julia child does it again.

It was a couple years ago that Micah bought me Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and we made a night out of making our own delicious French food. It has now become somewhat of a tradition to pick out new recipes each year for Valentine's Day and I'm pretty smitten on the idea. I have never been overly excited about this particular holiday with it's oodles of red and pink and cards and chocolate and weird stuffed teddy bears. So, instead of braving the crowds to get a table for a meal out, I quite like spending the time creating something together. And, it has been our experience that Julia rarely let us down.

This year we decided to spend a little more time on dessert. So we went with a light and airy chocolate mousse, chilled in martini glasses of course. My only comment about the mousse is that it was more of a mocha mousse than chocolate. The recipe called for 4 tbsp of strong coffee, and we either operate on a different scale of what strong coffee is or the recipe calls for too much, because it was way more than a subtle hint. Slightly (and I do mean slightly!) disappointing when you're really wanting chocolate, chocolate, but once it was accurately re-named as mocha, it tasted better.

The main meal was your basic meat and potatoes. The potatoes in this picture look a little like tater tots, my opinion is that they were much better than tater tots, as they were slathered with butter and chives. The steak had a red wine reduction sauce, and was also served with garlic butter. And the salad was simple with cucumber and mushroom and goat cheese.

It was the perfect way to celebrate with the person I love most.