April Date Night In: My Birthday

 “We, and I’m talking about all of us now, have created this romantic notion of ‘soul mates.’ We date people and search for ‘the one.’ If we are lucky to find that one, we marry and expect things to be perfect because we think we were made for each other. Yet when our ‘soul mate’ unintentionally hurts us and dissatisfies us in some way-which will happen because we are all imperfect people-we are crushed and confused, and we question whether ‘the one’ was really the soul mate.” –Ashley Rodriguez, DNI p. 37

OK, so let’s be honest here. I didn’t think Roy was my soul mate when we got married. Maybe it’s the realist or pessimist or whatever-ist in me, but I view marriage very much as a choice from the get-go. I choose to be with you through the good and bad. I choose to love you in spite of the coffee breath (which now goes both ways) and wrinkled shirts and your dilapidated pick-up truck. And you in turn put up with my anxieties and insecurities and lack of knowledge about anything dealing with ancient culture.

I think of Roy much more as my soul mate now, almost 9 years into our marriage. We are happiest and healthiest when we have the chance to spend significant time together. Our boys are calmer, our house is cleaner, and everybody finds it easier to laugh. The past two weeks we’ve had precious little time as a couple. He is working an additional full-time job this month in a distant city and I have a week-long conference and big woodwind quintet recital coming up. Nobody has been fortunate enough to escape Drippy Noses and Major Congestion. We had a hard time finding-the-time-to-find-a-time for Date Night In. But last night was it, and I looked forward to it harder than ever.

·         Hot Dates with Olive Oil and Sea Salt

·         Fresh Herb Risotto

·         Fennel-Crusted Lamb Chops

·         Crème Fraiche Panna Cotta with Ginger-Roasted Rhubarb

Our first night together in eleven, we shuttled the lads to their beds as soon as feasible and escaped to our quiet kitchen. I spent $17 on two lamb chops and was terrified to even look at them lest they char in front of my face. Roy gamely agreed to tackle the lamb while I claimed the lazy, warm job of stirring risotto for a half-hour. I had spent much of the afternoon and the previous evening seasoning the chops, making panna cotta (including my own homemade crème fraiche), and prepping fennel rub and herb puree. It was a sensual feast, with the bright green of the herbs, the pop of vanilla bean and toasted fennel seeds, and the irresistible sneak-taste of the panna cotta. The hope of spring!

It wasn’t until the risotto was almost finished that I remembered about the date appetizer. Thankfully they take all of five minutes to make. Warm, blistered dates with olive oil and a dusting of sea salt. Really, really good folks. This cookbook forces me to try things I couldn’t even fathom and then blows my mind.

 

Picture stolen from the internet...it would be hard to mess this dish up visually anyway.

The dates were consumed and we moved onto the main course, risotto and lamb. I’ve just started making risotto this winter, so the technique wasn’t foreign. This risotto had two cups of fresh herbs mixed in, which definitely gave it brightness. I personally think I’m coming to a place where I declare that more than a tiny sprig of parsley is just too much. I measured the parsley to the gram and I still felt that it was all I could taste. This dish yielded substantial leftovers though, so it’s possible that a night in the fridge helped take the edge off. More cilantro, less parsley. That’s my motto in life.

In process. There was a lot more broth to be absorbed and herbs to add.

Roy did a stupendous job on the lamb. He used our meat thermometer and nailed it on the cook. I’m giving him meat from now on. The fennel rub was pretty good—I personally wouldn’t use any more, but it did clear the “I can taste something other than licorice” line, if by a nose. The lamb tasted wonderful. I tried not to think about the cute fluffy animal I was eating…

 

Such a great job!

We made room for dessert. A month into spring we are, but rhubarb is nowhere to be found. Multiple Wegmans were consulted to no avail. So we had panna cotta with fresh strawberries instead. I was afraid my crème fraiche was too runny, but with the gelatin powder it thickened nicely. Since the purchase of this book vanilla bean has shot to the top of my favorite ingredients to use. It makes anything taste fancy. We enjoyed it with simple strawberries, but as soon as rhubarb comes in we’ll make it again with the proper roasted rhubarb and ginger.

 

We used our precious time to focus more on each other and less on taking artsy photos...

It was a great date. The food was wonderful and deeply enhanced by our desperate need to reconnect this month. I am so thankful for this project and that it’s, in a sense, forced us to make space. We worked hard all day yesterday getting all of the other to-dos out of the way so we could truly take the whole evening. And we needed every second of it.

“I’ve found that it’s through the course of marriage that you become soul mates. It’s through deep sadness that we learn to grieve together, through great joy we learn to celebrate together, and simply through the day-to-day that we learn how to use who we are to create a stronger unit that works for both. Somehow, in the midst of being married to Gabe, he’s managed to make me more ‘me.’ He has encouraged me to embrace who I am while gently inspiring me to see things differently: he refines who it is that makes me me. … Gabe and I are soul mates, but we worked damn hard to get here.” DNI, p. 37.

Today’s 1%: I bought metal tongs this week. I had the cheapest pair of plastic ones imaginable and “accidentally” melted them. (It really was an accident, but I wasn’t sorry at all.) This is going to be one of those investments that we look back on and know we did the right thing.