February 17th, 2020

This is what Valentine's Day looked like at our house on Friday.  Flowers and candy and cards both funny and sweet.  Awwwwww!

I know people who choose to not observe Valentine's Day and that's fine.  That's their choice and I respect that.  But Tim and I are kind of gooey about holidays and days of observation.  I don't really know how to categorize days such as St. Patrick's Day and Halloween and Valentine's Day.  I mean, the banks are open, it's a regular work day and there is postal delivery just like any other day.  So it's not actually a holiday  but it is a special day of note sooooooo  what do we call those sorts of days......?  Does anyone know?

Well however it's categorized, Tim and I observe it.  And all of the others, too by the way.

We did not go out to dinner however.  In the past we have done that. Sometimes a fancy schmancy place, other times we've gone to more of a shorts and tee-shirt sort of place.  Last year we ordered delivery pizza (it came heart-shaped...awwww).  But we have leaned that here, in Venice, trying to go out to dinner on Valentine's Day is madness.

This is the peak of tourist and Snowbird season and as such, all of the restaurants are always packed.  On a special day like Valentine's...it's extra busy.  So even if we made reservations and went out, it would be so crowded and so noisy that, well, it's not as enjoyable as it should be. So we noped out of that.

Instead, I made a nice dinner and a special dessert while poor Tim was slaving away in his office.  

I considered and rejected a lot of ideas.  Sometimes I need a little inspiration.  I went online and read a lot of suggestions for Valentine's Dinners and well, bah.  They were all either fairly ordinary things that I make anyway so not special enough to suit me or they were just foods we would never eat. Bizarre stuff.   I cannot even remember a single one of the recipes to use as an example, that's how out of my frame of reference some of them were.

So instead I went to the grocery store and just started wandering the aisles looking for something that would set off that light bulb moment for me. It took awhile honestly but eventually it struck me.,..BBQ ribs.  Tim loves them!  There we go!  Since the meat section is the last aisle I had to do some backtracking to finish buying what I needed for the meal but that's okay too.

The final menu was BBQ ribs, garlic mashed potatoes, corn on the cob and salad with a special dessert.    Oh I had no problem coming up with a dessert.  In fact, it was the first decision I made.  Chocolate cupcakes with white icing.  Oh yeah.  Sounds ordinary to you perhaps, but this is scratch cupcakes and icing I'm talking about.  The sort of thing that takes a little time and makes a big old mess.  That's the best kind of dessert.

They turned out pretty good.  I'm still getting the hang of using a piping bag but one of the things I finally was clever enough to do was to find a recipe for an icing that is specific to a piping bag (as opposed to a frosting that is applied with a small spatula).   The new recipe improved the situation considerably!   The icing was thick enough to hold it's shape but smooth enough to use the piping bag& tips.  It was neither too sweet nor too heavy.  Perfect!  The cupcakes looked like this:

I was so tickled with how they turned out that I shared some with our neighbors.  She proclaimed them to be the most luscious cupcakes they've ever had.  Now perhaps she was just being polite, but  they are pretty damned good,if I do say so myself. 

The rest of the meal came out nicely too but I forgot to take a photo before serving.  All you get is a picture of the aftermath.  Although that suggests that it turned out fairly well also :)

Then, the biggest surprise happened.  my favourite TV show, Outlander, dropped the first episode of Season Five 2 days early!  Yes, that's right, I got to watch it on Valentine's Day!  AWESOME!

So there you have it, flowers, cards, chocolates, a nice meal, a special dessert, the surprise showing of my favourite TV show and the absolute best part, sharing it with my Valentine.