Valentine's 2014

Yeah, so, this is a bit overdue...

Jay and I actually celebrated our Valentine's Day a week early, at Tuscany (fulfilling a childhood fantasy of mine.  and sadly, is not worth the money.  if you were wondering*) seeing opening night of Ballet West's Sleeping Beauty (SO SO SO AWESOME!  Might be my favorite ballet... so many awesome women's solo parts!).  We've had season tickets for years now #imsoluckymymanlovesballet2 and I still have NO photos of us there together!!  

Tonight!  We're going to Ballet West II's "The Little Mermaid", so hopefully I'll remember to do it!

ANYWAY, the week-early thing is important because we watched my little sister's kids overnight so she and her man could have a special night away for Valentine's.  I had meant to get lots of cute cousinly togetherness photos, but it turns out, there wasn't much time for photos with a 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 year old to take care of.  It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be, actually.  But I'm happy to only have 3 bums to wipe every day, instead of 5. :)  (and if my mom hadn't watched their baby, it would have been 6!)

They didn't come over until after lunch, so I tried to make a special breakfast for Jay in the morning.  His all time favorite is Eggs Benedict, and though I've made it many times before, this was definitely the best time yet!  I'll tell you why

1) Homemade English Muffins:

2) Hollandaise sauce recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". (which I forgot to write down before returning to the library!  doh!)

3) "Poaching" the eggs in a slow-cooker** made everything SO much less hectic, and I was able to put more attention on the Hollandaise- which actually wasn't that hard!  I can never get the blender method (which is what most scaredy cats recommend to novices so they don't scramble the eggs) to thicken up properly!  Give me a whisk and a pan on the stove and I'm good to go. I like being more in the thick of it when I cook :)

I admit, we eat our Eggs Benedict with bacon.  Not the most traditional, but most excellent. :)  And I cook them the uber-gourmet way: in the microwave, between double paper towels.  In fact, you can see them in the background of this next photo...

and here are my flowers from the Jay :)

Now, if I could only make good rice Krispie treats...

footnotes:  Chris!  How do you do that?
*But Valter's Osteria is worth every penny!  Get the pasta tour, or just get the spinach ravioli or the limoncello angelhair.  My mouth is watering right now thinking about them...

**How to "poach" eggs in a slow-cooker, brought to you by "Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook ".  Heat about 1 inch of water in the slow-cooker for 20 minutes. Crack each egg into a separate, Pammed, ramekin or small bowl (I could only fit 4 eggs in my slow cooker) and place them in the hot water.  Cook with the lid on until the whites are no longer runny.  (me thinks it was 15-20 minutes?  it's very flexible, the slow-cooking...)

Happy Valentine's Day!

The Frog comes up behind me while I'm perusing Valentine lunch ideas (mostly sandwiches cut out to look like hearts.)
The Frog:  "Mom, when it's a special day, we should have heart pancakes."
me: "okay!"
The Frog: "the kind of heart that's in your body.  A big splot."
me: "okay?"
The Frog:  "But only for a special day."

I at the last second, thought of a way to make our french toast look like hearts by cutting the French Bread on a diagonal and then flipping the other half upside-down.

Valentine French Toast

 This is the first year of the Valentine-for-classmates obligation and this is what I convinced The Frog to do.

 I got the free printable here.

 We had our Family Home Evening Lesson on Love at Home.  We wrote things we love about each family member and these our the extent of our Valentine's decor.

I actually made these red velvet cupcakes for a Chinese New Year celebration we went to (because they're the lucky color- red!) but they feel valentine'sy and they've lasted all the way until today...

 I love it when the kids have loving moments like this :D

 Nothing like bonding over a bag of Doritos on my white, kitchen rug (that I had to wash after this adventure.  Orange hand prints?  Adorable, but not cute on my rug.)

 I spent the afternoon on these for my visiting teaching families.

 And our traditional Valentine's dessert is Jay's favorite- Créme Brûlée.  However, I made myself a special non-dairy one using coconut creme (the solid part from a can of coconut milk) instead of heavy whipping cream.

It was actually pretty good!  It looked exactly like the richer version and MUCH fewer calories.  Though, still didn't have the je ne sais quoi.  (créme brûlée makes me Frenchy, apparently)

I'll for sure be making the regular kind for myself next year.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day

Having Valentine's Day on a Sunday can be a bit of a downer for us LDS since that keeps us from going out to dinner on the Sabbath. So we celebrated Love-Day on Friday instead. Jay brought me a traditional bouquet of roses in a non-traditional color :) and "made" a candle-lit Indian food feast for the fam. (We looove Bombay House) It was sooo good and such a welcomed change. We rarely "eat out" because it's so inconvenient with our adventurous little Frog (and we like having him around) so it was fun to get our favorite take-out.


I also decided to try making sugar cookies for the first time (can you believe it's taken me this long?) and I was sadly not impressed by them. BUT they sure look cute eh?


I must admit, as much as I love desserts and baked goods, I loathe making cut-out cookies. It's such a time-consuming process...

make dough.
refrigerate the dough.
roll it out.
stress about getting maximal cookies and an even number of each shape out of rolled dough.
deal with shapes that are stuck to the bottom or won't come out of the cookie cutter.
stress out about moving the now cut shapes to the cookie sheet without ruining their shape.
stress out about perfect placement so as to maximize the number of shapes on the sheet while minimizing melding.
waiting for the sheet to cool before putting new cookies on it.
waiting for the cookies to cool so you can frost them without the frosting melting (shouldn't all cookies be able to be eaten warm?)

plus you have to make the frosting... in at LEAST two different colors. And if you think you can convince me to BUY frosting, you are horribly wrong.

EW.

I think in order to prevent me from becoming a burnt-out mom too quickly, I'm going to hold off on the cut-outs until my kids are old enough to want to help out. Next year? I'm going to tackle the Red Velvet cake instead :)

Happy Valentine's Day!!

I never used to be a big fan of "singles' awareness day", but this year I'm extremely excited about my very first Valentine's Day while living in the same place as my significant other. :) We started the day off right with a big eggs and bacon breakfast, and now that I'm done with class, we're going to head of to a matinee and grab something to eat.

Last year, Jay was still living in Rhode Island, so we decided to have what we call a "distance date". We both rented the same movie and bought the same kind of cheesecake from the cheesecake factory and started our movies at the same time. It was fun to text each other with our comments throughout. For all those not as lucky as we are this year, I highly recommend it.

And for those of you who are not attached, doorbell ditching is sooo much fun :)

Don't forget to spread the love! Happy Valentine's Day!! <3