Valentine's Day!

I love chocolate. I love milk chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, dark chocolate (yes, they are different) I even like bittersweet chocolate. I even have some very good, very expensive chocolate that was given to us almost two years ago from a friend that was visiting Belgium. A very wealthy friend, I should add. He sent it back to us in a huge box. It is a very, very, very large block of very, very good milk chocolate. I have it specially wrapped and stored in a special place. Did you know that if you wrap and keep chocolate correctly it has an almost unending shelf life?

If there were a fire in our house and all of my family were out, I would run back in for our photos and chocolate bar.

I love to cook. I love to entertain and cook for people. My friends know this about me. I love to cook and bake and plan pretty tables for my friends and family and well, just people in general. There are only a few things I love more than cooking and baking for friends.

It is Valentine's Day tomorrow! After everything my poor family has been through in the last year I am going to pour my heart out and make a special Valentine's dinner for them. We will dress up and use our good dishes and the silverware Ira and I got for wedding presents 11 years ago. I have been inspired from cooking shows over the weekend! I am going to make an entire dinner, 4 courses, using chocolate somewhere in the recipe, somehow, in each course.

I am starting off with an appetizer of salad with a chocolate dressing. That's right, you heard me. A chocolate vinaigrette dressing. It's tangy, sweet, and very delicious. Don't gross out on me, some of you like poppyseed dressings, or sweet vidalia onion dressing or even red wine vinaigrette dressings. They are tangy and sweet, kind of sweet and sour. Well this is along the same line. Ira and I had this dressing when we ate dinner at a Valentine's weekend package thingy at the Worthington Hotel many moons ago, before we had children. It was wonderful! This is a version that I came up with on my own after experimenting and it is really good.

Next, chocolate soup. Now, this is NOT a sweet and sour thing. This is just plain melted chocolate with milk, some cream and a spoon, ya'll! I got this idea from the new cooking show on the Food Network, Ham On The Street. It will be like having a dessert, but it will be a very small amount in a bowl, and warm and, and... Who cares? It's Valentine's, right? :^)

Main course, Chicken Spaghetti. Okay, here it is ya'll. My secret ingredient since I first heard of it on the Galloping Gourmet, remember that show? Cocoa powder. It isn't sweet, no sugar. But when you add it to a tomato based sauce... Magic! Something happens to the sauce, it gets richer, it does something to the red color, and makes it deeper, it's just savory and good, ya'll. It goes so well with tomato sauces it's insane. I put a teaspoon to a tablespoon of cocoa powder in anything I make with a tomato base or a tomato sauce in it. It really does give it something.

Dessert, what else? Chocolate dipped strawberries. I am going to use our own special, Belgian, high-in-everything, chocolate. Melt it and just let Ira and the kiddos dip.

To drink, we will have Ginger Ale in the champagne glasses with a frozen grape at the bottom.

The best part of it all is the only thing that I will have to actually go out and purchase for tomorrow's dinner are the strawberries and Ginger Ale!

Celebrate your loved ones!