Saturday, November 1, 2014

Day 1 #NaBloPoMo: Date Night 2.0

OMG, I almost didn't make the posting deadline on the FIRST DAY.

WTH?

Do you know how embarrassing that is?

It's hard to post under pressure!

It's a Saturday night, so Mr. KK and I had one of our Date Nights.

Our Date Nights are pretty special. There are always cocktails, either music or games (ahem, Scrabble champion right here, thank you very much), and – of course – a fabulous dinner.

Now that we're a month into parenthood, we've adjusted to what our new date nights have become. We still have them, they're just…slightly different.

First, we have to time date night between feedings and naps. 

It sounds something like this:

"So if he eats at 8pm, then we keep him upright for a half hour after, then put him down to sleep, and we have to preheat the oven which takes about a half hour, then it should take about an hour for the roast to cook, then it needs to rest, that puts us eating around 9:15pm. Which gives us an hour to eat, clean up and get ready for the next time he eats. Forget starting a movie! We don't have the luxury of time or attention span! We'll just watch cable!"

Tonight's date night started out with a dirty martini for me (blue cheese stuffed olives, thank you very much) and a Manhattan for the hubs. 




After two sips of my martini Mr. Max was fidgety and wanted to be held. After two more sips he wanted to be rocked and to hear my rendition of Philip Philips' "Home". That put him right to sleep, and we went back to our dinner.

Tonight's Date Night Menu:

Roasted Pork Rib Roast with a garlic and rosemary crust
Brussels Sprouts and bacon (cooked in bacon fat, of course)

 brussels sprouts always get a bad wrap! 
I made these by browning about 6 strips of bacon and removing them, 
leaving about a TBSP of the fat. I cooked down an entire stalk of sprouts, 
continuously deglazing the pan with chicken stock. 
After 20 minutes I added the bacon back in. PERFECTION!



the best thing we ever purchased was an electronic thermometer 
that you can put outside your stove and set to an internal temperature. 
We have had perfect roasts every time every since. Tonight was no exception. 


the finished product. Amazing.
(and Max slept through our entire dinner!)


this was tonight's wine. It was something we purchased on a whim on our way out of the liquor store. One of those "hey this looks good and it got a good rating and the price is amazing" type of purchases. It was delicious, and perfect with the pork.

**NOTE: see that back splash behind the wine? That's our homemade cork back splash. We collected corks FOREVER to make it. Some of them are written on and say things like, "Rob's Birthday!" or "Promotion at work!" or even "Mom and Dad anniversary!". Needless to say, it was built with love, and we included coasters from our honeymoon in Napa Valley.

So bring it on, New Date Night. We're ready. And so is Max.

Max during tonight's Date Night.
He's the quiet type.

No comments:

Post a Comment