Valentine's Day Dinner

Valentine's day is Tuesday. 

**sigh**

It should always be on a Saturday if you ask me. I think I'll petition to have the date changed so it's always the second Saturday in February. That way everyone can celebrate in a really fun way, even make a weekend out of it.

I have no idea how to do something like that. Or if it's even possible......

Do you call your congressman? "Hello, I would like to change the date of Valentine's day! I think it should be......" and here's where they will hang up on me.

I'm too tired to worry about it. We'll just go with the 14th, a Tuesday.

I made something recently that was delicious, and easy to prepare for a weeknight dinner.  Plus it will pair beautifully with Champagne or Sparkling wine, which is my favorite part of a special dinner.

Menu

Schramsberg Sparkling Wine

Gouda and crackers

Crab Cakes with mixed greens and Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette

Focaccia Bread

Brownies and homemade caramel sauce

Let's start with the bubbly.

Schramsberg Blanc de Blanc
The Blanc de Blanc is made from Chardonnay grapes. It's dry and crisp. Serve with aged Gouda, or other hard cheeses. It also pairs beautifully with shellfish, crab cakes, sea bass, lemon chicken, Thai food. ($27 at BevMo!)

Crab Cake Salad

Crab Cake Salad with Roasted Garlic Vinaigrette Dressing
dinner for two

Salad:
Two pre-made Crab Cakes from the Whole Foods fish counter
Spring Mix and Spinach Greens
Roasted Baby carrots
Cherry tomatoes 

Dressing: 
makes one cup 
2 cloves of roasted garlic
3/4 Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1/4 cup White Vinegar
1 T Dijon Mustard
Salt and Pepper
Sugar

Turn oven, or toaster oven, to 425 degrees.

1. Take each jumbo sized crab cake and divide it into two patties. Set aside.
2. Roast your carrots and garlic in your oven, or a toaster oven. Drizzle the carrots with olive oil. Let roast for 10-12 minutes until golden brown. Wrap two cloves of garlic lightly coated with olive oil in foil and roast with the carrots.
3. Crab Cakes: Add a drizzle of olive oil to a medium sized frying pan, turn to med-high heat. Add crab cakes and cook until browned on each side, and heated through. ~8-10 minutes.

Prepare the salad dressing while the crab cakes are cooking.

Salad Dressing
1. In a small bowl, jar, mini Cuisinart, or blender combine the vinegar, mustard, roasted garlic, 1/4 t. salt, 1/8 t. pepper and a pinch of sugar.
2. Slowly add the olive oil, whisking until emulsified.
Makes one cup. Store in a jar and refrigerate for up to two weeks. Shake before using.

Assembly: Grab two large handfuls of greens for each person. Toss into a large mixing bowl. Drizzle with about a 1/4 cup of salad dressing. Toss. Divide onto plates. Add roasted carrots, cherry tomatoes and a nice, crisp, crab cake.

Serve with warm focaccia bread and Schramsberg Sparkling wine.

For dessert, serve fudgy, chocolate brownies and homemade caramel sauce. 

*If you don't like crab cakes you can substitute thinly sliced steak, chicken or grilled shrimp on the salad.

Enjoy! And Happy Valentine's Day.

Homemade Pancakes and Chocolate Truffles

We usually make pancakes from a mix. I mean really, who makes pancakes from scratch? Martha, yes. The average Joe. Probably not.

Elli wanted to make heart shaped pancakes for Don for Valentine's day. But we were out of mix and I was too lazy to go to the store. So I made the batter from scratch. And guess what? It's not THAT much harder than using a mix and tastes fantastic. Most recipes have you add a few things to the dry ingredients anyway and this is the same.

Elli was in charge of the pancake production and I'm happy to report that most of the pancakes actually did resemble a heart. Let's just say they were her artistic interpretation of what a heart looks like. I had to do a little bit of finessing so they didn't look like Mickey Mouse.

The recipe and pipe bag instructions are straight from Martha herself. 

 

Happy Valentine's Day Daddy!

Buttermilk Pancakes

1 cup flour
2T sugar
2 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 egg
1 cup buttermilk (or regular milk)
2 T melted butter

Preheat oven to 175º

Mix together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. Add the egg, milk and melted butter to the dry ingredients. Whisk together. Don't overmix it should have some lumps.

Heat your griddle or griddle pan. Add a little butter to the pan. Add the batter and flip when the edges get bubbly. Cook another 30 seconds or so.

Place pancakes on a plate and keep warm in the oven.

Makes 6-8 pancakes

Valentine's Chocolate Truffle update.....

Truffle making turned me into miss cranky pants. Our truffles looked like little Bentley poops. I kind of freaked out during the process. Don had to yell and remind me that these were Elli's truffles - not mine. Ouch. At one point I threatened to throw them out. Elli cried and Don told me to zip it again. This was not good.

It was definitely not the joyous mother/daughter project that I imagined it would be. There were sprinkles and chocolate and hot chocolate mix (don't ask) everywhere.

Elli thought they looked AWESOME. I thought they went from looking like little turds to prehistoric rocks. I immediately knew we needed some nice packaging to disguise these suckers.

We found little red treat boxes at Cost Plus that would fit three truffles perfectly. We carefully wrapped them with pink tissue paper. Then we placed a sparkly heart on top of the box. The box looked great. I would love to know if her teachers ate them. I hope she remembered to tell them we used Godiva chocolate. sigh.......

This is definitely one of those instances where the pros made it look really easy and it wasn't. At least it wasn't for a 9 year old and her psychotic mother.

 

Little chocolate Godiva turds.

oooooooh. I think I want the little turd in the back row that is covered in hot chocolate mix. It's an Elli original. Maybe we could name these Yosemite Truffles and sell them in Curry Village?

I better go before I get in trouble again for being sassy.

Will you be my Valentine?

Remember these?

I thought so. I don't know about you, but I still love getting a box of these candies. Some of the messages have changed since I was little.

TEXT ME

HOOK UP

But many are the same as I remember:

SWEET PEA

SOUL MATE

ADORE ME

SAY YES

CALL ME 

WINK WINK

LOVE HER

SWEET ME

So guess what? Since Valentine's Day is all about showing how much you love someone I figured I would ask for some love and give something sweet in return.

If you make a $100 donation to Team in Training I'll mail you a whole bag of candy hearts. Because I love you and I really want Don to get to his goal so I can relax. I'm sure you want the same.

You can make your donation by clicking {HERE} or on the Team in Training link to the right in the sidebar of the blog. Make your donation between February 11th and February 14th and I will mail you a bag of candy hearts. Now that's what I call a sweet treat.

Here's how it works. You donate one of these:

Check out the turkey neck on Benji.

And I will give you this. 

Ha. Just kidding. That's 32 pounds of candy = 250 pieces per pound = 8,000 conversation hearts. That would be kind of  COOL. But that seems like overkill. I was thinking more along the lines of a one pound bag.

So there you have it. 

Thanks in advance for the moola. LLS greatly appreciates it. And so do Don and I.

Homemade Valentines

Elli is in full getting-ready-for Valentine's Day mode. She has made cards for her teachers and for all the kids in her class. And this weekend we are going to make homemade truffles to give to her teachers as gifts.

She's a "do your best" kind of gal. It makes me crazy. Where I see mistakes and messiness, she sees beauty. She's way more accepting of life's little imperfections. And obviously not a perfectionist. (I'm the opposite.) I love the way her cards came out anyway. They look like her.

I can hardly wait to see what our chocolate truffles look like!

A card for one of her teachers.

Cards for the kids in her class.

A mobile for another teacher.

I remember making cards when I was little. I loved playing with the doilies and all the shades of red, white and pink.

And now we're about to make homemade CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES. Yuuuuuuum. Can't wait.

Here are two truffle recipes in case you want to try to make some this weekend too. I haven't tried these myself so we can all experiment together. They look really easy and chocalicious. I mean really, how can you go wrong when the main ingredients are chocolate and heavy cream? (I think I just gained a pound typing heavy cream. Good thing these are gifts.)

1) Valentine's Day Truffles by Jenna Weber. Super easy. Perfect recipe for kids.

2) Chocolate Truffles by Jacques Torres. The chocolate god. Not hard. But not super easy according to one commenter.

So there you go. Homemade cards and candy made from little hands with a big heart. My favorite kind of gift.