Anniversary Gluttony

We tend to put more emphasis on our dating anniversary. To me, it's a better landmark of when our lives and destinies became bound together and seems somewhat more significant than the day we signed a piece of paper to make legal what was by then already a reality. Of course it's also that we've grown accustomed to celebrating this day, and to not do so would seem almost a denial of how significant this day is in our relationship.

We're almost to double digits here (next year will be the big 10), and we went all out at home with the food to celebrate. Two gigantic ribeye steaks, a healthy portion of buttery boiled potatoes, and our favorite salad (inspired by one of our favorite local restaurants, Girasole). The cooking can largely be attributed to Michael.

The steaks were a beautiful medium-rare to medium, tender, juicy, and well-seasoned. The salad is composed of baby greens, chickpeas (canned), cherry tomatoes, sunflower seeds, Gorgonzola crumbles (not enough to taste it per se, but very important for the salad's flavor to come together), and a balsamic vinaigrette. If you're wondering, neither of us finished our plates. Almost, but we both threw in the towel with a bit of steak and some potatoes left on the plate.




A glass of red sparkling wine purchased at the Food Tasting in March accompanied our meal. Made me really tipsy, as wine tends to do.




Once we recovered from dinner, we set about to make dessert. I'll take more credit for this one, hehe. Vanilla bean ice cream, situated over a warm brownie. Topped with Nutella ganache and fresh blackberries. The Nutella ganache is really easy: just heat some heavy cream to just bubbling, then pour over a similar volume of Nutella in a bowl and stir until the mixture smooths out and becomes a thick luxurious sauce. Best thing about this sauce: it doesn't seize up on ice cream like Nutella alone does! Don't be fooled by the modest drizzling of sauce over the ice cream in the staged photo above--after this shot was taken, literally the rest of the sauce (about 2/3 cup total) was poured over the bowl and devoured with the ice cream.

Here's to year 10!