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Valentine's Day - Part II


Our Valentine's Day continues.  Who says you only need celebrate once? When you have so much love to spread, sometimes it takes a couple days to spread it. So, we continued our celebration last night at my sister's house. My brother-in-law hosted a fabulous dinner for friends and all us ladies were pampered by letting the men do the work.   However, my sister did do the beautifully set table. 


Jim did a similar dinner for us last year that I wrote about here.  After last year's fun, I was really looking forward to another evening of pampering. Like Barbara's table setting skills, I contributed a small bit by bringing my leftover Valentine cookies.  I wrapped up five little bags of cookies to give everyone coming to the dinner.


I had some leftover cookie dough so I made a few more cookies with a new cookie cutter I got but haven't ever used. It's a cookie cutter where you can change out the letters to make your own custom message on the cookie. I can't remember where I got it but you can order the same set I have on Amazon here.  It came with a little bag of letters, several of each letter, and you slide them into slots in the cookie cutter for your message.  The hard part was doing it all backwards so it was a mirror-image of what you wanted to say. 


I messed up a few times noticing after I cut the cookie dough and had to re-do the lettering...but they came out really nice after I got the hang of it. For Jim's cookies, I wrote "Thank you Jim".


There were four couples coming to the dinner party so I wrote each couple's names on the cookies and put them in bags.


The cookies were a nice touch to add to the party but not nearly as much work as all the guys did for us. They provided all the appetizers, drinks and served all us ladies.  



Jim made an incredible dinner of jambalaya from a recipe he used from The Barefoot Contessa.


It was sooooooo good!  He first served an appetizer of guacamole, crab, and shrimp to keep with the Southern theme to start us off. There was also some dipping tortilla chips and a little salsa to soak up. A great appetizer to start with!


Next, came the salad with roquefort dressing that was served with our main course.


He also provided a dessert that he called "modified banana's foster" that was sliced banana with ice cream and caramel sauce. Delicious! And some homemade chocolate chip cookies.


It was a superb evening and lots of fun. Valentine's Day is so easy to love. It's almost as much fun spreading the love as it is to receive the love. I like making all the little Valentine foods, making heart shape edibles and decorating with red and pink but I also love  eing the recipient.  Being pampered on Valentine's Day is one thing I'll look forward to all year.  How about you?    

Happy Valentine's Day




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