A Comfortable Romantic Holiday

It’s Valentine’s Day. As I moved about the kitchen this morning doing food prep for later today, I smiled thinking about the difference in married love, and how it is almost impossible for all those young lovers out there to meet the high expectations of what we see in the movies and on TV.

This has been a very busy week after a very busy weekend, and I neglected to plan ahead for our Valentine’s Day menu. Our plans don’t include going out for a romantic dinner prepared by some chef in a restaurant in a crowded restaurant. With flu season in full swing, a nice evening at home sounds perfect. But, again, I didn’t plan ahead.

So today I’m winging it. I have all the ingredients on hand to make steak fajitas for dinner, full of sautéed red and yellow peppers and onions, with a side of garden salad. Good, the main course was decided.

Next was dessert. Hmm. Sugar cookies … I could make iced heart-shaped sugar cookies with red sanded sugar sprinkled on top. Been there, done that, but there was no sugar cookie mix in the baking cabinet. I could make them from scratch but then thought about what was available that would be faster.

Chocolate is the language of love, right? A quick check of the fridge showed we had plenty of low-fat milk so I could make the from-scratch chocolate pudding that Mr. Mitchell loves so much. So it was decided. Chocolate pudding, it would be.

What made me smile, though, was a little later when I spied the four bananas on the counter that were almost too ripe. One more day and they were going to be ready for the trash. A quick re-think and the chocolate pudding, food of love, got ditched for banana bread.

If Mr. Mitchell and I were young and dating, if we were newly in love, I would have felt that only the chocolate pudding would have made perfection. No, forget that — we would feel the pressure to go out for dinner, and we did plenty of those when we were young and before kids. But because we are the comfortable old married couple, I knew he would be perfectly okay with banana bread especially since he’s lived with me long enough to know my frugality. Why waste four perfectly-good-for-banana-bread bananas?

Ah, married life. It’s romantic in a different way. In a comfortable way. And I like it that way.

As I type, the smell of banana bread wafts through the air and down the hallway. Later the house will fill with the smell of sautéed onions, then peppers.

I have the table set with the red tablecloth covered with a lacy white tablecloth. That counts for romance, right? Oh, and the beautiful bouquet of flowers Bill sent for my birthday five days ago for a centerpiece.

Truth of the matter is we will probably eat in the living room on the coffee table in front of the TV watching the Olympics. In both of our books, that’s a romantic evening.

I hope your Valentine’s Day is as romantic, and comfortable, as ours.

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