Showing posts with label Couple. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Couple. Show all posts

Monday, February 15, 2010

Valentine's Weekend 2010, briefly

Friday we watched the Olympics' opening ceremony. I love the Olympics! I adore the patriotism that oozes from spectators rooting for their country's athletes. Frankly, I love cheering on the athletes representing the US!
{For the first time in my life, I have actually visited an Olympic host city!}

Saturday we woke to trees coated in frost and fresh snowflakes; it was beautiful and lasted nearly all day. We watched Dexter {Season 1} and the first games of the Olympics before getting ready for our dinner date downtown. Dinner was outstanding and my date was delightful.
{winter beauty}
{date night}
{the house specialty - my fave}
Sunday I woke up, made some breakfast and continued to watch Olympic coverage before getting ready for our family celebration. My mom invited us along with my brother and his wife for an early dinner (or late lunch, depending on how you look at it). Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures, outside of the dessert. But the meal was wonderful - potato dumplings, ribs, asparagus - and the company outstanding. Yum. Dessert was a meringue cupcake filled with raspberry curd, whipped cream and fresh raspberries. Double-yum. Seriously. Makes sense why I took a picture, no?
{valentine's breakfast}{dessert}
♥ a weekend inspired by love; doesn't get much better than that
image sources:
*Vancouver Olympic Rings - Tim Wang's elearning blog
*Fogo - Shea
*House specialty - Gusto

Friday, February 5, 2010

Mystery Meal à la Rich

Earlier this week Rich and I celebrated five years together. I've mentioned it here before - but I've been working a lot of hours. So on the day itself, when I got home at 6:30p Rich asked who I was, because his wife is usually at work until 9p. (An exaggeration, yes, but not terribly far from the truth.)

He mentioned he had wanted to make a special dinner, but wasn't sure when I would come home so he hadn't picked up the ingredients. Right then and there I promised that on Friday I would leave work no later than 5:30p and from then on referred to the dinner he was going to make as his "mystery meal."

Man, this guy does not disappoint! I arrived home to him chopping, slicing and dicing in the kitchen. And everything was a surprise. I had no idea what we were having. I asked prodding questions that led nowhere.

Until... our Appetizer:
{fresh coconut}
The coconut was a huge clue - we were revisiting our honeymoon!! (I told you Rich is good!) He made our favorite Tahitian entree, Poisson Cru!

Poisson cru is similar to cevice in that it consists of raw fish, quickly marinated in lime juice to "cook" the fish. Coconut milk is added, along with diced and seeded cucumber, tomatoes, chopped scallions, salt and pepper. Interested in the recipe? Check out this link.
{Rich taking a picture of our meal for his Project 365}
The dish itself was terrific. It was a first attempt and I must hand it to Rich, it was a fantastic replica of our initial poisson cru experiences!
{Lime+Coconut+Fish=Fresh+Simple+Tasty}
{that's me in the background, chowing down}
To go with our French Polynesian meal, we also opened one of the bottles of rum we bought during our visit. {I guess we'd been saving the rum for a special occasion too, because this was the first time we'd opened a bottle.}
{ice, liquer banane, oj}
What a fun way to celebrate love and bring the tropics to us. Great work, babe!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

I ♥ Valentine's Day

I love Valentine's Day! As a kid, Valentine's morning we would wake up to treats, gifts and a card sitting on the kitchen table waiting for us. As an adult, I still get little care packages of treats from my mom. Plus, it is a great reason to remind your loved ones that they are just that, loved ones.

Here is the abridged version of my Valentine's Day:

  • Finished gift for husband: Bacon Ice Cream
  • Made husband Valentine's Day Card & assembled presents
  • Exchanged gifts
  • Played games
  • Showered
  • Got Manicure/Pedicure with Krystle
  • Enjoyed delicious treat, made by Krystle
  • Glammed up for the evening
  • Went to Crave at the Galleria for dinner
  • Returned home - hung out with husband and dog
And the extended version:
I will talk more about the Bacon Ice Cream in a later post... but know this: it's good.

This year, I was drawn to a card at Target and decided to create my own rendition. So, I went home and warned Rich he would receive a homemade card for Valentine's. I bought a sheet of paper from Michael's (red on one side, white w/ little red hearts on the other) and formulated my plan.

First, I burned the bottom of the card.

Then made a book of matches. The book is made of extra paper from the card, and the hearts were crafted using extra paper I had around the house. The black strip is from junk mail and then I used a regular staple for effect.

I wrote on the card and voila -- it was done!!

I set out the gifts I had for Rich, told him coffee was ready and placed his cup next to his presents. Then Rich surprised me! He had me come downstairs and there, waiting, were a dozen red roses and a card. Here's a photo of our goods.

Shortly after our gift exchange, and bacon ice cream tasting, we started playing with the set of books I gave Rich. Before we knew it we were 50 questions in, having a great time and eager for more! I was about to suggest we finish the book when I got a text from Krystle. She was on her way and I still needed to shower. So we saved the rest of the book for later.

Thankfully, I was able to get ready before Krystle arrived and we were off to get our nails and toes done. I was really looking forward to a manicure/pedicure. And while no one sees my feet during the winter, I was still super excited *and* willing to spend the $$. Here we are in the massage chairs getting our pedicures.

And here is the finished product (Krystle's hand and feet are on the left, mine are on the right).

When we got back to the house, Krystle gifted us with some delicious Valentine treats she made earlier that morning. How cute are these? Not only were they incredibly tasty, but the frosting was killer-good.

Thanks Krystle!!
(Rich wanted me to pass along how much he loved them, too!!)

Rich and I changed and got all glammed up for our dinner plans; Rich had made reservations for us at Crave. They serve sushi, among other things, but we only had sushi. It was so tasty!!! And they had really yummy drinks! We ordered Pear/Rosemary and Pineapple/Basil martinis while we made our food selections. Once we told the waitress we were only ordering sushi, she recommended a sake for our dinner. I don't remember the brand or style, but it was the sake-version of champagne, pink and wonderful.

I had planned on taking photos of our food, but only managed to take one of the drinks. So you'll have to trust me without visuals; the food was awesome. They had some pretty creative rolls. The Mexican (fish, jalapeno, cilantro - served w/ two lime wedges) and Minnesota (smoked walleye, celery, green onion) were my favorites!

After stuffing ourselves to the gills, we briefly shopped around the Galleria and headed home. We picked up the books again and finished answering the rest of the questions before I fell asleep for the night.

It really was a wonderful day!

Thursday, January 1, 2009

2009 - Couple Resolutions

I thought it would be fun if my husband and I put together Couple Resolutions for 2009. Here's what we have so far. I'll add more as we come up with them.

1. Eat dinner at a table once a week
Once we got our table, we were able to do this daily. Thank goodness! I love eating dinnner together at a table.
2. Go on a date night once a month
January -
February - Dinner at Crave
March - Bar Hopping during days 1 & 2 of the NCAA Tournament
April -
May - Sushi at Mt. Fugi in Maple Grove (after looking at houses)
June - Movie at theater by our apartment + Chanhassen Dinner Theater
July - BIRTHDAY DINNER!
August -
September - ANNIVERSARY DINNER!
October - a few J. Cousineau visits
November -
December -
3. Play tennis together
Fail - Yeah. Didn't get to this one. It's still on my "bucket" list though.
4. Make or try a new ethnic food 6 times
Golabki - Polish (August)
Marinara Sauce - Italian (first time from scratch, August)
Fried Rice w/ Seafood-Chinese? (November)
Gingerbread Cake- Polish (December)
*Here are a few more I could include, but they are more of a stretch
- Pita Bread - Greek (December)
- Pizza - Italian (July)
5. Do one volunteer activity together
Fail - isn't this awful? We did donate money to a few things... but that wasn't quite my goal.
6. Take guitar lessons
Fail - We moved the guitars a few times throughout the year. That's more than we'd done previously. Drats!

As we complete our list, I'll update this post with the details.