I know Valentine’s Day was a while ago now, but we’ve been so busy with birthdays and other events that I’m only just getting around to writing it up! Slacking, sorry! Anyway we had such a fun time that it definitely deserved an exclusive blog post, and this time I get to take the credit!

As you will probably know by now, Char is most certainly the creative one in this relationship, and comes up with the best ideas…last years Valentine’s being no exception! You might remember she whisked me off to ‘New York’, all from the comfort of our own home (Take a look at our ‘Homemade Manhattan’ blog post here!), and she pulled out all the stops, so of course this year I had to seriously up my game! I thought to myself, she might have given me New York, but I was going to give her the whole world! Ok, so the around the world theme might have actually been Chars idea…see, I told you she comes up with the best ideas! But she didn’t know what I had planned, and I was determined to give her a Valentine’s to remember!

My first job was to design the menu, and this is where I definitely come into my own. I’m the cook in this house, and if there’s anything I know how to plan well, it’s food! I’ve never been to one of those fancy restaurants, you know the ones that serve up 6 or 7 courses, but I’ve always loved the idea so I decided we ourselves would have 8 courses (because there were just too many countries with yummy food to choose from). I know this seems like a lot of food, but I figured I’d do very tiny portions, like canapé size so we could fit it all in, although to be honest I didn’t really see us having any real issues in this department! Here was what my menu was going to consist of….India – Chicken Korma, pilau rice and mini poppadums, China – Satay chicken, Singapore noodles and prawn crackers, Japan – Katsu curry with sticky coconut rice (had to stick this in here as Love me a Wagamamas!) Italy – Pizza, Spain – Chorizo & sautéed potato tapas, Mexico – Mini quesadillas and tacos with Doritos and dip, USA – Cheeseburger slider and France – Crème Brûlée.

The next thing to sort was props, and luckily for me Chars Mum has contacts in the fancy dress industry, so all I needed to do was give her the list of countries, and voila, She managed to get her hands on a huge array of full costumes and photo booth props, which was so much better than I could have imagined! I also made signs for the evening, bought a map of the world table cloth, and included some obligatory heart decorations and crackers to add a bit of extra cheese to the whole thing.

We chose to celebrate on the Friday night, despite Valentine’s being on the Thursday, as I had work early the next day and didn’t want to feel like everything had to be rushed, this way we could really take our time to enjoy each course.

I spent the day prepping everything, which took a while, but I was finally ready. The room looked great, and I couldn’t wait to surprise Char!

Well her face was a picture when she first saw the room. I put on music from our first country of India, and handed her an outfit with instructions to get changed while I prepped the first course, and obviously had to do a quick change myself! Then it was time for me to serve, and for us to present ourselves to each other…and this was the part of the evening where we started laughing, and did not actually stop until the very end. It was absolutely hilarious, I was stood there with a gold turban on my head and wrapped in a saree, and Char was sat waiting at the table in bright pink harem trousers and a cardboard cutout head piece. It was brilliant, for every country we absolutely looked the part, we had music to set the atmosphere, and the food for each country was cooked to perfection, even if I do say so myself!

Yes, I know the ‘N’s’ are around the wrong way, I was cutting them out back to front and you would not believe how difficult this actually is! Ok, probably not that difficult but I didn’t have enough maps printed to change it!

The funniest parts of the evening were when we didn’t have full costumes, but instead had only props, so we had to improvise with what we had upstairs, and this literally had us crying with laughter! At one point Char came down the stairs dressed as a Spaniard who looked like he was about to take part in bull fighting, it was hilarious!

By the end of the 8th course we were absolutely stuffed. We’d started the evening around 6.30pm and finished about 10.30pm, and had literally been laughing and eating the entire time! It wasn’t so much romantic, but more belly laughing fun, and we couldn’t have asked for anything more. We are cheesy and romantic together constantly throughout the year and don’t need a specific day to show how much we love each other, but instead we took the opportunity to have a laugh and enjoy being silly in each other’s company, and we both had simply the best time!

I would definitely encourage anyone to do this for a fun date night in, or for a special occasion. It’s definitely all about keeping things lighthearted and fun, as well as staying romantic to keep the magic alive.

“Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before” ~ Dalai Lama

Much Love,

2 Birds 1 Love

Xxx