Valentine's Feast

We invited neighbors J & J over for Valentine's dinner yesterday. Actually, we invited a few of the other neighbor-couples over, but they had made plans for the weekend, so it was just the four of us for Valentine's Day dinner. I fussed with the table, just like I always did for our parties in Clear Lake, and the entire dining room looked like something out of a Victorian magazine. For just a couple of dollars, I had found a remnant of red glittery fabric and that became the stage for beaded-heart Mardi Gras necklaces, votive candles in red goblets, heart-shaped candies, pink and ivory china, and elaborate place cards that took hours to make but were so worth the time. I had the food set up on the kitchen counter so we all helped ourselves, buffet style, and when J walked into the dining room she just stood there for a few minutes looking at the dining room table and said she'd never seen anything like it before.

The food...... for four people, we had a feast. I had cooked beef ribs (that we had in the freezer from Joe's BBQ in Alvin), cornbread (which I cut into heart shapes), zucchini quiche, tiny rolls stuffed with cheese and chopped-up mussels in pesto. J & J walked in the door with a tray of steamed salmon, baked sweet potatoes, fresh bread from their bread machine, a huge bowl of fresh fruit salad, and huge strawberries with a bowl of chocolate for melting & dipping the strawberries. We all agreed that we could have invited four other couples for dinner and had more than enough food to go around.

We ended up splitting the dishes that we had left.... so J & J went home with half of what I had cooked, and they left half of what they had brought with us. The big strawberries they brought were delicious, and we melted the chocolate in the microwave and then decided we needed to have a fondue party one of these weekends. I have two fondue pots and lots of extra fondue forks, so we can invite more of the neighbors and just tell them to bring things for dipping into either cheese or chocolate fondue.

Yesterday's weather was a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. At noon-time yesterday, it was so warm and sunny that my husband and I had a light lunch out on the porch, sitting in the sun. (The good.) It was heaven.... and we thought we had turned this horrible weather-corner that we've been having. By 4:00, the wind kicked up and the sky got dark. (The bad.) I ran outside and called the chickens and they followed me into the coop and I locked the gate. I'm sure they thought I was crazy because they don't usually go in the coop that early, but the sky just looked so hard and awful. By 5:30, just about the time J & J got here, the wind was just awful, howling like a horror movie. (The ugly.) J & J were getting blown sideways trying to get from the driveway to our back door without the platters they were holding being blown out into the pastures. What happened to the beautiful Spring day we started out with?!

This morning, the sun is out, the wind has died down, but it's still a bit breezy and still a bit colder than it needs to be. Mardi Gras has begun! We're officially into Spring here! And Spring means warm weather that builds up slowly into the heat of summer so that by the time April gets here you're wondering how Spring disappeared so quickly without anyone noticing that Summer had bloomed in a heart-beat.

This state is ready for Summer. We can all just by-pass Spring this year and get right into the heat of April, May, June, July, August, September, and October. And I swear, I will never never never never complain about a hot day ever again. This has been the worst winter.