Valentine's day means many things to many people.
For most, it's a time to let your loved one know how you feel. To affirm your love with flowers, candy, or even jewelry, and hope it somehow translates into rough sex.
For me, it's always been a time of reflection, since the only rough sex I'm going to have is if throw myself on Rachelle while she's filing her nails.
Which she usually is when I throw myself on her.
Yes, for me it's a chance to look back at the way things might have been... ....had I not hooked up with someone dedicated to making my life a living hell.
Don't take my word for it. Watch the show, "Living With Ed", and see for yourself. That's why I did the show. It was that or install a Nanny cam. I wanted the world could see that I wasn't making this shit up.
Valentine's Day
Valentines
Fondue x 2
Lee's biggest complaint regarding my cooking is that I "never repeat", meaning I never make the same thing twice. Which isn't true of course, but I know what he means. I'm always looking to improve upon recipes and try something new. So for Valentine's Day I let him choose the menu, something new or a repeat of an old favorite.
For celebratory meals it seems eating in is at least as romantic as eating out, maybe more. And with a few possible exceptions, no matter what ingredients you buy, you'll be hard pressed to spend more than you would dining out. One year I even made platters of seafood--oysters on the half shell, poached shrimp, mussels, smoked salmon, etc. But the biggest hit was the time I made cheese fondue followed by chocolate fondue. So after deciding we'd rather do Valentine's Day dinner at home this year, Lee expressed his desire for "Fondue x 2", which is our menu du jour.
My (Foolish) Hearts
It is, perhaps, telling that my two favorite holidays are a) non-religious and b) associated with the acquisition of large amounts of candy. I love the autumnal, supernatural-tinged crispness of Halloween, and I adore Valentine’s Day’s pink, and red, and sparkles, and lace, and…hearts. I could live forever without the mushy sentiments. When I was single the romantic aspects of the holiday left me anguished, desperate and anxious for the relief that came on the 15th of February. Now that I am old and married, I am largely of the opinion that if you express your love only (or even mainly) because of Hallmark, you have some work to do on the home front. It is not the sentiment, but the trappings that “send” me.
Although real, anatomical hearts are not particularly prepossessing as objects, they are beautiful in their own way. It would be hard to live without one. What I love, though, is the shape as old as the ice age, a shape that probably came from the combining of an ancient symbol for fire and that of the astrological sign Aries. It is, to my eyes, a perfect shape. It combines gentle curves for those who like curves, and they suggest other things that are rounded, erotic, comforting and otherwise love-worthy. For those who prefer straight lines and pointy things, there is everything below the curves, all straight lines and an exquisite point. Pentagrams are nifty, but they have nary a curve if the scribe is sober. The infinity symbol has two lovely, looping curves but what if one needs the crunchy edginess of a line or an acute angle?
Hot Chocolate Galettes
While I may be a decent home cook - I have my share of successes in front of the stove and am pretty good at food and wine pairings - I loathe baking. It’s just too precise for me and since we rarely eat sweets anymore - I’ll take the cheese course over the dessert course every day of the week - I’ve never felt compelled to get any better at it. Which is weird because I really like science. I am super impressed by what people are able to create, but the time and energy involved makes me want to run from the kitchen.
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, I wanted to create a special treat that did not take hours upon hours, any unusual equipment, or a mass of specialty ingredients to end our home-cooked meal. Yes, I know, I’m a lazy chef. Plus, I’ve been married a long time and honestly it doesn’t take much to impress my husband in the kitchen. He can barely boil water…though he can fix ANY computer or iPhone problem, so we must celebrate each other’s strengths.
When I came upon Chef Ludo Lefebvre's Hot Chocolate Galettes from the CRAVE: A Feast of the Five Senses - 10th Anniversary Edition, I knew I hit the jackpot. We are big fans of his cooking and while I love this book, many of the recipes in it are still way out of my league. Most of the desserts, however, are classics and while not necessarily always simple to make, they rely on basic ingredients and clear techniques that aren’t out of the wheelhouse of most home cooks.
Lady Baltimore
About ten years ago, after a painting that she’d been working on disappointed her, my mother dragged the canvas out onto the front lawn. Still in her painting clothes, she proceeded to rip it apart with a small hatchet, reducing a 3 by 5 foot work of art to an abundance of 3 by 5 inch works of art. A few weeks later, she sent them, without explanation, to her friends and family for Valentine’s Day. (The whole thing was a little “Vincent’s ear”, and the parallel did not escape her: she did a series of Van Gogh’s disembodied ear the next fall. She also set fire to a couple of those, and then did a painting of them on fire. And yes, I was an anxious child.) The canvas scrap my mother sent to me that Valentine’s contains the original painting’s full signature. Of all the fragments of her destroyed work, each one a tiny relic of perfectionism and mania, I got the one with her name on it!
Receiving the portion with her signature, the veritable corner piece to the puzzle of her insanity, really means something to me. I can see how, when other people opened their valentines that year, they might have felt a vague sense of reproach, instead of the more common Valentine’s message: affection.
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