« It's About to Get All Wedding-y Up in Here... | Main | Personal Best! »
Adam and I had the most romantic Valentine's Day ever! We just ran a bunch of errands because we had been snowed in for the past, oh, forever days and desperately needed to do a Target run and some grocery shopping. Then we cleaned the house, I went to the gym and he helped a friend move.
You know, your average Sunday.
We're not really Valentine's Day people. We don't do gifts. We don't make reservations at a fancy restaurant. No chocolates or roses. But we did decide we were going to make a "fancy dinner," which basically means it's not a one-pot meal of some sort and we were even going to have dessert!
We decided to make Rachael Ray's "You Won't Be Single For Long" Vodka Pasta. We left out the chicken stock (obviously, but we didn't substitute anything for it and I think it would have been too watery a sauce if we had), used whole canned tomatoes (all Trader Joe's had) that we crushed ourselves, and added some crushed red pepper flakes and freshly grated parmesan cheese at the end.
It was really good! We don't eat a whole lot of pasta, but vodka cream sauce is one of my favorites. I would probably add the crushed red pepper flakes into the sauce while it's cooking next time for the flavor to be more incorporated throughout the sauce.
On the side, we had another Rachael Ray dish... Arugula Salad with Pear, Blue Cheese and Apricot Vinaigrette. We used apricot preserves we already had on hand instead of the "all fruit" spread, and used all arugula (one bag) for the salad greens. It was so yummy. It made a huge bowl of salad, but we ate almost all of it! (Two helpings for me, and three for Adam.) The only mistake was that I dumped the whole amount of dressing on the salad and it definitely didn't need that much.
Dinner was served with some champagne we received from the jeweler from whom we got my engagement ring. So sweet!
Finally, for dessert, we made a modified version of Martha Stewart's Meyer Lemon Mousse Cups. (Our version is after the jump.) Main modification: serving it in bowls, rather than hollowed-out lemons.
It may not have been as pretty as Martha's, but it was delicious.
We (meaning my husband) made that penne vodka over the weekend, too! I requested the addition of portobello mushrooms, and it was inspired, if I do say so myself.
Posted by: RA | February 15, 2010 09:29 AM