Valentine's Day

This year Ethan and I decided to stay in for Valentine's Day. Although there are plenty of places to go out to eat at in Rexburg, nothing caught our fancy on this specific Monday. Ethan suggested just making a quiet dinnner in for just the two of us. We decided on seafood, our favorite. He bought crab, salmon, fettuccine alfredo pasta and broccoli. I added salads and french bread dipped in oil. We had so much food we could hardly eat half of what we made. This time it was easy to cook in quantity because we bought everything in bulk. To start, we had to figure out how much time it would take for each item to cook so that it would all be done around the same time. Ethan and I like to figure things out on our own and just kind of wing it until it looks right. I mixed up the marinade for the salmon while Ethan boiled the crab in a big pot. We added a pinch of salt to the boiling water and let the crab sit until the outside shell was a vibrant red. Then we put it in the oven on a temperature around 230 so that it would keep it warm and still bake it slowly while we worked on cooking everything else. Next we added olive oil to the pan to cook the salmon in. Ethan poured the marinade I made onto one side and cooked the salmon until it turned from dark pink to light pink. He then flipped it over, poured the marinade on the other side and cooked it again until it was all light pink. He checked the middle to make sure there was no more dark pink left in the salmon. While the salmon was going, we boiled noodles in hot water until they were soft and then added some cut up broccoli to cook and soften it as well. Neither of us really kept track of the time, we just went based off of the fact that both the noodles and the broccoli were soft and cooked all the way through. We strained it and added our alfredo sauce. At this point, all three of the major food courses were about done so I cut up the french bread, poured oil and spices into dipping bowls, and melted butter and cut fresh lemons for our crab and salmon. On a side note, I did make small salads but with everything we made, neither of us wanted to waste our stomach space on salad. It was put away just as fast as it took me to make them up. I rinsed off lettuce, chopped tomatoes, carrots, and croutons/bacon bits were optional with any choice of dressing. Everything turned out just as we wanted it to. Aside from being delicious, it provided us with left overs for the next two days. The only improvement we decided on was with the salmon. The next time we are mixing up a marinade we are going to bake the salmon instead and see how it turns out then.

The gentleman working at the grocery store gave me the
 following marinade recipe:
1 cupe of butter
1/4c lemon juice
1/8c soy sauce
Dice 2 green onions

French bread dip: Dean Jacob's bread dip seasonings
1 Teaspoon of seasoning with 2 Tablespoons of oilve oil
let stand to increase flavor (ratio can change- to taste)


Our table presentation: After you prepare a meal, it makes it more appealing when it is presentable on the table. Since it was Valentin'es Day I had fun making it festive for the holiday. I had Ethan's roses that he had bought me earlier, placed in the middle of the table, two tall candles, and small red and pink candies sprinkled around. I had nice (matching) glass dishes to put everything in and a bottle of sparkling cider off to the side. I got lucky using a combination of people's dishes to make everything match because not everyone has a full set of dinerwear in college.

Estimated Cooking Time: 1hr 30 min