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Valentines Day - Brick & Dinner?

February 15th, 2007

For Valentines Day, I planned a special dinner for my wife and I. She agreed to take care of the kids dinner, so I could work on a special romantic dinner for two to eat after they were asleep. Did I mention I like to cook? Well, I just kind of experiment in the kitchen, and usually things turn out well, last night fortunately was one of those nights where the crazy idea in my head translated well to the plate and eventually to our taste buds.

The girls got a special treat of “breakfast for dinner”…. they don’t normally eat dinner in the pajamas, but it was bath night. So after they were all cleaned up and ready for bed they came down to their special Valentines day dinner: Heart shaped chocolate chip pancakes, fruit salad, and turkey bacon. Oh yeah, they also got cool stuffed animals and lots of Valentines cards.

For the Adrien and I, I prepared: insalata caprese; Dino-kale with Garlic braised in Olive Oil; Pumpkin Ravioli in a Chèvre Heavy Cream sauce; and Pan Fried Chicken Breasts stuffed with Turkey Chorizo, Dates, and Chèvre compote. I served a white wine with 50% Chardonnay/50% Viognier. For dessert we had domed Hazelnut Mousse covered in thin layer of chocolate. I didn’t make the dessert of the ravioli’s from scratch, but I prepared everything else. Since I rarely use recipes and in this case just made this all up earlier that day I can’t describe exact proportions or nutritional values…

It’s a good thing I had done a brick workout with a 25 mile bike ride on my fixed wheel bike and a 4 mile run earlier in the day. The 2 hour workout allowed me to not only burn up some calories before the big dinner, but also to think through my shopping list and imagine how I was going to prepare the meal. Much like my race day planning, I like to visualize how I might cook a meal. In this case, I did pretty well… kept the kitchen relatively clean, and was actually able to have everything partially prepared before the kids were in bed, so once they girls were asleep I slipped into my suit and tie (after all this was a fancy dinner) and finished preparing (braising the kale, boiling the pasta and frying up the stuffed chicken breasts) and plating everything.

One note: the link to dino-kale was the best one I could find with a quick search of the web. It shows someone washing their kale in soapy water… PLEASE do not ever do this to kale or any vegetable. Ugh! Water… that’s all you should ever need to wash a vegetable.

Entry Filed under: Fitness, Triathlon, Diet, Ironman, Family, Running, Cycling, Marathons, Strength Training, Stretching, fixie, single-speed, fixed-gear, Daughters, food, cooking