02-14-10 Valentine's Surprise!

Today was Valentines Day. Normally, Curtis and I don't do much for this holiday. My birthday is also exactly one week later so, Valentine's day was always kind of the precursor to my birthday. Also, Valetine's Day seems kind of forced and I prefer people do something nice for those that they love without being forced by a special day to do it. Generally speaking, my boyfriends usually couldn't really afford to go all out for Valentine's AND my birthday since they are so close together, not to mention it was often tough for one or both of us to get both days off of work (when you are in the hospitality industry, that can be tough) so, I often had to make a decision- Valentine's or My Birthday? Well, as I mentioned, Valentine's feels forced to me and also was a day that EVERYONE went out for and my birthday was just my birthday. So, I usually chose my birthday and so, most of my Valentine's Days when I was with someone were low key events which was just fine. When I was single, it didn't much matter at all. I also hate dealing with over crowded restaurants and masses of people all trying to prove how in love they are. I tend to avoid crowds whenever possible. So, yeah, it's never been a really big thing. Usually Curtis and I exchange cards and call it a day and I am just fine with that. :) So, when he told me he had a surprise for me this year, I was surprised by that fact alone. It also made me suspicious. But I kind of thought that he was just trying to do something nice for me because I'd had such a rough couple of weeks and he wanted to make me happy. Because he's awesome like that.

However, Curtis told me over a week ago that he had a surprise for me for Valentine's Day. I love him and think he is wonderful but, I don't know why he does this. It drives me crazy knowing that there is something secret going on and so as soon as you tell me that you have a surprise for me, I start trying to figure out what it is. One or two days of this is fine. Over a week and I actually start to get cranky about it. Some people might call this ungrateful. But the way my mind works it is just mean to tease me this way. Curtis calls it funny. I call it mean. ;-)

In any case, my first guess as to my surprise was that he was taking me to one of our favorite places, Capone's for dinner. He wouldn't confirm or deny this. But the more I guessed other things the more he confused me. Eventually, I gave up trying to figure it out but I still knew that it was going to involve dinner because I was not to eat the dinner at my sister in law's house which is where we were meeting before we headed out to have some King Cake that my mom had brought back from New Orleans.

So, Curtis had to work that day and I had a matinee show. My parents came to the show and that was nice. They had a good time.



Then we went to my brother and sister in law's house to have the King Cake. Curtis met us there and from there we headed out to my "Valentines Surprise"! So we got changed into some fancy going out clothes and we set off. Curtis took the long way to dinner to throw me off a bit more but in the end, we ended up at Capone's! I was really excited about this because it had been a year and a half since we had been there and they have really good food and the owner Dino is nice and always remembers Curtis (even if he doesn't remember me) and so, it was nice to finally be able to be there.

On Valentine's Day, Capones has a set menu. You have three choices for appetizers, two choices of salads and three choices for an entree and then you can have any of their desserts for dessert. All their food is wonderful, but because of my mostly vegetarianism my choices were somewhat limited. But that is okay at Capones because, as I said, it's ALL good. For appetizers Curtis had mussels and I had some mushrooms in a garlic cream sauce baked with bread crumbs on top. We both decided that my appetizer was better than his even though his mussels were good. The sauce on my mushrooms was perfection. I dipped some of their fresh baked and delicious bread into the sauce too. Then we both had an Italian style salad that they call "The Romeo Salad" it was so good. They have a great vinaigrette there and the salad had lettuce, kalamata olives, celery and red onions in it. It was quite good. Then for the main course Curtis had Lobster Ravioli and I not eating Lobster or Lamb Chops went with the chicken in a lemon butter sauce. It came with carrots and asparagus. The vegetables were quite good. The chicken was also good but being that I don't eat a lot of chicken and also am not especially into "picatta style" sauces like the one it was in, it was just "okay" to me. I could tell that if you liked picatta you would LOVE this chicken. But it just wasn't quite my favorite kind of food and it was really, really rich to me. So, I didn't eat much of it. Curtis really loves it so I got it boxed up for him and I finished off the bread by dipping it in the "vodka sauce" that his ravioli came in. Mmmmmm. In the end I was full and happy. But we still had dessert to go. I got a chocolate mousse cake and Curtis got one of their amazing cannolis. Both were amazingly good. But I kind of wished I'd gotten the cannoli too. The cannolis are just so good there. It's okay. Curtis let me have a few bites of his. :)


There was also a singer there providing entertainment. Her name is Kathy and her website is www.kathybee.com if you wanna check her out. She did a wonderful job and she even invited Curtis to sing with her a bit. For his efforts we got a free cd of hers! As it turns out she is also a red hat lady. My mom is a red hatter so that was kind of neat.

After that we chatted with Dino a bit more and then we called it a night. We got home just in time to see the last bits of Olympic coverage of the pairs ice skating.


All in all, it was a lovely Valentine's Day! I am very lucky to have such a wonderful boyfriend who took the time to surprise me with something he knew I would love. I love him so much!