Our Sweet Valentine's Day

Photo Courtesy of Brad Lovejoy

This entry has very little to do with cooking and almost everything to do with celebrating Valentine's Day. We had just returned from a week-long trip to the Oregon Coast and had grown weary of eating in restaurants. Olivia and I decided that the best way to celebrate Love Day was to invite Brad (a.k.a. Daddy) to be our Valentine by spending the evening at home. He of course, accepted our invitation so Olivia and I started devising our plan.

We decided that the first thing we needed to concentrate on was decorating. As you can see in the photo above, there was a big commitment to cutting and punching hearts. We even dug out taper candles and crystal candle holders for the centerpiece. Finally, we set the table with great care and set to work preparing dinner.

We decided to make one of Brad's favorite dishes, lasagna. Half of the lasagna was prepared with turkey sausage and half with zucchini, mushrooms and olives. I made the sauce from scratch and my little blonde helper was in charge of assembly. She did a beautiful job concentrating on the task at hand. We also decided to purchase mini heart cookie cutters in order to create heart-shaped red pepper, zucchini and cucumber slices for a spinach salad. Isn't the final result cute? We meant to include heart-shaped beets but forgot about them until after the fact.

Photos Courtesy of Brad Lovejoy

Finally, we put together a platter of Valentine goodies from the Metropolitan Market bakery because their options never disappoint. Our favorite treat was the Death By Chocolate bite that is located at the top of the platter in the photo below. It was absolutely decadent.

Photo Courtesy of Brad Lovejoy

Brad arrived at 5:30 sharp for our Valentine date with one dozen red roses for me and one dozen coral roses for Olivia. The roses were beautiful and they smelled heavenly. We served our lasagna and salad with a nice bottle of red wine and then proceeded with our sweet Valentine's Day dinner. Brad and I agreed that our evening qualified as one of the best Valentine celebrations of our past ten years together.