A Life, Lived

Travel Tuesdays - Love

Dysfunctional Hearts

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was on Friday. With the weeks being so hectic we decided to have our dinner on Saturday. We decided to cut back this year - we have everything we need (and then some) so there was no need to go overboard on gifts. Instead, we had a nice meal, some good wine, and enjoyed each others company. . . Jake took it upon himself to misbehave but what would expect from the devil cat? :-)

We didn't go completely cold though - we had cards and some small chocolate treats but this was quite scaled back for us!

The first course was a crab and shrimp cake we bought at the market. They were served with a zippy Old Bay sauce.

The next course was a fennel and blood orange salad.

For the main course I had picked up some marinated pork tenderloins. They were served with potato and green onion rösti, and mixed roasted beets.

It is not Valentine's Day without chocolate so dessert went deep in that direction . . . chocolate devil's food cake with strawberry filling and a chocolate ganache icing.

(strange angle is because I had started digging in before I realized that I had neglected to take a pic! CRISIS

Everything was fabulous.

We certainly didn't miss the stack of gifts we have had in the past (well, I think the kittens did because they traditionally got to go silly as heck with the tissue paper and ribbon! LOL)

Happy Valentine's Day

Our Belated Valentine's Dinner

Valentine's Day feel during the week this year so we didn't do a whole lot on the 14th. In fact, had Paul not reminded em I might have forgotten completely. We had our celebration on Saturday.

People often ask if we go out to for a nice dinner.

The answer is definitely NOT. Valentines is the second worst day of the year to eat in a restaurant (the other being Mother's Day). The restaurant is super busy, the service likely rushed, and the food mediocre. . . even fabulous restaurants go down a notch or two as they race to move customers in and out.

Then there is the fact that we like to enjoy a drink or three and then I have to drive home.

All in all, a fancy dinner at home is the way to go.

I wasn't sure what we wanted so I went to the farmer's market in Hamilton to see what inspired me. After I was stocked up with yummy things I had to head to Grimsby where I had a case of sparkling wine on order to be picked up. On the way home I popped into a butcher shop for what was to become our main course.

Lots of yummy things.

After all of this racing around I needed a rest when I got home.

The afternoon was spent getting ready for dinner. I had bought some nice flowers for the table but Lucca and Jake thought of them as a salad - bits of flowers all through the house. So far we have found one spot in the entire house where they are unable to get at the flowers. Unfortunately, they are so high up that we can't really enjoy them either. Those kittens. SIGH

We relaxed when Paul got home from work. It was nice to not race around with showers and getting fancy to head out. Or is this a sign we have been together too long and the romance is gone? Personally a nice dinner while wearing seats and jeans is a lovely thing. LOL

The first course was duck confit ravioli with a white wine and mushroom sauce. No, I didn't make the ravioli - they came from a fine food shop in Dundas. I did make the sauce and I have to say it paired beautifully.

The sparkling riesling was a great pour to go with this first course.

For the main course we had a broccoli and cauliflower gratin, mashed potatoes, stuffed chicken breast with 4 peppercorn sauce and a spinach salad.

I didn't get a shot of dessert - likely because I was so full by then that I wasn't really interested. Don't get me wrong, it was delicious (lemon raspberry cake) but you reach a certain point of food overload where you do not appreciate things.

We sat in the family room and opened gifts.

The kittens sure appreciated the tissue paper!!!!

A wonderful, laid back, Valentine's Dinner - our 20th apparently.

People who had a Worse Valentine's Day than YOU!

From red and pink themed everything, to over-priced flowers and prix fixe, Valentine’s Day is a time when we are meant to feel loved. For many, however, Valentine’s Day is not just a conspicuously consumeristic Hallmark holiday, it is also a painful reminder of broken relationships, dashed dreams, and heartache. Being alone with one’s social media accounts on Valentine’s Day requires fortitude.

However, the broken-hearted can take solace in the knowledge that however bad their day is, others have had it much worse.

Elisha Gray

As everyone knows, Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. After all, there is a historic site devoted to him, a medal named in his honor, and a former telecommunications monopoly that operated using his name. Bell’s real accomplishment, however, was that he hired an excellent lawyer.

On February 14, 1876, a different inventor named Elisha Gray filed a patent for his own version of the telephone. Gray reached the patent office several hours before Bell’s lawyer arrived, and so should have received the patent, the credit, and the fame-filled legacy. Bell’s lawyer, however, was savvy enough to demand that Bell’s application and filing fee be processed immediately. Gray’s fee was left overnight and was only taken to the examiner the following morning.

 

The controversial incident is subject to no shortage of conspiracy theories. Malcolm Gladwell may call it “simultaneous invention,” but there are questions about intellectual property theft (with most historians arguing that that Bell stole a key element of his design from Gray’s patent application) and bribery (the patent examiner Zenas Wilbur claimed a decade later that he had taken a $100 bribe to show Gray’s design to Bell).  The situation however, was decidedly complicated, as much of the evidence emerged in a corporate struggle over the Bell Telephone Company. While some continue to assert that Bell stole the design for the telephone, Gray would not have been pipped to the post if he had hired a dogged intermediary to file his patent.

Captain Cook

The British navigator, explorer, cartographer, and harbinger of colonialism Captain James Cook met his end on this day in 1779. Best known for mapping New Zealand in detail, this former grocery-store apprentice turned naval captain died while trying to kidnap Kalaniʻōpuʻu, the ruling chief of Hawaii. Cook attempted to kidnap the chief in order to ransom him for a longboat that the British used to ferry goods to and from their boat the Resolution. The longboat, in turn, had been stolen because the British had taken, without permission, the wooden railing used to delineate the sacred burial ground used for high ranking individuals.

The attempted kidnapping was a disaster. At first Kalaniʻōpuʻu went willingly with Cook, believing that he was invited to visit the ship. One of his wives raised the alarm and, just as he was about to get into a waiting boat, Kalaniʻōpuʻu refused to proceed. He literally sat down in the sand. A crowd had already gathered and, with Cook shouting at the chief to get in the boat, others came to the chief’s defense. In the chaos Cook was stabbed, somewhat ironically, with an iron dagger he himself had traded to the native people. James Ledyard, one of Cook’s companions, blamed Cook for his own death when he reported that Cook had fired the first shot. William Bligh (who would later find fame as captain of the HMS Bounty) later claimed that he saw Cook’s body dragged up a hill and ripped to pieces. At least some remains were later returned to Cook’s cruiser and buried at sea.

Henry IV

In the Middle Ages kings regularly quarreled with popes about the balance of civic and celestial power. In some ways clashes between God’s representative on earth and God’s divinely chosen monarchs were somewhat inevitable. For Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany, the issue was the appointment of clerical officials. This had been a traditional right of the Holy Roman Emperor and a power that Henry’s own father had exercised. Pope Gregory VII, on the other hand, was having none of it, claiming that lay rulers did not have the power to appoint the clergy. The disagreement, commonly known as the Investiture Controversy, reached dramatic heights in 1076. Henry convened a meeting of German bishops and declared that Pope Gregory was deposed. Gregory, quite predictably, responded by excommunicating Henry on Valentine’s Day. This kicked off a series of uprisings in which Henry’s opponents crowned an anti-king (the first of many), and Henry helped install an anti-Pope known as Pope Clement III.

 

In the end, and after a succession of military excursions and rival kings, Henry IV was toppled by his own son and forced to resign his crown. Clement III, for his part, met a sticky end. Years after his death his remains were exhumed and thrown into the Tiber.

Members of the North Side Gang of Chicago

The rivalry between rivaling Chicago mobsters reached a head in the 1920s when Al Capone led the South Side Gang (more commonly known as The Chicago Outfit) and Bugs Moran – the man often credited with inventing the “drive by” shooting – ran the North Side Gang. In addition to competing with one another in the bootlegging business, staunchly Catholic Moran reportedly looked down on Capone for his involvement in prostitution. Moran’s predecessor had attempted to take out Capone and, for his part, Moran burned down Capone’s nightclubs and hijacked his trucks. The subsequent deaths of seven members of the North Side Crew has come to be known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and is widely believed to have been orchestrated by Al Capone.

On February 13, 1929, Moran received a call telling him that a truckload of whiskey had just arrived from Detroit. It was Prohibition-era Chicago and Moran was offered the whiskey at a good price. He arranged for the liquor to be delivered the following day at 10:30am. Posing as police officers, two assassins in uniform and two in plain clothes lined up seven members of the gang against a wall as if they were going to handcuff them. Then they gunned them down. As for Bugs himself, he wasn’t there either: he saw a police car and fled or he simply slept in that day.

St. Valentine

Then there is St. Valentine himself. One imagines that for the man himself this celebration of his holiness wasn’t the most enjoyable of his life. According to tradition, the patron saint of lovers went to his death on this day around 270 ce. The late antique story known as the Passion of Marius and Martha claims that Valentine was a priest who was imprisoned and beheaded by the Emperor Claudius II. Interestingly, the earliest references to Valentine never mention him in conjunction with love. As the Franciscan scholar Agostino Amore has argued, the record is unreliable. There are at least two candidates for St. Valentine and we know almost nothing about their lives or deaths. So, take heart: perhaps Valentine was not actually bludgeoned and beheaded on this day.

Happy Valentine's Day

I know that here are those out there who are cynical about Valentine's Day, complaining that it is a made up Hallmark holiday that has gotten out of hand. Truth be told, in our world of excess and commercialism EVERY holiday seems to have gotten out of hand but that is a different matter.

Valentine's day isn't all about roses, candy, and expensive dinners.

It has a historical background too. . . looooooonnnnnnggggg before Hallmark started writing cards telling people how they aught to be feeling.

Contrary to what some may believe, Valentine's Day wasn't created by greetings card companies just to sell cards and candies. It's actually a church sanctioned holiday, as Pope Gelasius deemed February 14 St. Valentine's Day near 498 A.D.

Shrouded in mystery, the exact origins of the celebration of St. Valentine are somewhat unclear, according to History.com. While the holiday's history is well documented through the years, the saint (or saints) it's named after is up in the air.

It's still unclear exactly who the celebrated saint of love really was, as the Catholic Church acknowledges 3 separate saints named Valentine or Valentinus. All of them were martyrs.

According to one legend, Valentine actually sent the first "valentine" greeting himself. While in prison, it is believed that Valentine fell in love with a young girl -- who may have been his jailor's daughter -- who visited him during his confinement. Before his death, it is alleged that he wrote her a letter, which he signed "From your Valentine," an expression that is still in use today.

The oldest know Valentine's poem in existence today was written by Charles, Duke of Orleans during his imprisonment in the Tower of London, following the Battle of Agincourt, according to History.com. The poem was written to his wife.

The holiday continued to gain tremendous popularity through the 17th and 18th centuries, but saw tremendous popularity in more recent times, with faster communication. It wasn't until the 1840s that Valentine's day cards began to be produced.

Our Valentine's Dinner

It's a bit late . . . I know. :-)

It was late even when we had it. Paul worked until 10 on the 14th so we ended up celebrating it on the 17th.

We started off with charcuterie and martinis in front of the fireplace.

Later we moved to the table for dinner.

We had leg of lamb, scalloped potatoes, and asparagus. Believe it or not - I was full at this point so I never ate my dinner.

I did save room for dessert though - mmmmmm cake!

We opened gifts - lots of treats bought in California.

The cats LOVED the tissue paper.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!