Valentine's Day 2013

Sooo.... Valentine's Day came and went, and I was reminded of how lucky I am to have someone like Cookie..  Basically, he took the time to plan out an entire day for me, full of the food I love (since he's a cook, and both of us love cooking). When I woke up, he shoved a dozen roses in my face. Mind you, he's bought me flowers every month or two, but this time it was different. The bouquet was HUGE. I think that could have made up half of my entire body! I couldn't stop giggling and looking at it wide-eyed in wonder.

It begun with lunch, since I had a late night and couldn't get up for breakfast. Lunch was a toasted baguette, eaten with blue cheese and cranberry pâté. On the side are green seedless grapes, fresh strawberries, and sparkling peach wine. This was especially sweet of him to do because when we first dated, this was what we ate for dinner all the time. It brought back a lot of sweet memories..

In the afternoon, although he was open to watching a romantic-comedy, I suggested the newest Pokemon movie instead, since neither of us have seen it.  We didn't have much time between meals because I offered to help out with cooking the next meal.

Dinner was a lot more extravagant. We had oysters and grapefruit to start off with. It's unfortunate that the ones we got weren't all that juicy or plump, but I still loved it. After the oysters, we had a mâche salad with roasted pine nuts and a balsamic and olive oil vinaigrette. This was actually super tasty. I love how sweet and sour it tasted. Next up is our shining star of this evening: the wine-braised lamb on top of a bed of polenta. The lamb was fall-off-the-bone yummy.



Since neither of us had enough room to eat dessert, we had our vanilla bean panna cotta later on in the evening. On top is a generous layer of raspberry sauce, some fresh fruit, shaved dark chocolate, and a mint to top it off. We ended off the night with raspberry tea with honey, and fruit. It was, altogether, the best Valentine's Day I've had up-to-date.


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Other than that, I've started a second part time job with my school through the work-study program. I am now officially the website developer for our Communications Department's Genomics lab website!  I get paid minimum wage ($10.25 per hour), and I can only work up to 140 hours for this semester, but it's enjoyable and flexible and my employers and employees are all very friendly. It's unfortunate that I can't continue this after April, but at least I have this experience down and I can always ask my employers for reference letters (or see if they want to continue to hire me on contract or know someone else who'll hire me? I'm not sure, one can only hope..). I'll link the lab website once it's finished.



Ah yes, speaking of websites, I've finally made my new Tumblr food blog! Basically, I can either choose to blog about something random, or (the main part) I can post recipes of foods I've cooked/baked, and also post general photography. I'm also doing restaurant reviews, although right now, there is no "rating system" yet. I would only say if I recommend going or not, what I liked from it (and what I didn't like), photos of the food, recommendations of which menu items to order, and restaurant information for each post. If you have a Tumblr and wouldn't mind Following Me, than please do. Thanks!!


As for photography, I find less and less time to indulge in my hobby right now, so there is a lack of updates (unfortunately).. However, I just want everyone to know that I am still active and still alive!

I'll try to update more often from now on, though. Thanks for all the support!