Valentines Day

So, once more it is snowing in the mid-Atlantic and everyone is acting like it's the end of the world.  Thanks to a Christmas gift from my sister and a class-action lawsuit, my husband and I scrounged some money to go to a couples "Cooking Italian Class" tonight.  Looking forward to that and will blog about it later maybe.

This weekend was a nice weekend at home with those we love.  We both had a long week (I had a couple of days of working/being out of the house for over 12 hours, add to that my overly ambitious Valentines Day project.

Saturday was a little slower pace and we got various "chores" done and some rest and just stayed inside as it was the coldest day of the year here.  We did make a great recipe from Pinterest-   Orange Chicken.  Even with telling my son it had two of his favorite ingredients (honey and orange juice), he wasn't very interested, he had a small amount of rice and had eaten a big lunch, so rather than bribing him with other food, we let him finish off dinner with a bagel with peanut butter (saving more leftovers for ourselves).  It was a delicious meal and a consolation that with food allergies in the family we can't order Chinese.

I had told my hubby that we had a pretty big Christmas and we have been having car trouble (and may need to get a new car soon), so we should do Valentine's Day pretty small.  Meaning- I got him a DVD of one of our favorite shows from our dating/newlywed days.  He went a lot more generous and got me flowers, strawberries and a pretty necklace.  We did try to do a lot of just thoughtful things for each other for Valentine's Day.  My husband is generally very thoughtful most of the time anyway.

So while I got to sleep in Saturday morning, my husband got to sleep in Sunday morning and thanks to a little Curious George and Charlie Brown's Valentines Special, I was able to make him some Chocolate waffles.

 We had a nice time at Mass (perhaps because my son got most of his antsy behavior out at Mass on Ash Wednesday, he was more subdued than usual on Sunday).

When we came back home we checked out the recipes we were planning for dinner.   Braised short ribs and French Chocolate Mousse.  We were also trying to get lunch (leftover Raclette from last week).  All of this is complicated by a 3 year old bouncing around a kitchen.  Having a double boiler going, a mixer, a three year old and separating egg yolks and egg whites, I felt like I was in a Quickfire Challenge from our favorite cooking show, Top Chef.  I'm pretty sure I would have lost the challenge.  As I was looking at the iPad, filling milk and navigating around my husband and son, I realized that I had switched egg yolks for egg whites in the recipe.  I temporarily considered doing what I normally do (go ahead and go with it, I mean, most recipes all the ingredients mix together anyways?).  Then I thought- nope, this is  Julia Child-based recipe and that is not what Julia would do.  Also, just the name of the recipe- French Mousse, denotes a level of sophistication and skill that does not get along well with ad-lib.  Thus, that batch was dumped and I started over again.

I was ready for a nap when that was done!  My husband made the short ribs while my son and I rocked for nap time.  We had a throughly enjoyable movie and ended it with a bit of Downton Abbey.  What a nice Valentine's Day with the ones I love (and good food : )

 My son's Valentine's Project