How To Make a Super Romantic Meal

In keeping with this week's Valentine's theme, today's how-to is an easy-peasy, delicious and romantic menu! Avoid all the rush at restaurants on Heart Day and stay in with your sweetie and cook at home! This 3-course menu has delicious items that are tasty aphrodisiacs! 
These step by step instructions may look a little overwhelming at first, but trust me - This is a minimum effort, maximum effect meal!

Appetizer ~ Steamed Artichokes with Lemon Butter Dip

This quick and easy appetizer is so delicious, and a fantastic snack to share over a dimly lit conversation! 

*Trim Artichoke: Cut stems down close to the base of the artichoke, Cut Off the Crown & Clip off the thorns (optional), pull off the tough outer leaves
1. Bring 1/2 inch of water to boil in a pan deep enough to hold the artichokes upright
2. Add a teaspoon or two of salt
3. Set artichokes in boiling salt water, cover the pan, reduce heat to a steady simmer, cook for about 20 minutes
4. Check to see if they're done by pulling off a leaf from close to the center - if it pulls off easily they're done, if there's resistance continue cooking and check every 5 minutes. (The whole thing could take up to 40 minutes depending)
*Microwave Recipe
*Don't forget to cut all the little hairs off the top of the heart (how to clean artichoke hearts)

Dipping Sauce:

Literally just melt some butter in a little bowl and mix in lemon juice to taste! While I'm partial to the simple butter/lemon combo, you can make it a little different by mixing in garlic, parsley, mint or chile! 

*To be a little fancier, you can make an aioli!

Main Course ~ Roasted Chicken with a Rose Petal Chocolate Almond Sauce

This dish is an adapted version of a recipe from the book Like Water For Chocolate, a very romantic story of a girl who cooks her emotions into her food. In a particularly sensual chapter, she makes this dish and all who eat it are consumed with desire and passion. Hopefully your meal will yield the same results...

This recipe is easy because all you really need to do is make the sauce!

Ingredients:

- Roasted Chicken - I buy a pre-made rotisserie chicken from the grocery store! So easy!
- A Couple Ogranic Roses

And the ingredients for the sauce:
- 4 1/2 cups chicken stock
- 3 tablespoons Olive Oil
- 1 cup Onion, finely chopped
- 3 tablespoons Garlic, chopped
- 1 tsp Dried Oregano
- 1 tsp Ground Cumin
- 1/4 tsp ground Cinnamon
- 4 tablespoons Chili Powder
- 3 Tablespoons All Purpose Flour
- 2 Tablespoons Raisins
- 2 Tablespoons slivered Almonds
- 2 Ounces Dark Chocolate

*Chocolate is the king of natural aphrodisiacs, it contains a host of compounds including anandamide, the psychoactive feel-good chemical, and PEA (phenylethylamine), the "love chemical," which releases dopamine in the pleasure centers of the brain! PEA is said to help induce feelings of excitement, attraction and euphoria!

How To Make The Sauce:
1. Heat Olive Oil in large sauce pan, then lower heat
2. ADD onion, garlic, oregano, cumin and cinnamon
3. Cover and cook until onion is almost tender, stirring occasionally, for about 10 min
4. Mix in Chili Powder and Flour, stir for 1 minute
5. Gradually whisk in Chicken Broth, and increase heat to Medium High
6. Boil until reduced, about 35 minutes, Stirring Occasionally
7. Remove from heat and let cool slightly
8. In blender or food processor, blend raisins, almonds and sauce until smooth
9. Heat over Medium Heat until hot, and whisk in chocolate
10. Reduce heat to low and simmer about 3 minutes until blended

Serving:
Place chicken on platter or plates, spoon sauce over the top and allow it to drip down the sides. Garnish the platter and chicken with rose petals (organic roses are edible if you so choose!). Use the rest of the sauce for dipping!
* Pair this with a nice bottle of wine OR champagne! A nice South/Central American Red Wine would be great!
* A great side with this dish if you want one is sauteed Asparagus - another aphrodisiac (but you probably wanna do something different if you choose to make the artichokes)

Dessert ~ Strawberries and Creme

And now, for the easiest dessert ever! Get some strawberries, or mixed berries if you want, wash, put in a bowl, sprinkle sugar over the top and leave in the fridge over dinner! Take them out with some cool whip on the side, dip and enjoy!

OR If you wanna be slightly more ambitious, try some of these options:

~ Pair with Pound Cake! Sarah Lee from the freezer section is Bomb, or you can find it in the bakery section of most grocery stores!

~ Get a bag of frozen mixed berries from the frozen food section, throw in the blender with half a cup of sugar and some Grand Marnier or Amaretto (basically any sweet liqueur of your choice). Blend, then drizzle over vanilla ice cream, pound cake or whatever you like! *wink wink*

Hope you enjoy your meal. Perfect to share with a sweetheart! Don't forget the music!

Paint Sample Heart Garland

Happy Craft Day!

Since Valentine's Day is this Tuesday, and I am a holiday freak, the next 6 days are going to be themed!

Today's craft is a super cheap, super cute way to spruce up the house for Valentine's, or just to add a little color any time of the year! 

Materials:
- A collection of paint samples in any colors or spectrum (you can snag them for free at any home-depot-y place)
- A semi-big craft heart-shape hole punch (found in scrapbooking section) OR you can use scissors: it'll take some more time and effort, but it will work
- Needle
- Thread (I'd recommend white but any color will suffice)

How To Make It:

1. Punch out hearts in all the colors that you want to use. Depending on what kind of samples you got, it helps to cut them out with a scissors and isolate each color - you can punch more hearts that way.

2. Thread your needle with thread as long as you want it to hang. 

3. String the hearts on your thread. 

4. Hang on a wall of your choice and admire the splash of color!

 

(This is Mine!)

(Close-up)

As with every craft -Make it your own!!! Choose a color spectrum you love! Put letters or glitter glue on them! Also - the stamped out samples look cool themselves, so if you want, consider using them for something!

Hope you find this fun! Happy Valentine's Week!

The Art of Being Clumsy

                I used to like to think of myself as super graceful. Somewhat of a Ginger Rogers, gliding smoothly across the floor like an elegant pink fog, drifting seamlessly in and out of rooms, dancing like an undiscovered prima-ballerina. I vividly remember watching the Olympic figure skating as a kid, thinking how easy it looked.

                For years I labored under the misapprehension that all those little daily trips and stumbles and face plants were just a slight side effect of having too much on my mind. Doesn’t everyone trip and stub their toes and slam their skirts in doors and tumble down stairs constantly? …

                No. Apparently everyone doesn't. 
                It has taken me years to fully admit what I’m about to say:

                I am clumsy.

                While my dear friends have been hinting at this for years, it took a series of inciting incidents to prove to me that yes, I might in fact be oh so slightly less graceful than Ginger Rogers…
                Here are some examples of things that have lead to my realization:

• In High School, the regular act of falling down stairs in passing period didn’t exactly make me the big woman on campus…There was the occasional kind co-nerd that helped me up, but not until after a flood of hoodlums had trampled over my limbs and notebooks...
• Then in college, I had an acting professor who compared my entrance during a production of an Oscar Wilde play to “A baby colt stumbling to find its first steps.”
• A few years ago, Jake and I took a little trip to Vegas (Let me say for the record that alcohol never improves my grace). After a particularly moving performance of Cirque de Soleil's Love (if you ever get a chance to see it do so!), I stumbled down some steps... Then, as we walked down the strip after a fresh rain, I slipped banana peel style on the wet marble port-a-cacher of Caesar's Palace in a fall that later resulted in a bruise on my hip the size of a bocce ball. 

                (In my defense - at one point during that weekend I was so, er, merry, that I got lost in a Casino Ladies Room, so maybe this trip isn’t a sure-fire example of my normal tendencies…)

• About a year and a half ago, I was having a blast at a downtown celebration, when I decided to run to a couple bars over to meet someone. This resulted in full-fledged eating shit fall onto the ground. That resulted in a slightly cracked rib... 

                (Much more embarrassing than this however, is the fact that I still went to the Pediatrician. Nothing like being 23 years old and sitting on a firetruck table confessing you’re a bit foggy on the details of how you cracked your rib, but you wanted to make sure it was ok…)

• This past fall in San Francisco, I was at the infamous City Lights book store when my boot caught on a step and I went thudding down a flight of stairs, barely saving myself by grabbing hold of a 60-someodd year old pipe that almost burst open over the works of Kerouac and Ginsberg. Luckily, my honey grabbed me and pried my thumb out from underneath, narrowly avoiding catastrophe, but not at all avoiding cheek-reddening embarrassment.

                Still, all of these incidents seemed a mere string of coincidences. I still ignored my critics who said I was a klutz, or clumsy. That was, until, New Years day this year...

• In a bout of enthusiastic spontaneity, I convinced a small group of friends to hike up part of a mountain we were near to look at the city lights and take in the new year. Fabulous in theory, not so much in execution… To be completely honest, I didn’t quite realize what was happening until my face hit the rock and that major oh fuck feeling took over. I was fine... other than the hematoma and this black eye:

                Tripping down the mountain was the final straw. It made me realize: Maybe, just maybe, people have been right. I might be clumsy. As much as I'd like to ignore it, I can't. 

                HOWEVER - I have decided to embrace it. To take full responsibility for my gravitational challenges, and go forth with the same confidence I had when I was ignorant. It's a quirk, an idiosyncrasy, another piece of the personality jigsaw puzzle... right?? 
                Some things I just need to accept. My hair will always be a little frizzier than I'd like, my patience low, and my grace will always be less than idyllic. But these all make me myself. I won't let myself get down.
                Grace of spirit is more important than grace of balance.
                And that is the art of being clumsy.


PS - Even though I've made the choice to accept my clumsiness, I do fully intend to try my best to not trip on any more mountains...
                

Heart List 2 ~ 5 ~ 2012

Pound Cake with Strawberries and Cool Whip, Citizen Kane (saw it on the big screen recently. A. Mazing.), Potato Tacos, Walker Evans' photography series Many Are Called, Cracked 

Dunkin Donuts Coffee, Pinterest (I know I said it last week, but I'm even further addicted), These 3 shopping sites: Mod Cloth, Fred Flare and Shabby Apple, Stylelist Look Back series

Amor Towles' debut novel Rules of Civility, Haagen-dazs Pistachio Ice Cream,  Fitz and The Tantrums (they're great!) 

                          

This Is Not A Pipe

Rene Magritte

Roy Lichtenstein

Henri Matisse

Jean Michel Basquiat

Toulouse Latrec

Wassily Kandinsky

Robert Rauschenberg

Vincent Van Gogh

Man Ray

Sandro Botticelli

Emil Nolde

Frida Kahlo

Edward Hopper

Pablo Picasso

Shepard Fairey