Valentine's Day

We are not very sentimental.  Anniversaries are sacred, because for the last 3 years they have meant Hawaii vacations! But Valentine's Day, we can take and/or leave.  For example, last year on Valentine's day I had a work deadline that lasted til 3am.  If anything we use V-day as an excuse to go to a nice dinner.  This year we wanted to stay home and enjoy our new house so we had a fancy night in. We dressed up and poured some rose and ate fondue!  (Warning!  This is definitely not a vegan blog anymore!)

Why yes, I did make a cheese plate as an appetizer for our fondue dinner.

There are a million cheese fondue recipes on the internet and most of them are essentially the same.  I used a variation on this one: http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2010/11/making-swiss-cheese-fondue-recipe/.

The spread! Fondue, plus broccoli, brussels sprouts, bread, mushrooms,
cauliflower and potatoes for dipping.

For dessert, I made mini molten chocolate cakes from this recipe: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/14/dining/141nrex.html. I didn't really think it was necessary to make 6 servings for the 2 of us, so Kevin was very helpful in doing the math for halving 1/3 and 3/4 cups. There were spreadsheets involved.  The cakes turned out amazing and I even whipped some cream and added strawberries:

Those cakes!  So molten!

And for breakfast this morning I turned the leftover cauliflower, potatoes, mushrooms and brussels sprouts into a hash with a little cheese and some scrambled eggs.

Repurposed!

I'm off to San Francisco next week, just in time for the heat wave to hit Michigan (Highs above freezing!  And even in the 40s and 50s!).  But look forward to more posts about our new home, and life in the "country".

I believe I promised some French Onion Soup?

Surprise! I didn't forget!

French onion soup is such a perfect winter food - sweet and savory with caramelized onion, bread and melty cheese.  I had actually never had it before I made it for the first time a few months ago. It took a little while to grow on me, but now it is one of my favorites, and a perfect dish for the first week in our new house!

That's right, we officially moved in on Wednesday.  It snowed about 4 inches Tuesday night and on into Wednesday morning as the movers began to carry our stuff down the precarious flight of external stairs up to our apartment.  Things only got crazier when the movers got to our new house:

Ooops!  The moving truck got stuck in our neighbor's
lawn/driveway!

But now we're here, almost entirely unpacked (bless you, Kevin and your type A tendencies!) and cooking delicious meals in our new kitchen.

Chopping onions makes me sad

Don't worry, I'd still be crying even if I wasn't chopping pounds of onions!  It's those darn Olympics! Even in years not marred by human (and animal!) rights abuses (ugh. Russia!), the Olympic Games regularly bring me to tears.  There's something about a person devoting his or her life to a sport, and having the skill to achieve the extraordinary that makes me weepy.  Kevin will attest that I even cried tonight watching a commercial of Bela Karolyi carrying Kerri Strug after her historic vault… Damn you Olympics!!  I'm crying right now just thinking about it.

Anyhow… back to the soup.  It's based on this recipe: http://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/french-onion-soup-with-comte.  I half the recipe, so that it makes one dinner and one set of leftovers, and I cook the onions on medium (or medium-low, given the power of my new stove's burners) so that they brown without burning. 

I enjoy watching a huge pile of onions slowly cook down

and caramelize

To become:

Soup!

Hope you all are enjoying the winter, in whatever form you may have it (polar vortex, California drought, or even 2-inch snow day!)