V-Day Dinner

Troy and I have given up long ago on going out to eat on Valentine's day. We just aren't ones who want to fight the crowd. Especially now with a preschooler who makes it difficult to thoroughly enjoy some dinners out. She does quite well most of the time but it still means we have to pay attention to what she is doing more than conversation between the two of us. So we opt for dinner at home. And it is so much easier. We still try to make v-day a little special because we both enjoy having another reason to celebrate the love we share, although we believe this can be done any day and try to make random days out of the year special too. We don't buy each other gifts unless maybe there is candy involved and no not the expensive boxed chocolates but a candy bar :) What we do is try to make a dinner at home that is something different than we normally make and that we wouldn't make all the time. This year we spotted some packaged pasta that seemed to fit the bill. We have surely missed out on this stuff. We got a spinach and cheese ravioli but never thought of what kind of sauce we would make for it. So the night of dinner we used the suggestion on the package for melted butter and a sprinkle of shredded parmesan cheese. We had some mushrooms that we thought would go great with it and pan fried those as well. It turned out great! We were both surprised at how great it was. The butter was necessary to give the pasta a little wetness but great because it didn't take away from the flavor stuffed inside. It wasn't real cheesy which I was afraid of. More spinach flavor than anything. We paired the pasta with some garlic bread and we were both satisfied with our dinner in. Maybe it had something to do with the blueberry pie we indulged in for dessert. Probably not a pie we would get often but a nice treat.

We think the mushrooms were a necessary addition. Yum!

Yes you need that much cool whip...Troy even said you can never have enough cool whip :)

I was surprised how much Sevea loved the pie. Soft mushy fruit doesn't always go over with her!

We hope that you enjoyed some time with the loved ones in your life! It really is about the small stuff and a home cooked meal prepared together certainly is something to be thankful for.