Monday, February 22, 2010

Blini and Bonuses make me happy


Since my family was visiting us this past week, Mike and I decided to wait until Saturday to celebrate Valentine's Day. We do the same thing every year, get the kids to bed, open a bottle of champagne, and have caviar and blini. It's much more fun than going out in the cold for an overpriced dinner.

Mike does a great deal of driving for his job, he averages 900 miles a week. So when the weekend comes, I try to avoid work talk, which is pretty much unavoidable. Although this past Friday ended on a great note, we found out what our tax refund is going to be, and Mike is finally getting a decent bonus for all his hard work. And because of that, Mike said he wanted to get a new TV for the living room, and I can finally get......a Garmin!!! So if anyone has any suggestions for me as I start shopping for one, let me know.

Now back to our meal, Mike went to Wegman's for the caviar, and brought home some other surprises. We started off with brie stuffed dates, with a drizzle of balsamic syrup. They were very rich, I could only eat one. Mike uses Ina Garten's recipe for blini, they always come out great, he made a shamrock shaped one just for kicks. I love caviar, and we paired it with creme fraiche, which I could eat like ice cream. We also had a few king crab legs, they were so sweet that you didn't even need butter. Of course there was chocolate for dessert, I ate them before I took a picture (big surprise), they were the perfect portion, about the size of a tall shot glass. We shared one in chocolate, the other coffee. Well, I kind of shared.


Here is the recipe for the blini, the recipe calls for a stick of butter, but you can get away with using a 1/4 of a stick:

1/3 cup buckwheat flour
2/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons milk
1 extra large egg
1 stick of clarified butter *we didn't clarify it this time, and only used 1/4 stick

Combine flours, baking powder and salt.
In a separate bowl, whisk the egg, milk and 1 tablespoon butter. Then whisk into flour.
Heat a tablespoon of butter in a saute pan, when hot, drop batter in the skillet, one tablespoon at a time.
Once bubbles form at the top of the blini (about 2 minutes), flip over and cook one more minute. Wipe the pan down with a paper towel, and repeat the process.

Top with whatever you like, Ina pairs them with smoked salmon and creme fraiche in her Barefoot in Paris Cookbook, one of my faves.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ina Garten is the best!!! But your hubby sounds better. What a beautiful way to celebrate Valentine's Day...makes me long for the dinner and champagne...

Congratulations on your good news!

Pining for Pinterest said...

That is great news about the refund and bonus!! YAY for the Garmin :-) I am still using my friends. I just do not want to spend the money right now :( The pictures of the food look amazing!!

Julie said...

Hi Molly
Cheers to great Valentine's dinners and wonderful husbands!!! The food looks awesome! You can keep posting great recipes...I love it and am writing them down:)

Oh boy, Molly gets a Garmin!!! I have the 305 and I love it:) I hope that you have an excellent week!!

J said...

I don't know which Garmin you want but this weekend I saw one for 224.99 at EMS. It was the smaller one, that comes in green. I like that one cause its not as bulky lol.

I love wegmans!

Unknown said...

You will love your Garmin!! I have the green 405 if you want to take a look. It's still a bit bulky, but way smaller than the 305.

Sounds like a great V-Day!!

Lisa said...

Congratulations on all the good news! I like your way of celebrating Valentine's Day. We like to play it low key, too.

ajh said...

I have the 405 and like it very much. I can't compare it to any other though.

Brad said...

Sounds like a wonderful belated Valentines meal. Nice to kick back relax and eat some elegant food sometimes.

Susan Fobes said...

I have never tried caviar and never heard of blini but I am intrigued...

I love our Garmin! We finally broke down and bought one after last year after getting lost coming from a meet. (Let's just say that my sister-in-law has one, got to the meet to watch my daughter, then made it to our house before we did and she lives 5 hours away!) Ours is the Garmin nuvi 760 with 4 inch touch screen, bluetooth for actually pairing with your cell, a memory function that helps you find where you parked your car, and you can look up ammenitues. We use it every time we travel.

NY Wolve said...

Ahh, the Garmin. I reflexively bought the 405 because it is sleeker and cooler looking. I have had quite a lot of experience with it, and I will say I love the data. The device, well lets just say it has some kinks to work out. If I was not concerned with fashion sense (which I realize now is basically irrelevant when I run), I would seriously, seriously consider the 305 or 310 or whatever they call it now. Yes, it is bulkier, but it has buttons and not the touch dial. (If you go to my blog and follow the tags to posts tagged Garmin, I posted my rant about my 405 about a year ago.)

Whatever choice you make, I heartily recommend the heart rate option. It will change your training. I was a huge holdout on heart rate training, but now I cant imagine doing without it.

And Happy Valentine's Day!

Nicole @ Chic and Cheap Nursery said...

Sound like you had a yummy belated Valentine's celebration!

Cheers!

www.thewannabewahm.com

austin-sara.blogspot.com said...

stopping by from SITS hi :)

Melissa said...

I just bought caviar for the first time last week. Had no clue what to look for. I bought the one that said no artificial coloring added. Stopping by from SITS to say Hi!

sophia said...

Wow, that's impressive. I've never had good caviar before...It sounds absolutely luscious...but I've got my eye on that brie-stuffed date!!! Whoa!