Bacon, Be My Valentine?

mmmm, Bacon!
Originally uploaded by magpie-moon.

I had forgotten just how much the US loves its Hallmark Holidays so when I got back here, I was hit with the full force gale that was Valentine's Day.

Now I assure you that I'm not bitter and twisted about being single on February 14. That wasn't always the case though. I remember being at high school and over the course of the day, announcements would be made over the PA system summoning girls to the front office to collect their $5 roses sent to them from pimply kids from our brother school. At the time I was so envious and would ooh and aah along with the lucky girls about just how fortunate they were to have some hormone factory so obviously in love with them.

But as an adult, is it just me who thinks that the ladies who receive flowers at the office are in the minority? I don't actually know any couples who even acknowledge Valentine's Day, much less make a fuss of it. Maybe that's just a consequence of growing up, or maybe its a grizzled effort to stick it to the man and stubbornly refuse to subscribe to an overly commercialised excuse to jack up the price of flowers and sell cheap cards with lame messages. Maybe.

Ahem.

So yes, rather than debate the pros and cons of Valentine's Day yesterday, K and I just flat-out ignored it and instead invited P to join us for dinner. It was the first chance we'd had to cook a full meal in our new kitchen, plus I had wanted to roadtest the bacon-wrapped steaks that I'd recently bought.

I think most people worry about overcooking steak. I am quite the opposite. I couldn't quite manage to crisp up the bacon around the steaks; something that I think would have been much easier on a traditional BBQ. All the same, the bacon infused a delicious smokey flavour to the meat and kept the fillets nice and juicy. We served some vegetables alongside so that we could assure our mothers that were at least ingesting beneficial vitamins of some description. There are vitamins in sparkling shiraz too, right?

Dessert was a delicious affogato, using Haagen-Dasz vanilla bean ice cream with cold Baileys & hot espresso poured on top. We stopped counting vitamins at that point.

As far as February 14 celebrations go, it was a wonderful one. And just when you try and catch your breath after an overdose of paper lovehearts, soppy messages and cheap chocolates, the greeting card aisle is blasted in bright green as we move on to St Patrick's Day on March 17. Good grief!