Valentine's Day 2011

Happy Valentine’s Day

I’m about to throw myself out of the apartment and go to the grocery store to see what I might be able to find that would make a special Valentine’s Day dinner.  Last night, for some reason, I remembered something that someone told me that made me shudder, which is why I want to cook a special meal tonight.

I had been working in Germany for Boston University for about five years when the Dean of the College of Education, who incidentally reads this blog daily, made me an assistant dean.  Well that really frosted the shorts of the VP who was in charge of things in Europe, especially in light of the fact that his girlfriend was in my department and I would have supervisory responsibility over her.  In an effort to smooth things over, I volunteered to drive her from Heidelberg to Brussels, where we both had different meetings to attend. It was a very long, tedious drive and the more we talked the more I realized that we had nothing in common.  However, she was fluent in French and I was looking forward to having a decent meal after this long trip. 

When we got to the hotel we arranged to meet in the lobby at six.  I had spoken to the concierge and had a list of four restaurants that were typical and not too expensive.  I was looking at the list when she arrived and she asked if I had picked out something.  I told her I had a short list and showed her and much to our mutual horror, she thought I was talking about movies and I thought we were talking about restaurants.  Here we were in one of the gastronomic capitals of the world and she wanted to go to the movies.  That is when she said the words that still make me queasy, “I wish they would just make a pill that you take once a day so that we didn’t have to waste any time eating!”  Needless to say, we said our goodbyes and I avoided her as best I possibly could for the next four years. (In case you are wondering, I had a memorable meal that night that involved patés, mussels, and frites with three mayonnaise dips, Muscadet, mini-fruit tarts and delicious Cognac.)

Dinner last night was a lot of fun. I had made a caprese salad which I served on spinach and arugula as a starter, and then I went into the kitchen and made some great potato/carrot pancakes using the potato/carrot smash that we had the night before.  I first mixed three eggs and three tablespoons of flour in a big bowl and let it sit for a bit. Then I added about two cups of the potato/carrot and I stirred that together until it was all nicely blended.  I added some salt, pepper, tarragon and chives and mixed it up again. This time I let it all sit until I was ready to fry the pancakes.  Meanwhile, I had cut thin slices of lighted salted salmon and in another pan I had caramelized an onion and five cloves of garlic.  When we were ready I made the pancakes and then placed them on the plate, covered them with the onion mixture, laid a few slices of salmon on each pancake, covered the salmon with yogurt and decorated each pancake with some chives.  DELICIOUS, if I do say so myself.

I challenged the weather this afternoon to go to the grocery store.  The weather won.  It faked me out with lots of sunshine, blue skies and what looked like light winds. Turns out the wind was coming from the opposite side of the apartment building and we were on the leeward side.  Once I walked around the building I was pummeled by a very strong wind that made the nine-degree temperature seem well below zero.  I had a very specific dish I was going to make tonight and every one of the main ingredients was not available at the store.  I’ll improvise!

On this Valentine’s Day let us pause and give thanks that we aren’t trying to celebrate in Malaysia.  Who knew that romantic love was not suitable for Muslims? And speaking of romantic love, what in the world is poor BerLUSTconi going to do today? With all of his girlfriends and all of the press he gets, someone is bound to feel slighted!  I’ll bet there will be no celebrating Valentine’s Day in Bahrain, even though the King, in an effort to buy some love from Bahrainis, gave each family $2700.  Today is scheduled to be a Day of Rage and Bahrain might not know how to handle it.  And finally, a sad story about two teenagers who will not be celebrating Valentine’s Day today.  Perhaps however, they did qualify for next year’s Darwin Award.

Moscow: Two students died on Sunday night in Moscow after they attempted to ride on the roof of a metro train, a police source said. One of the bodies was found on the roof with 'multiple fractures' while the other was found on the platform a short distance away, the source said. They are believed to have died after being slammed into the roof of the tunnel. Both the dead were teenage tourism students at a Moscow university.

Best wishes for the day, Cindy and Wm.