookbook I picked up a few months ago that I’ve been meaning to get to – now was the perfect time to try out a recipe.  I quickly settled on Beef in Stout with Herb Dumplings. I’m a big Guinness fan and thought it would be interesting to cook with it.  We had a Guinness reduction with soda bread at an Irish pub in Florida that was amazing… hoped to duplicate an equally amazing taste with the stew.  Plus, Guinness and stew, isn’t that just so Sherlock Holmes?

Made my shopping list and easily found all the fresh ingredients I needed.  (You can see my complete shopping trip HERE.) Plus I picked up a chocolate turtle torte for two to serve with tea as a late night treat (Earl Gray and sweets, anyone?) 


You can easily stay under $25 for this date night if you’d like to duplicate it.  Where I went slightly over (spending $33) is 1) I decided to make the full recipe rather than half so we could make another meal of it for everyone the next day, 2) I opted to add a dessert indulgence, 3) I bought frozen biscuits to cut my prep time in half and 4) I opted for a 6-pack of Guinness rather than purchasing a single can for the recipe.  However, if you simply split the recipe in half, you can have the extra Guinness, biscuits, and dessert and still come under $25!

To add to the pub-style ambiance, I kept the decor simple, serving on the hardwood table rather than covering with a cloth and pouring tall, cold bar glasses full of Guinness draft to serve with dinner.

The Beef in Stout with Herb Dumplings turned out better than expected (I will totally make this dish again soon and will be posting a recount of recipe for you,) the tea and chocolate torte was a super indulgent way to satisfy to cap off a terrific date night, and the movie was all that I hoped it would be an then-some.  In a nutshell, if you loved the first Sherlock Holmes, you will adore the second one equally.

I love that the characters are already developed in Sherlock Holmes 1 so the action in 2 can kick off right from the get-go. And I found the relationship between Holmes and Watson to be just as funny, poignant, complex, and riveting ever… along with the intriguing and keeps-you-guessing plot that makes the movie experience so rich.

The food, the movie, the date night experience – all get a 5 star rating! Making such a special dish to complement an incredible movie made me feel like I wasn’t spending a night at home, at all, but rather an enriching European escape.

What vittles will you be fixing to watch Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows?  Are there Irish or English traditions or dishes you’d like to incorporate in your date night? 

Disclosure: I am a member of the Collective Bias™ Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias™. #CBias #SocialFabric.  As always, thoughts and opinions are my own.