Early Valentine's Day Dinner and Game Day Breakfast

Chris and I were supposed to head to my parents lodge in West Virginia for the weekend before we found out we were going to be getting a blizzard. This was going to be a little vacation away to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Instead we had to stay home in our apartment and enjoy the snow from our own couch. Thankfully we were fortunate enough to have power, heat, and helpful neighbors who supplied us with a shovel to shovel our cars out. I was able to get out of the apartment for a bit and take some pictures of the beautiful scenery. The scenery is even prettier today because the sun is shining and everything just glistens. It’s really breathtaking. Here are some pictures I took last night while out on my scooter.

(yes that is my car under there)

This is what it looks like today with the sun shining.

After Chris was done shoveling the cars out, we started on dinner. His plan was to make me dinner as part of my Valentine’s Day Gift, (with my favorite foods) but I felt so bad that he had spent the last hour and half shoveling snow that I helped him out in the kitchen.

On his menu:

• Home made bruschetta with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil
• Fresh Dover Sole baked with lemons and tomatoes
• Brown jasmin rice
• Green beans
• Warm chocolate chip brownies with vanilla ice cream

My favorite fish is Chilean Sea Bass, but it is a little harder to find these days, so he went with my second favorite, which is sole. I love buttery white fish, and sole is just that.

We tend to eat dinner in front of the TV a lot, so tonight I wanted to make sure we ate at the table.

We started with the bruschetta. French bread pan fried and topped with thin slices of mozzarella and a mixture of diced tomatoes, basil, olive oil, salt and pepper. Chris made the tomato mixture while I seared the bread. I had seen this done on the movie Julie & Julia, and it looked so good that I wanted to try it myself.

The finished product.

We started with 2 pieces each, but had a few more. It was some of the best bruschetta I’ve ever had. The bread really made a difference, and I loved the addition of cheese. It was incredibly fresh and tasted just as good as it looked on Julie & Julia. We were amazed at how much a difference searing the bread made. I could have easily made this my dinner…but there was more!

I cooked the brown jasmin rice and the green beans while Chris prepared the fish. This was his moms recipe, and it was incredibly simple. Three pieces of dover sole lined in aluminum foil in a baking dish. Top the sole with slices of lemon, tomato, salt and pepper. That’s it! We baked the sole in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes, and it was perfect. I tossed the green beans in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper and Voila. This meal was so fast and easy to make, but definitely tasted gourmet.

Our meal wouldn’t be complete with out wine! We had a Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc to pair with the fish. I loved this wine because is was complex, buttery, but crisp all at the same time. I thought it paired really well with our meal.

The fish was flaky and buttery and very succulent with the tomatoes and lemon. I loved having a piece of the fish with a piece of tomato and some rice. Everything went together so well.

And clean up was a breeze because the fish was baked in aluminum foil.

We had planned on brownies for dinner, but we had made them the night before and used the wrong size pan so they came out crispy. OOPS. Instead we both had a small bowl of Haagen-Dazs 5 vanilla ice cream and Kamut cookie. I love this ice cream because it is made with FIVE simple ingredients and that’s it. The Kamut cookies were cookies I was given to sample from the lovely people on the Kamut team. The cookies were a very interesting texture and a little dryer than your normal chocolate chip cookie. You could tell they were made with a flake type cereal because there were tiny little chewy parts in the cookie. I think the chocolate chips made this cookie, and it was pretty good in the ice cream. Kamut Korasan Wheat has great health benefits. Check them out here.

Now it’s Superbowl Sunday, and I woke up excited to make chocolate chip pancakes. But first I had an Honest Kombucha. This is a new item for Honest, and to me, tastes better than the GT Kombucha I normally drink.

I don’t know why, but I have been craving pancakes lately. I usually use Bisquick, but my box of bisquick had expired a long time ago so I threw it out. But before I did that I checked the ingredient list, and was surprised to see that Bisquick has partially hydrogenated oil and enriched white flour. NO THANK YOU! Instead I made my own pancakes from scratch. I like to call these “Lauren’s Mouthwatering Whole Wheat Dark Chocolate Chip Pancakes” Is that name long enough for you?

Into the mix went:

• 2 C whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 Tbs sugar in the raw
• 1 1/2 C skim milk
• 1 egg
• 1 faux egg (1 Tbs ground flax seed and 3 Tbs water)
• 2 Tbs vegetable oil
• 3-4 Tbs water to thin batter
• 1 1/2 C organic dark chocolate chips

I mixed the dry ingredients and wet ingredients separately and then added the wet mixture to the dry. Have you ever used a “faux” egg before? This was my first time, and it seemed to work pretty well. We only had one egg left so I combined 1 Tbs ground flax seed with 3 Tbs water and let the mixture sit until it became a thick substance that resembled an egg.

I figured I would wear a football jersey for Superbowl Sunday-even if my team isn’t playing.

The batter was thick and hearty and made perfect pancakes. I had two and didn’t even need syrup because the chocolate chips made them sweet enough. I really enjoyed the whole wheat to regular white flour. Delicious and filling.

Now I’m off to clean up and plan some healthy Superbowl munchies. Wish we could have people over, but I think most of my friends are snowed in. I will recap later the healthy game day eats.

Question: Who do you want to wine the Superbowl?

Tagged as: brown jasmin rice, burschetta, dover sole, haagen-dazs, kamut, pan fried bread, whole wheat chocolate chip pancakes