Valentine's Day 2011

This year Valentine's Day was extra special.

#1. Our first V-day as a married couple

#2. It was also our 6-monthversary of being married

#3. Ryan planned it like 4 months in advance

Dinner was AWESOME. We went to Via Toscana, a great Italian place in Louisville that was having a special 5-course dinner for the holiday. The food was, simply put, amazing. It rivaled what we had on the cruise ship during our honeymoon!

On the way to the game, we picked up our nephews, Ethan and Jared - we had a couple extra tickets and thought that they would have fun!

The game was pretty fun...for the first 18 seconds, after which the Avs got somewhat clobbered. Ending score: 9-1. We all enjoyed being there, but wished that we had been rooting for the Flames instead!

We had a fun Valentine's Day and I'm so glad that I get to spend that holiday with such a stud every year!

Breathe Easier

A few Saturdays ago, the weather was fantastical, and Ryan and I decided that it did not merit sitting around the house. So out we went!

Our journeyings led us to Fort Collins Nursery. Of plants. We thought our home needed a little sprucing up, and figured a couple of house plants would take care of that for us.

We bought one cute little plant for Ryan's cubicle at work. That way he could feel like he had a little bit of nature with him even though he can't see the light of day from where he sits.

We also got a couple other beauties, including a money tree. It has an adorable braided "trunk", and it loves us!

See all those somewhat lighter green leaves on the top? Those are all new since we bought it! I feel so proud. However, it may have to move its living locale soon because it is going to cover up our wedding picture, and that is not OK.

Brain Food

I have recently made a goal to not use a recipe for the majority of my cooking. I still like to peruse my cookbooks for ideas, but try not to actually look at a recipe while I'm making dinner. I like to call these dishes my "Brain Food". It is something that I really enjoy doing, and know that if I want to be good at it, I need to practice and use the knowledge that I gained at culinary school. It's been four years since I graduated from it, and stuff is starting to fade, which I hate because I read recipes and realize that I have forgotten that I know how to do something (i.e. blanch and shock).

Another motivation for cooking this way is that 90% of the time Ryan enjoys dinner more when I don't use a recipe. I'm hoping that I can continue to keep that percentage!

The only "bad" part about not using a recipe is that it makes it a lot harder to share my concoctions with you because I never measure anything. On Tuesday I made something I called Tomato Basil Chicken. Ryan raved about it, and insisted that I write down the recipe. So I did! The measurements of the spices are guesstimates, but everything else is pretty accurate.

Let me know if you try it, I'm curious to hear if you enjoyed it as much as we did!

Tomato Basil Chicken

Ingredient list:

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into strips

2 garlic cloves, minced

Olive oil

5 whole white mushrooms, sliced

1 large tomato, blanched and shocked*, diced

1/3 C chicken broth

1-15 oz bottle of light Alfredo sauce, divided

1 tsp dried basil

1 T dried minced onion

Salt and pepper to taste

Sauté garlic and chicken strips in olive oil. Meanwhile, in a separate sauté pan, cook mushrooms over medium heat in small amount of olive oil, adding minced onion and chicken broth after 2 minutes. Allow to simmer. Add tomatoes and Alfredo sauce, bring to a slow simmer. Add basil to cooked chicken; stir to incorporate. Season both sauce and chicken with salt and pepper. Serve sauce over chicken.

Yield: 3-4 servings

*Blanched and shocked: cut out the leafy top of the tomato and slice an "x" into the bottom of the tomato. Plunge the tomato into boiling water for 30-60 seconds, or until the skin begins to break. Remove from the water and immediately put into an ice bath. This allows the skin to easily be removed and brightens the color of the tomato.