A Celebration of Love

February 16, 2009 6:04 pm

Valentine's Day is a celebration of your love for another. While that's all well and good, if you are not in a loving relationship, Valentine's Day becomes more of a day of brooding bitterness and an overindulgence of calories. I may not be in a loving relationship with a man, but I am in several loving relationships with my girlfriends. This Valentine's Day, instead of curling up with a pint of Ben and Jerry's and Lifetime movies, I organized a dinner party to celebrate my love for my lovely ladies.

After pronouncing Chocolate Is My Boyfriend I headed home to whip up my own chocolaty bites of Heaven. I melted a Valrhona chocolate bar with a pat of butter and a pint of heavy cream on low heat. Once that mixture came together, which took a tad longer than expected as I used too much cream, I dipped twenty beautiful strawberries into the chocolaty batter and placed them in the refrigerator to cool. The chocolate was a bit too liquidy from the cream, so I was not too sure how my dessert was going to turn out, but the leftover chocolate that was on the spoon tasted so incredibly yummy that I was quickly reassured that the strawberries would be delicious.

Next I busted out my mandoline. I was both excited and nervous, as I had never before used my mandoline and I am more than a tad bit clumsy. I took one last sip of my wine before picking up the first sweet potato, figuring that someone as accident prone as I should not consume alcohol while working with a super sharp blade. I am happy to report that all my fingers are still in tact and no one ate bites of nail with their appetizer. After slicing the remainder of my spuds, I tossed them with olive oil, salt, and red pepper flakes and sent them into the oven. Now that the dangerous part of the cooking was done, I resumed my celebration of love by cheering with the girls and refilling everyone's glasses. Once the sweet potatoes were beginning to golden, I mixed them together with low fat mayo, fresh basil, and some lemon juice to serve as a dip for our naturally low fat pre-dinner snack. Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite foods as they are not only really good for you, but they taste really great no matter how you prepare them. I filled the girls' plates with a generous helping of baked sweets and a dollop of dip. Less than five minutes later, we all went back for seconds...and then thirds.

After taking a bit of a breather to digest, which we amply aided with gossip and girly chatter, I filled my pasta pot with water to begin dinner. I diced a liberal amount Italian semi-dry sausage into bite size pieces to be tossed into a few tablespoons of melted butter. While the sausage browned in the butter, filling my apartment with all kinds of delicious smells, I split two-dozen grape tomatoes in half and grated a fist full of Pecorino Romano cheese. Nothing says, "I love you" like cheese. Well, maybe diamonds, but we didn't have any diamonds to share, so cheese would have to do.

After the sausage cooked, I added the tomatoes and turned down the flame so that they could simmer in their own juices. I salted the water for the pasta and tossed in a pound of rotini. Next, I added a pint of heavy cream to the simmering mixture and stirred continuously. I realize that heavy cream seems to be the theme around my dinner party, and while that was unintentional, no one complained as a room full of single ladies are not too calorie conscious on Valentine's Day. A few minutes before the pasta was perfectly al dente, I mixed the Pecorino Romano in with the tomatoes, semi-dry sausage, cream, and butter and had the girls set the table for dinner.

We are a very chatty bunch, but for the first few minutes of dinner, everyone was silent as forks full of pasta danced around in our mouths. "Lexi, this is scrumptious," said one. "Mmmmm, I freaking love you," said another as she shoveled into another fork full. Silence took over again only to be interrupted by the clanging of wine glasses and smacking of forks against plates. Since the girls were on dish duty, I was able to sit back and enjoy another few bites while they scrubbed my kitchen back to its usually pristine condition. My ladies sat back down for some more girl talk and chick flicks while we all digested. The cheesy goodness of dinner stayed with us for a while, but about an hour later, someone asked about the strawberries...

Before serving the tray of chocolate covered strawberries, I gave a disclaimer that I had close to no idea about what I was doing when I made them, and that even if they stink, the girls better put a smile on their faces and eat up. And I meant that with complete heart felt love. Well, they must have been good because of the twenty, there were only three left on the tray and we were all once again stuffed. My chocolate was lighter than the fancy, gourmet ones that are properly made, but that was fine with us because it meant that you could eat more. I was actually quite pleased with the thinner layer of chocolate, as it allowed for more of the flavors of the strawberries to be tasted and savored. They were also a lovely accompaniment to our white wine, which was flowing freely.

More chatter followed as we all reached for comfy sweatpants and a last glass of wine. No knight in shinning armor with dimples and a thick head of hair showed up to give me a dozen Gerber daisies this Valentine's Day, but the company of my ladies was more than enough to fill my heart with love and my stomach with lots of yummy treats.

Alexis Popov