Black Zeppelin | Barr & Table

Valentine’s Day might be one of my favorite holidays. We don’t do the bouquet of roses, sappy cards, get dressed up for dinner kind of thing. We learned that wasn’t necessary many years ago. Not to mention, who wants to pay $200 for a dinner that takes HOURS to come out after ordering while 100 other people wait around you? Personally, I’m a fan of a quiet night at home, cooking together and drinking some good wine.

We cheated a little bit this year and bought our main dish. Last year, we went all out and made a pistachio-crusted lamb which turned out wonderfully. This year, however, we went to the farmers’ market the week before Valentine’s Day and saw that Roli Roti has a new rotisserie duck l’orange. We already love their rotisserie chicken, brussels, and potatoes, so how could we say no? We woke up on Valentine’s Day and got to the market as soon as they opened to get our duck.

It was so nice to relax rather than having to work on the main dish. So we broke out a bottle of Black Zeppelin, a 2009 Syrah blend, that we got in 2012. We bought 2 bottles and had the first right away. This bottle was even better than we remembered!

It was also gone pretty quickly!

I also made a cheesy [ha.. in both senses of the word] plate to snack on while the side dish was in the oven. Thank you very much, Cabot!

And what goes better with cheese than prosecco? Only the finest bottle in our house..

The main event.. it was better than I could have imagined! Did I mention that this was my first time eating meat in 2 weeks? Nathan’s idea for the dippy egg over top of the rosemary garlic roasted potatoes and brussels was killer. I was absolutely in heaven!

And if that wasn’t enough, I made a “single serving” [which really turned out to be a double. So we nicely shared.] of Smitten Kitchen’s blueberry crumb bars. I’d only made them once before, a couple years ago, and Nathan has been talking about them ever since. I decided Valentine’s Day was the perfect day to break it out again. We also bought some Tahitian Vanilla gelato from our favorite place, Lush, right down the street. It was the perfect topping.

Dinner was fabulous, as always, and we were more than full. Or as we like to say, fat and happy.

Food for Thought

Did you do anything special for Valentine’s Day?

Gooood morning! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend and hopefully a nice Valentines Day too [if you celebrated.] Friday was a bit crazy for both of us and by the time we got out for dinner, all we wanted was something cheap and easy. Mexican it was!

It was the last dinner of my 2 week vegan experiment and what could be a better way to finish it off than with grilled veggies, rice, black beans, and lots of guacamole? Oh right.. fresh tortilla chips and salsa, too 😉

Saturday was all about taking it easy. In all of the running around that we’ve been doing lately, we decided that pulling the married card out and relaxing all day sounded like the best way to spend Valentines Day. We hit up the farmers’ market bright as soon as they opened to get the main star of our dinner—rotisserie duck l’orange. I guess we cheated a little bit in a way by not making the main dish like we usually do, but hey, it was hard to pass up! And such a gorgeous day, too. Which is why we took the opportunity to spend more time outside and walk over to the nearby rose garden.

Too bad we forgot that it’s still winter [yep, 75 degrees in February!] and there were only about 10 roses to be seen. Ha! We’ll have to make our way back over there in a couple of months.

The rest of the day was spent watching movies and having a few drinks on the couch.

Only the finest in our house! The perfect apertif while we were cooking up some roasted brussels & potatoes to go with the duck. We also popped open a bottle of Black Zeppelin, a 2009 Syrah blend, that we bought in 2012. It was surprisingly better than we had remembered!

Don’t worry, I’ll fill you in on the rest of the food on Wednesday. Except for dessert.. a homemade personal pan blueberry square topped with Tahitian Vanilla gelato from Lush, down the street.

Sunday was for workouts, working, errands, and the start of the new day bed for all of our guests! Ikea is the best.. ish.

Don’t worry Mom and Dad, the room will be a little more put together in a week and a half when you get here! Looking forward to this week being a little quieter. And actually being able to do some real meal planning. I missed meat and seafood!