Lamentations of a Pastry Chef on V-Day

Well, I don't know if this will be a lamentation, but our Valentine's day this year surely turned out very different from what we had planned. Luckily we had a little pre-Valentine's bash with a few friends the night before since most of the other plans got thrown out the window.

For the last few years Ry and I have decided to trade back and forth on who gets to plan Valentine's Day so that we both get a chance to be surprised and swept off our feet. . .hmm, I'm pretty sure that sounds girly to say it that way, and I'm bettin' Ry would prefer something more masculine. Smacked over the head with the club of love? Tackled soundly by warm fuzzies? I'm really not sure on that one. Oh well.

Anyway, this year was my turn and I had ever-so-much planned- video games (because Ry loves them and begs me to play with him all the time, to which I usually say no), romantic dancing, a truly amazing dinner, and presents. (oh, speaking of which, for all of you that were wondering after the last post, I made a cartoon flip book for him of me doing all sorts of crazy dance moves, whispering lovey-dovey messages, and just plain being weird and quirky. I ended up printing and lamenating around 60 or 70 pictures so the animation turned out AWESOME! He was totally surprised, which I loved, and he guffawed when he flipped it, which I also completely loved. It makes me SO happy to get him to laugh that hard!)

Umm. . .that was a long aside, and so I thought I'd start a new paragraph. So, bottom line was that I had all these amazing plans, and somehow I forgot to take into account my profession in this all-encompassing holiday of LOVE. Yeah, I hit the bakery about 4:30am and didn't leave until about 3pm. It was a crazy, yet exhileratingly fun day. Somehow I've always loved the pressure of a bustling kitchen- its such a rush! I dipped something like 500 strawberries and over 300 marachino cherries in chocolate, piped hundereds of chocolate mousse cups, decorated dozens of giant cookie hearts, and while tired at the end of the day, I felt this happy, warm little joy inside of me that always gets there when I cook. I love doing what I do.

Unfortunately, all too often though the spirit is willing the body just ain't. I came home and absolutely crashed. I slept for about 4 hours and when I woke up I wasn't really in the mood to do anything. My lamb dinner with curried risotto and molten chocolate lava cakes became Papa Murphy's heart-shaped pepperoni pizza with a tall glass of milk, and all other plans gave way to a blood-pumping game of Harry Potter Edition Clue.

But the best part of being married for almost three years is that we had a blast anyway; sometimes its all about the simple stuff.