valentine's day.

ah, valentine's day. this valentine's day consisted of a candlelight dinner, cuddling, and spending time with the boyfriend. last year we went out and rather than deal with the hassle of waiting in line to eat, we decided to make dinner at home instead. i've actually posted this dish before. it's one of the boyfriend's favorite and so that ended up being what we ate for dinner yesterday. :)



start off with olive oil, fresh rosemary, minced garlic, paprika, salt and pepper as a marinade for the chicken. stab the chicken a few times to let all that goodness soak in and let stand for about ten minutes in the fridge. afterwards, arrange the chicken in an oven-proof dish (or foil pan if you don't want to wash, lol), top with thin slices of butter and bake at a pre-heated oven for 45-55 minutes at 350 degrees. you can forgo the butter if you want, i usually do if i'm just making it as a everyday thing. yesterday, tho, was something special. :D



first things first, cut the potatoes and boil them in salted water. while the potatoes cook, prep the chicken and the brussels sprouts. when they're done cooking, you can let the potatoes sit in the hot water and do the brussels sprouts like i did, or you can do the mashed potatoes. for these, i mashed it, added pepper and garlic powder to taste, added some butter, added milk till i got the right consistency, then finished it off with some spring onions.


you should get something that looks like this. yummm.... when i did the mashed patatoes, i turned the burner on low so that the mashed potatoes could stay nice and hot. hate it when food gets cold. :(




brussels sprouts. these i did between putting the chicken in the oven and before the mashed potatoes. start off with prepping them and cutting them in half. then i tossed them with olive oil and sprinkled salt and pepper. put them face down on the pan, then tossed and roasted them until they got a nice little crispness to them. now set these babies aside.


in the same pan, poured in two parts balsamic vinaigrette dressing and one part honey, sprigs of rosemary, onion powder and paprika . brought to a boil and let it simmer until syrupy. took my brussels sprouts and made sure to evenly coat every single one of them with the glaze. if a few ended up in my mouth, that's a-okay! ;D and that's it!


and we had dessert! just something nice and simple. stewed some apples in cinnamon sugar butter then added a bit of spiced rum. mmm..... and how did we have it?


with cinnamon ice cream of course! this actually paired really well with ben and jerry's cinnamon buns ice cream. delicious! all in all, not too bad a dinner. no, what in the heck do i make today?!