The Oatmeal put it best the other day when they/he posted a strip about the worst thing about Valentine’s Day. And though it basically mirrors my feeling on it, I can hardly seek to improve on his eloquence.

So instead I’m taking a different tack and spending a moment to talk about the history of Valentine’s Day. It’s not, as often charged, a conspiracy by Hallmark to take all your money cause they made up some holiday. It’s actually quite legitimate – as legitimate as any other holiday, anyway – even if people seem to be quite comfortable with the conspiracy paradigm and have no desire to look any further.

Like most major holidays that we celebrate today, Valentine’s Day is an amalgamation of many different traditions and legends. There are three possible actual people, in the early years CE, that could be attributed to the naming of the day – three separate Saint Valentine’s. Nobody knows for certain really what these people did – apart from being martyred, as all three were – or what could have earned them the day in their name, but legends do exist.

The first tells of a Roman priest who continued to marry young men to their wives against the wishes of the emperor Claudius II. The emperor had decreed that men with wives made lesser soldiers, and promptly outlawed all marriage for young men. Valentine, seeing the error in this, chose to continue to perform marriage ceremonies regardless of the emperors decision. He was then killed.

The second tells of another priest who helped young men escape from being harsh and possibly false imprisonment. He was jailed himself, fell in love with a young girl while in prison, sent her what is arguably the first Valentine’s card, and was then executed.

The third Valentine saint traveled through Africa, and even less is known of him. In fact, that’s it. Most likely, somebody killed him too.

Were all these three saints killed on February 14th? It’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that, in a similar fashion to the decisions made on calendar placement of Christmas, the Christian Church made the choice to celebrate Valentine’s Day – then a feast day – in the middle of February to preempt another pagan holiday. See, in the Mediterranean region, February is the beginning of the spring. And the festival Lupercalia fell in the middle of this month, as a celebration of the changing of the seasons – again, much like the pagan festival celebrated slightly before what is now our modern day Christmas. Lupercalia began on the ides of February, the 15th, and was a fertility festival honoring the god Faunus – god of agriculture. It was also a time of purification – a “spring cleaning,” if you will. It’s easy enough to connect the dots here.

So next time you feel compelled to sneer at the endless heart shaped boxes and teddy bears plaguing you at your every turn the minute the New Year has begun, consider sacrificing a goat – for fertility. Or a dog, for purification. Then you can dip the strips of goat hide into blood, and take to the streets to slap young women in the face with it – thereby blessing them with the gift of fertility for the coming year.

On second thought, maybe the chocolate and Hallmark cards aren’t so bad after all.

Two years and one day ago, I married the most wonderful woman in the world. Today, she *is* my world.

As yesterday was our anniversary, I spent most of the day with her and not particularly doing much writing. We actually had a pretty simple night, going out after work to tour the maternity ward where Aedan will likely be delivered. I say likely because our OB is actually affiliated with two hospitals – one which is slightly closer to our work and one which is slightly closer to our home – so we will be pre-registering with both. They seem to be pretty similar though.

The tour was fun, enlightening, and very real. It’s funny how when these major life events are sneaking up on you – marriage, kids, etc., – each progressive step on the march towards the event has this ability to make it all get more and more real as you see things and realize things you probably already knew, but didn’t really *know* know. If you follow me. Seeing the hospital where we will first meet our daughter, seeing the very rooms where she will be delivered, filled us both with a strange mix of excitement, anxiety, and – well – intimidation.

Next step: baby classes.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few of my favorite pictures from that perfect night two years ago. If you were there with us, I thank you for helping to make it the best night ever.

So it’s that time of year again. The time of year when everybody – even those of us (*cough*) that aren’t into American football (*cough, cough*) – get together to watch the Big Game, eat food, and drink alcohol.

This year the game actually falls one day before my 2 year wedding anniversary, February 7th. This year it falls on a Monday, so Amanda and I have no big plans. There’s also the little detail that Aruba (and a certain furry someone who hurt himself and had to go to kitty ER) have all but cleaned out my bank account at the moment. Instead, we’ll be celebrating our anniversary with the romantic activity of touring the hospital where our daughter will be born. That works, yeah?

Anyway, so, football, eating and stuff. Here’s a small collection of links from some of my favorite food writers (myself included, naturally), for some good vittles for this coming Sunday.

– Mushroom Pockets from MSCK

- Whipped Sweet Potatoes from The Confused Homemaker

- Spanakopita from Sasasunakku

- Peanut Butter and Bacon Jamwiches from Saint Tigerlily

- Texas Caviar from kara cooks

- Smoky Sweet Spicy Wings from Steamy Kitchen

- Teriyaki Chicken Wings from White on Rice Couple

– Adorable Little Football Shaped Oreo Truffles from Three Baking Sheets to the Wind

- Chocolate Chip Cookies from MSCK

If that’s not enough, then let me refer you to my friend Krysta over at evil chef mom, who has written up a great list of Super Bowl snacks from her blog.

As far as drinking goes – well, it’s sort of gotta be beer, right? Can I make a recommendation?

So cheers to you and yours, be safe this Super Bowl Sunday. May the best team (that doesn’t have Roethlisberger on it) win!

I had this really cool post planned out for today with a great meal that I was going to cook last night, but the weather had other plans.

Yesterday, starting at precisely 3:30pm, a snowstorm began pummeling the DC area. I know this because 3:30pm was exactly the time I picked up my wife from her office and started driving home, exactly the time most federal government employees were sent home, exactly the time the HOV lane on our drive home became closed to us, and exactly the time the light, drizzly, non-threatening rain turned into furious hail and then huge snowflakes.

Very quickly, our commute home from work became a disaster. The snow piled up faster than I have ever seen, and the amount of cars on the road to begin with made for a truly nasty situation. After about two hours, we had traveled less than half the way home and there was probably a good 3-4 inches of snow on the roads. This wouldn’t have been a problem for us in our new all-wheel drive CR-V, except for the fact that there were so many other cars on the road that couldn’t handle it. And given the fact that we were all moving no faster than 5mph at any given time, whenever there was the slightest upward slope the traffic would get hung up on it for a good 30-60 minutes or so. My favorite part was the idiots who felt the need to change lanes randomly and get stuck in the snow piles that had accumulated between the tire tracks.

We made it home in about 5 hours. FIVE HOURS. And that’s what should have been a 45 minute trip. Just about everyone I know seems to have been caught in it in the same way, with their commutes ranging anywhere from 2 or 3 hours, to upwards of 9 or 10. I’ve never seen a storm come on so fast and trap so many people. Cars were being abandoned everywhere. We used 3/4 tank of gas driving home over those five hours, and were on empty by the time we finally reached the gas station down the street from our house. I had been mentally preparing for the moment when I’d have to trudge out on my own and leave Amanda in the warm car to go buy a gas canister somewhere, but thankfully it didn’t come to that for us. I’m afraid it did come to that for many others though, and I know there had to be lots of people waking up this morning wondering where exactly it was they left their car.

Unfortunately, that’s not even the end of it. We got home after our five hour commute just short of 9pm, to find we had lost power at home. So instead of the meal I had planned, we instead had non-toasted bagels and cream cheese for dinner. And beer. And chocolate.

So we lit candles, played some board games, and got cozy. It would have been more relaxing and easier to appreciate the moment if our cats hadn’t been going totally stir crazy the entire time. And of course it’s just about impossible to come back from a 5 hour commute home. Losing interest in the games quickly, we settled on the couch and I started reading Neil Gaiman’s Stardust to my wife and prenatal daughter. She is developed enough now that she can actually hear me talking (the daughter, that is), and is very reactive if I start speaking or reading to her. She flips, rolls, kicks, generally doing whatever she can to react in some way or another. It’s cute. I plan to do more and more as time passes. The three of us shared the evening together in this way and passed out shortly thereafter.

It wasn’t until 11:30am this morning that we got our power back – everything restored *except* the internet. I spent about 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon FIOS trying to troubleshoot the issue until they gave up and said they have to send a technician. Who will be coming out on SUNDAY. Awesome.

Meanwhile, so much snow melted today on the main roads that both my office AND my wife’s office are open today. So not only did we have that mess to deal with yesterday but we’re forced to take PTO hours for not getting in to work today, meaning we’ll ultimately have less time to take for maternity/paternity leave. Which is why we’re both now camped out at the Starbucks instead of at home actually enjoying the snowfall.

So don’t get me wrong, I love snow. I love snowstorms. I love being trapped at home and digging out. But this is officially the worst and suckiest storm ever. Ever.

In other sucky news, the US did not medal in the Bocuse d’Or competition. We came in 10th. Our best performance remains 2009 when we placed 6th. The Scandinavians swept the medals, with Denmark taking gold, Sweden taking silver, and Norway taking bronze. They must know something I don’t know.

I did discover that A&E has been documenting the event, and will be broadcasting a four part series somewhere down the line. Don’t know when, but I’ll be sure to make a mention of it on my twitter feed or facebook page.

More info on the Bocuse d’Or can be found on Ruhlman’s blog, the All-Clad facebook page, the links on my last post, blah blah blah…

Yesterday, I posted on my Facebook page about the Bocuse d’Or – which, incidentally, starts today in Lyon, France.

I got no responses or interactions on the comment at all… not particularly surprising, for sure, but it’s motivated me to write a few words about the famous (in most places outside the US, anyway) competition. In a culture where reality show food challenges are de rigeur, it’s a bit of a shame how little awareness there is about some of the larger scale competitions that happen in the greater international world of cuisine. Of course I am no different myself, having only learned about stuff like this recently through some of Michael Ruhlman’s novels – and not through some general overall worldliness and amazingly endless cultural knowledge. I’m still working on that.

Occurring every other year in France, the Bocuse d’Or is a world chef championship. Started in 1987 by Chef Paul Bocuse, it is generally thought of as one of the most prestigious chef competitions in the world. The unofficial culinary olympics. Yes, it’s like that.

Unfortunately, there’s not much for television coverage of this event here in the states. Which is to say – there’s none at all. Never having placed within the top three nations (we took 6th in 2009), it’s undeniably stiff competition for the US team. It generally passes by without much fanfare around these parts.

But there’s definitely more attention from the US this year than ever before. The Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation is making a huge effort towards a good show in the 2011 competition. With Chefs Daniel Boulud and Thomas Keller helming the effort, they put together a council to select the chef team to compete on behalf of the USA. This council included such famous names as Grant Achatz, David Chang, Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, André Soltner, Jacques Pepin, Charlie Trotter, Jean-Gorges Vongerichten, and many more. In short, we’re talking créme de la créme here. The selected chef team trained for three months in a special facility built at Keller’s French Laundry, where they had full access to his kitchen, farm, housing, and a paid sabbatical from their own jobs.

The honor has fallen to Chef James Kent, of Eleven Madison Park in NYC. Each chef competes with a commis, or chef assistant, which will be Kent’s Sous Chef from Eleven Madison Park, Chef Tom Allan.

The competition consists of two dishes: one meat and one fish, and lasts over a period of two days. The chefs can not prepare any food before the competition, with only a few small exceptions: you can peel garlic, measure out oils, flours, powders, and you may bring your own prepared stock. The scoring is based on many factors – technique, taste, style, presentation, lack of waste, etc. There are 24 competing countries this year, from all over the world.

I would love more than anything to see some kind of televised or documentary form coverage of a culinary event of this scale, but I’m afraid that – at least for now – I will have to rely on the written word after the fact. In the meantime, I hope I’ve managed to grab at least a little of your interest, and I leave you in the hands of those who have written better and with more knowledge on the topic:

Grant Achatz: A Real Life Iron Chef Tells It All

Michael Ruhlman: Bocuse d’Or 2011

Eater.com on the Bocuse d’Or

And some other related links:

Bocuse d’Or 2011 Official Site

Bocuse d’Or USA Foundation

Bocuse d’Or Wikipedia Entry

So now that I’ve had a few days back home again, I’ve had some time to get through my photos and – sadly – re-adjust to life back at home. Cold weather (but no beautiful snow), work, “the grind,” etc., etc. But let’s forget about all that for now and spend some time re-living our wonderful long weekend getaway.

This trip was something I had been conceptualizing since just about the beginning of the pregnancy. I had no idea there was a hip, trendy name for what we were doing until Amanda told me so. I just figured it would be a great time to make an escape. Amanda actually didn’t even know about it until Christmas – I gave her a copy of our itinerary on Christmas morning along with a maternity bathing suit and some other beach wear. She opened the gift and saw the swimsuit, then read the paper in silence. And her first words of response were…

“What the hell?”

After explaining that yes, it’s true, what she was looking at was actually real, I let her know that I had also already sorted out her days off from work for her and that the trip had been entirely paid for already and we wouldn’t see any of it hit our shared credit cards or anything. So there was truly nothing to worry about, we just had to go and enjoy it.

Two weeks later and we’re packing the night before. The day before our departure, two major snowstorms hit the east coast and caused all kinds of air travel issues – but thankfully we only ran into a slight delay on one of our connections. No major problems. It’s actually not so bad traveling with a pregnant woman – even though Amanda didn’t want to, I made sure we got all the advantages we could to make it as easy as possible on her: pre-boarding flights, trading for aisle seats, getting a ride in the beeping trolley through the airport terminals. It wasn’t so bad, really. The normal inescapable air travel rudeness was at least slightly alleviated by the sight of a woman with a belly.

We arrived in the evening and ate our first meal at Pincho’s – a restaurant on a pier out on the water.

A word about the food in Aruba. The restaurants are generally a step above typical resort food but it is *very* expensive in most places that are worthwhile. For what you pay there for a moderately decent meal you could be eating at a top of the line restaurant here in DC, or even NYC. So it’s a bit of a let down when you see the prices on the menu and then get served food that definitely doesn’t meet that price. Unfortunately though, that’s been my experience to date in most of the Caribbean.

Still – the atmosphere is pretty hard to beat. That’s what you’re really paying for, so it’s best just to keep that in mind. I did have some pretty good local seafood though.

We also ate at the Flying Fishbone where you can dine right by the water in the sand, which is a bit further south from Oranjestad in a town called Savaneta…

… as well as a bit further north at Simply Fish, where the tables are actually up front on the beach and actually in the surf.

We stayed at the Marriott Renaissance, which is in downtown Oranjestad – the capital of Aruba. It had no beach front, but instead a boat that came into the lobby every 15 minutes to ferry you out to a private island that was only open to people who stayed at the resort.

This was great because it meant that the island was pretty much all ours, all the time. There was very little in the way of crowds in Oranjestad in the middle of January, almost surprisingly so. We had a crowded day on Saturday, when there were three huge cruise ships lined up in the marina, but other than that it was pretty empty. Oh, and that private island? It looked like this…

Okay, so we didn’t have the island *entirely* to ourselves.. we had to share it with a bunch of the local fauna, too.

I took one of my favorite pictures ever while we were out on Renaissance Island on the second to last day there. This is Amanda at 24 weeks…

I love that.

So that about wraps it up. Five days in the sun of just about nothing but beach and dining. One of my favorite things about Aruba is that even if you *wanted* to go do things, there’s really not that much to do. There are watersports, sure, and some hiking and a little bit of sightseeing but the island is pretty tiny, so you couldn’t spend much time doing all that even if you wanted to. I tend to be a bit of a busybody on vacations (and in life in general, really) – so sometimes I need to be forced to relax.. and this makes Aruba a pretty good destination for me. It was a very refreshing trip, and we are coming back re-charged and ready to take on the third trimester.

Speaking of which, one more thing I forgot to mention… our daughter’s name. This name is a fairly common boy’s name now, but it’s much more rare for girls, even though it’s actually gender neutral (think like Kelly is gender neutral). The spelling is also a traditional spelling but is less common than the typical one.

It’s Irish for “Little Fire.”

Amanda and I just got back from a little extended weekend getaway to Aruba. It was a fantastic trip, we had a great time, and it was the perfect refresher for us after the holidays and gearing up to start the 3rd trimester – we are at week 24 right now.

I have a bunch of great photos to share and stories to tell about the trip, but we didn’t get home until about 2am last night thanks to the snow and ice (welcome home, huh?) – and I’ve got nearly 500 images to sort through. So for now you’ll just have to be patient and maybe daydream about it a little, if you’re so inclined.

More to come on Thursday.

Over the holidays, my brother and his family from Hawai’i came to visit with us for a little over a week or so. You may remember a little from this post that I have one older brother, Matthew, who lives in Maryland with a wife, Margaux, and two kids (Anna and Peter) and another older, older brother Sean, who lives in Hawai’i with his wife Lurana, and two twin girls – Ruby and Teia.

Recently I’d been hearing snippets here and there about some kitchen adventures and activities that Lurana had been able to get her kids to participate in – at least with a small degree of success – so I thought I would embrace that as their Christmas gift and see if I couldn’t do something to encourage it.

So we got them some personalized chef’s gear.

They’re still working on the whole idea that the rolling pin is NOT a weapon.

It took a little while to bring some focus to the whole endeavor (I had to compete with the marble rollaway toy pictured in the background of the first two pictures, and if you’ve ever played with one of those you know that is some stiff competition), but once we got going the girls were great.

To try out the new gear, we decided to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies and a batch of coconut macaroons.

The most common question… can we taste the cookie dough yet?

Anna helped out too, she was just as involved as the others.

The coconut macaroons were really awesome but the yield was pretty low (like 10 cookies). I’d suggest at least doubling the recipe to make it even worth making because they will definitely go fast.

Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 18-20 minutes

Ingredients…

- 1 cup shredded coconut
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/8 tsp cream of tartar
- 1 egg white

1. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees fahrenheit.

2. Separate the egg yolk from the egg white, reserve the yolk and try to find another use for it.

I was pretty impressed here… Teia had no fear of working with the egg and was happy to volunteer to separate out the white.

Okay, next step…

3. Add the egg white and cream of tartar in a medium sized bowl.

4. Beat with an electric mixer (you can do it by hand if you want, too) until the whites are fluffy and peaked. Gradually add the sugar. Almost done…

5. Bake in the oven for 18-20 minutes or until the flakes are just turning golden brown. The kitchen will smell fantastic as the coconut toasts.

Me: “So, Ruby, you know now that you have your chef’s hat and apron and cookbook, you can make these cookies at home any time you want.”

Ruby: “What! No, we can’t.”

Me: “Of course you can – you know how to do it now.”

Ruby: “But they won’t ever be good. They won’t be as good as these cookies now.”

Me: “Sure they will, why wouldn’t they be?”

Ruby: “Well … cause… we won’t have an expert there to make them with us.”

<3

Just over a year ago, a close friend of mine started up a nice, cozy little spot on the internet for herself by the name of Three Baking Sheets to the Wind. In doing so, Ali – the author of TBSTTW – found an outlet for writing about her passions in baking and craft beer, and unknowingly set the wheels in motion that ultimately led to me creating this site and starting my own writing here.

I didn’t really ever used to read blogs. Maybe once in a blue moon I might stumble onto an article I liked, randomly, but I was pretty oblivious to what was out there. And I was pretty oblivious to the effort that so many people were putting in all over the internet to create some really amazing material that is far from bounded by any one particular theme or topic. When Ali started writing, and I witnessed what she was doing, a light bulb went on over my head.

I had always had a passion for cooking, and not just for cooking but for food in general – food knowledge, just about anything related to it. And as a student of philosophy, I always enjoyed writing. But I never had much of an outlet for either in my adult life, apart from the cooking done in my own kitchen and the occasional rant on some obscure forum. Watching Ali launch her blog, and her subsequent writing, it was immediately clear that this was exactly the kind of outlet I had been (subconsciously) looking for, though I may never have seen it myself without being shown.

I launched right into it without much forethought whatsoever. In some ways, I do regret that a bit – I could have been a little more prepared. But it felt like a mission then. It took me about 5-6 weeks to get all my shit together, and then My So-Called Knife was launched. We’ve spent the past year now doing this thing, and having her there to bounce ideas off of, benchmark, and commiserate with has been extremely helpful. I have learned so much.

My wife and I have known Ali and her husband for 6-7 years now and we’ve all had the pleasure to grow through several different stages of our lives as friends. I’m thankful for that time in the past and optimistic for more in the future. We have a number of shared readers of both our blogs – which is awesome – but if you haven’t yet had the chance to check out Three Baking Sheets to the Wind, there’s no better time than the present. Ali’s writing is funny, sarcastic, informative, nostalgic, and there’s no questioning that she knows her way around an oven.

Happy 1st Birthday, Three Baking Sheets.

The wife and I took a little road trip over the New Year’s weekend – we drove up to Pittsburgh with her parents and younger brother for the NHL Winter Classic. Though we’re not particularly huge hockey fans generally speaking, the Winter Classic is a big deal, played outdoors in a football stadium on New Year’s Day, and the Caps were in the game this year facing off against rivals the Pittsburgh Penguins. Her parents, Caps season ticket holders themselves, invited us along for the weekend, so we were happy to accept.

Plus it gave us a chance to break in our new baby-mobile, a used CR-V that we picked up a couple weeks ago in early December. After being crammed into a two-door Accord for the past ten years, it was a welcome change and a very nice ride.

We drove up on Friday (about 4-5 hours from Northern VA) afternoon. Amanda and I had been left with the responsibility of selecting a restaurant for NYE dinner – an honor, certainly, and not a complaint – so I had done some previous research. We found a spot in the Pittsburgh suburbs called Hyeholde Restaurant and it was amazing. The venue of the restaurant was an old castle that was built by a groom for his bride in 1931. The castle was built with his own hands and took 7 years to complete, and in 1938 the couple hosted their first meal there.

The NYE tasting menu was really wonderful. I can’t account for everyone’s meal, but I indulged in…

- Demitasse of chicken and duck consommé with wild rice and pomegranate seeds
- Kumomoto oysters
- Intermezzo of pomegranate and orange sherbet
- Cervena elk with red and green cabbage and potato galette
- Pomegranate, beet, and blood orange salad
- Egg nog bread pudding

The meal was paired with a fantastic bottle of Malbec and completed with a glass of Laphroaig 18 year single malt.

My biggest comment about the whole meal was – WOW, elk! All the dishes were tasty, but the main blew me away. It was my first time eating elk and it most certainly won’t be my last. I have been anxious to try it sometime for awhile now – especially since I have easy access to it any time through my Arganica connection. But I was reluctant to try it in my own kitchen first, especially with Amanda being a bit averse to meat in general lately on account of the pregnancy. Really though, this elk steak was as good as any filet mignon I’ve ever had. Better. Really, so impressive. Amanda liked it, too. I’m a believer.

We had a quiet, nice, classy NYE and rang it in together there at the restaurant. Which is really all we wanted anyway.

The next day was the day of the Classic. It had been raining all morning and what was to be a 1pm faceoff was delayed to 8pm. So we went downtown to hang out near the stadium and just bum around for a bit.

The Winter Classic was a lot of fun. 68,000 people there, Caps and Penguins fans swarming all over Pittsburgh. Lots of friendly and not-so-friendly competitive jabbing everywhere you turned. Plenty of language overheard that I will soon by working to eliminate from my vocabulary. But in the end, the Caps delivered the big win at 3-1 final score.

Thanks to Bill and Terri for the great little weekend getaway. I’m pretty sure the baby girl had a good time, too. A Caps fan in the making? … I’m sure nothing would make them happier.

She’s gotten quite hard to hide these days. 18 weeks left.

Happy New Year to all!