Valentine's Day 2013

This is an incredibly belated post and hopefully I didn't forget too much!

I got awfully excited about Valentine's Day this year. It felt like the first year that Callie was really going to "get it" ! And boy did she ! Some of my favorite memories are of waking up on Valentine's Day, walking to my spot at the table and seeing heart shaped pancakes and a heart shaped box filled with goodies. It seems like such a small thing but it was an amazing feeling. I'm not even sure if my mom knew what those little holiday moments meant to me, but I'm pretty sure she does now! That feeling is what I want for my daughters. To know that I put forth the effort to start their day with something special. Anyway, here is what I did this year.


I had been scouring pinterest for weeks planning events, games, food, etc for Callie until I dumbly realized she would be at school that day. So that left food for the most part. When she woke up I wished her an enthusiastic valentine's day (even though the night before had been pretty gnarly with multiple wake ups by both girls). Her smile was worth it:) Before she got up I had cut strawberries into heart shapes (not terribly hard given their original shape, and even easier with a fondant cutter) and made pancakes into hearts as well. I use this pancake mold from norpro. Word to the wise, even though it says it is nonstick, spray that sucker with pam anyway. This whole pancake is kind of a big deal for me. I can cook a great many things, even some pretty complicated things but pancakes had always foiled me. In fact, I pretty much avoided making them until Callie came along loving the damn things. So I have gotten a lot better! So, thanks kid! Plus, I have learned that Lucia freaking loves pancakes too! So I'm doomed to a life of saturday mornings glued to the griddle. There are worse things right?

I also made Callie a strawberry smoothie. Very easy, a pint of strawberries, a cup of yogurt (I used greek nonfat), 1 tablespoon of honey and half a banana. It did turn out a bit thick so I might add some juice next time. I put it in a special valentine's cup I found at safeway of all places.

Then it was time to take Callie to school, but first I attempted to get a picture of the girls together. It proved quite difficult as Lucia has been under the weather and wanted mama. Getting her to sit or stand next to Callie was definitely a challenge!
Then Callie was off to school with her valentine goodies. The teachers had requested healthy snacks or small toys like stickers or pencils, that sort of thing. We opted for popcorn, stickers and bubbles. They assembled everyone's goodies into special bags with the names on it with hearts.
I spent the rest of the day prepping for our dinner. I also picked up Callie early from school and we went for a nice hike at Rancho.

The plan for dinner was tomato bread soup with heart shaped grilled cheese. My heart shaped cookie cutter got quite a workout!

And some bubbly for mama:) 

I also experimented (successfully) with an eggless mousse. I wanted eggless so that Lucia could have some too.  Although she ended up filling up on grilled cheese so I guess I could have done a more traditional mousse, but oh well!
But it came out beautifully! Here is my recipe


Strawberry Mascarpone Ricotta Mousse
1 cup whipping cream
8 ounces mascarpone
16 oz ricotta cheese
1 pint strawberries
zest of 1 meyer lemon
Whip your cream in your mixer until stiff peaks form. Put aside in another bowl. Mix ricotta, mascarpone, 1/2 cup sugar and lemon zest. Throw your strawberries in your blender and make a puree. Add to ricotta mixture. Then fold in your whipped cream. Put in your serving dish of choice. I used some martini glasses for us. Refrigerate for several hours.

See? Easy! And so good. It was like strawberry cheesecake in a bowl!

I topped them with puff pastry hearts. Again, easy. Thaw some frozen puff pastry dough for an hour. Get out that heart cookie cutter again! Callie loved helping with this one. A friend sent me this recipe and thank god she did, because I was planning on something much more complicated! Actually my original idea was to put the strawberry mousse in between the layers of puff pastry  hearts but the mousse recipe made so much it seemed silly! In retrospect, I might just do a bunch of hearts and put the mousse in there.

I also printed out some pdf pages for Callie to color while I got everything ready. This one with elephants and the eiffel tower was fun but of course, Dora won the big prize with Callie:)