On this, one of the most commercial holidays of the year, I have to admit - I love Valentine's Day. Always have. Even when I didn't have a Valentine, so I feel like that disclosure makes my love of the holiday legitimate. I wish I could say it was because I'm such a loving person, or that it's because I love to buy cards and flowers for people, but I really think the main reason is because it is associated with my favorite color: RED.
Now, before you go mentioning other holidays that also play pretty heavy on the "red," I want to point out that for Christmas and the 4th of July, Red is only one of a series of celebrated colors. For Valentine's Day, however, Red takes center stage. You may want to argue that pink is also equally celebrated, but I maintain that as a derivative of the color Red, pink takes a back seat. Valentine's Day is a day that completely revolves around Red. And I love it!
So does anyone have really exciting Valentine's plans? I know a lot of our friends celebrated over the weekend by going to dinner/movie/the usual. We're going out to dinner tonight, although the exact location has yet to be disclosed (Nathan's good at surprises!). I'll make sure and update in a later post, especially if the food/service is particularly good or particularly bad. Those are really the only instances in which I feel compelled to comment.
Speaking of restaurants, we celebrated Mom's birthday yesterday with lunch at the Chop House. Rather than ordering a delicious Magpies cake this year, I decided to try to be resourceful and bake one on my own. Nathan may need to guest blog - like Steve Liadis - to fill you in on the event. Following in my recent pattern of using my new Bon Appetit cookbook, I asked Mom what she would like. She suggested chocolate, so I found a Chocolate Crunch Layer Cake with Milk Chocolate Icing. Because the "Crunch" part is made out of toffee, I immediately pounced on this recipe (Mom and I both LOVE toffee). It was a disaster. I'm about 99% certain that I would have come out better off just spending the $45 on a Magpies cake. When you take into account the time I spent searching for "cake flour" (which, by the way, Kroger, Food City, and even Fresh Market do NOT have), the 3 hours I spent making the darn thing, the hour it took to clean my kitchen afterwards and scrape the tiny little bits of toffee off our kitchen sink, floor, stove, walls, etc... At my effective billing rate right now of $75/hour...I probably "spent" about $300 on that damn cake. Now, I don't take home $75/hour - that's what the firm bills me out at - but I still came out in the hole, especially considering the fact that the cake was dry and the icing set up like cement.
Anyways, if you feel like wasting half a day, just try this recipe. Here's a look at the final product.
Now, before you go mentioning other holidays that also play pretty heavy on the "red," I want to point out that for Christmas and the 4th of July, Red is only one of a series of celebrated colors. For Valentine's Day, however, Red takes center stage. You may want to argue that pink is also equally celebrated, but I maintain that as a derivative of the color Red, pink takes a back seat. Valentine's Day is a day that completely revolves around Red. And I love it!
So does anyone have really exciting Valentine's plans? I know a lot of our friends celebrated over the weekend by going to dinner/movie/the usual. We're going out to dinner tonight, although the exact location has yet to be disclosed (Nathan's good at surprises!). I'll make sure and update in a later post, especially if the food/service is particularly good or particularly bad. Those are really the only instances in which I feel compelled to comment.
Speaking of restaurants, we celebrated Mom's birthday yesterday with lunch at the Chop House. Rather than ordering a delicious Magpies cake this year, I decided to try to be resourceful and bake one on my own. Nathan may need to guest blog - like Steve Liadis - to fill you in on the event. Following in my recent pattern of using my new Bon Appetit cookbook, I asked Mom what she would like. She suggested chocolate, so I found a Chocolate Crunch Layer Cake with Milk Chocolate Icing. Because the "Crunch" part is made out of toffee, I immediately pounced on this recipe (Mom and I both LOVE toffee). It was a disaster. I'm about 99% certain that I would have come out better off just spending the $45 on a Magpies cake. When you take into account the time I spent searching for "cake flour" (which, by the way, Kroger, Food City, and even Fresh Market do NOT have), the 3 hours I spent making the darn thing, the hour it took to clean my kitchen afterwards and scrape the tiny little bits of toffee off our kitchen sink, floor, stove, walls, etc... At my effective billing rate right now of $75/hour...I probably "spent" about $300 on that damn cake. Now, I don't take home $75/hour - that's what the firm bills me out at - but I still came out in the hole, especially considering the fact that the cake was dry and the icing set up like cement.
Anyways, if you feel like wasting half a day, just try this recipe. Here's a look at the final product.
Don't I look joyful? Thank goodness there isn't any audio accompanying, otherwise it would be, well...not PG.
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment