My Funny Valentine

Valentine's Day has never been a must-celebrate holiday for us. Some years we shower each other with gifts, other years we exchange kisses. This year Jason bought me a right front break pad. I bought him the left. We're romantic like that...well, we don't wish fiery car crash deaths on each other, at least there's that.

Otherwise, we stayed in and enjoyed ourselves the same way we always spend quality time together - by cooking.



On the weekend I let Jason do the choosing, which is his favourite part. And Jason, as Jason does, chose the most expensive thing on the menu - beef tenderloin. If you haven't cooked with tenderloin before, it is indeed the choicest cut of the cow; when you slice it, it makes chateau briand and filet mignon. When you buy the whole tenderloin, you have to take out a small loan. Which we did.

But Jason didn't want just any tenderloin, no, he wanted lobster-stuffed beef tenderloin in a white wine sauce. So basically, you take the most expensive meat, stuff it with the most expensive seafood, tear up a $20, sprinkle it over the meat, and hope for the best.

Jason isn't terribly good at making foods "match." He picks his main course first and then just adds side dishes that he likes, but don't necessarily go together. If we're having company, I try to steer him on the right path, but when it's just us, I give him free reign and I only worry a little. This time he picked an accompaniment of Greek salad (which was kind of him, I know he picked that for me, not that I would have picked that to go with tenderloin, but...), and stuffed baked potatoes (butter, sour cream, green onion, bacon, shrimp) and garlic cheese shrimp cocktail to start. Oy.

We were very lucky to get a good deal on the lobster tails, actually...the Gourmet Garden Basket happened to have a nice price. Of course, we still had to go to 4 different stores to accumulate the rest of the ingredients. Most shockingly, I let Jason pick the wine. I told him to find a "nice" Chardonnay, but I know Jason's wine selection criteria: coolest/funniest label. Inappropriate name a bonus. Actually, he picked some decent stuff to my taste (which isn't that discerning anyway), and in the end it didn't matter much because after 11 solid hours of cooking and cleaning prep work, I was feeling no pain after the first 3 sips.

Poor Jason. He only worked 9 of those 11 hours, but I made him stay at work the extra 2 because I just wasn't ready yet. When I finally let him in the door, the stage was set: candles flickered, the carpets were sprinkled with a trail of red hearts, the music was actually soft for once...and the moment he looked into my eyes, I crumpled to the floor, convulsed in laughter.

We're just not the cornball romantic types. He took one look at my "romantic" efforts and said "Oh Jamie, you're so witty" and I love that he so totally gets me.

Then I let him help me with the finishing touches of the meal, and then we sat down to a romantic meal that could have fed a romantic army, and I watched Jason find room for more food than you would have thought anatomically possible. I could have cried over how well everything turned out.

I am, however, a little miffed about this photo. I let Jason take a picture of the cake because I was too full to even look at it, and the picture sucks! You can't even tell that it's heart-shaped, and there's berry juice on it! I'll never be able to use this in my portfolio now, the bastard. Ah well. Jason assures me that it tasted delicious, and he was so surprised at the pinkness of the cake inside that he lost his balance and almost fell over (remember: roaring drunk by this point).

We capped the night off with some naked slow dancing, which is all you really need to make any occasion special, in my opinion, and then we went to bed to reminisce about the first Valentine's, and the many more to come.

And if you were thinking that all this sounds a little too easy to be an adventure in the life of Jay, well, you're right. Good eye. There was one small little incident where I almost burned the house down, but see how easily I glossed over it in the retelling?

Meet my shelf. It's just an ordinary shelf...it shelves things and whatnot. It holds pictures and candles and other crap that I have no real use for.

And it catches fire a little too easily, if you ask me. I mean, it was a small flame, and it was at least an inch or two away from the surface! Goddamn candles. They should come with a warning!