Happy Valentine's Day

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Ours was good...all about food. We had planned to go out Saturday night, but our babysitter is on crutches and my parents were out of town for the day, so we decided to celebrate Valentine's Day by cooking together at home.

Saturday night, we had corn and crab bisque. If you know me, you know I love a good bisque, and this one was really good. My first time to use crab, and luckily it worked out well. I didn't take a picture of it because it was pretty boring to look at, but trust me, it didn't taste boring. Recipe here.

But on Sunday, we got fancy, and decided to make boeuf bourguignon. It was definitely a two person recipe. It wasn't hard, it was just time consuming. Lots of steps, lots of different pots and pans. It was very French and very fussy. And it started out with boiled bacon, so we were a little suspicious.

Daphne worked on signing her Valentines, while Kev and I cooked. He was in charge of the meat and I was in charge of the vegetables.

Below is what the French call a "bouquet garni" which is basically a bunch of herbs tied together which is later removed. This is when I first put it in and the meat and vegetables started to simmer in a whole bottle of red wine.

And here we are, a few hours later, herbs removed:

It really was delicious. Worth all the time and French fussiness. But I guess if you pour a whole bottle of wine on just about anything and then cook it for four hours, it's gonna be pretty good. Daphne even liked it, and we'll get at least one more meal out of it. Here is the recipe, which we stuck to almost exactly, except we added some sherry because the sauce seemed to need something sweet. We served it with Creamy Goat Cheese Polenta, from the Pioneer Woman (recipe here). The French would probably not be too happy about that. But it was good, and I think it worked with the beef. A little bit French countryside, a little bit Oklahoma ranch. Works for me. We'll probably have the leftovers over pappardelle pasta. I think the traditional choice is potatoes, but that seemed a little boring to me.

Anyway, it was a good weekend of cooking with Kev, again without arguing, so I was happy with our Valentine's weekend.

Today, the kids had their class Valentine's Day party. And just like always, there was craft, snack, songs. In that order. It was cute, as usual. Daphne had fun singing with her class.

After school, we dropped our stuff at the house and took a walk. It was nearly 70 degrees, so a walk was required. We went to lunch downtown at the Leesburg Restaurant, and met some friends there. We made it home before the ridiculous wind started blowing. It was awesome. No coats and hats necessary.

I guess it's time for a new poll, but I'll have to think of one. I'm being paged into the other room. There are new library books waiting to be read. Happy Valentine's Day!

(Note: Daphne's Valentine cards at the top were inspired by these. What a great idea. I wish I could take credit. )