Holiday Gifts & Gift Baskets Blog

Posts Tagged ‘Valentine Dinner’

So, you’ve decided to make dinner for your sweetie this Valentine’s Day. Great idea! But if you’ve never really cooked before and are not exactly a pro in the kitchen, you may wonder where to start. Here are some ideas to get you cooking.

First, don’t attempt something so incredibly hard that even a five star chef would be sweating over it. Go with simple and elegant. If you want to make something really nice, go with steak. If your sweetheart is a vegetarian, opt for a nice pasta dish or lobster tails. You don’t have to make several courses. Just one nice main meal and a dessert is more than enough to show you really care.

Choose your menu based on the fresh ingredients you can get. If you can buy fresh lobster tails, go ahead. But just be aware that popular Valentine’s Day foods like lobster, good steaks, and other succulent treats like shrimp are going to be more expensive as demand increases around the holiday.

Another way to go is to mail order the food. You can either order it frozen, as with lobster or steak. Or you can order it already fully cooked and then just warm everything up and serve it. If you have never taken on an entire meal preparation yourself in your life, a great way to impress your date is to have it all brought in. Just transfer the food over to serving dishes once it’s heated and present it nicely. Whether or not you tell where you got it is up to you.

Many mail order companies will deliver right to your door an entire gourmet meal. Choose from rich chowders and soups, fillet Mignon, roast duck and more. You name it and it can be sent out to you in dry ice in time for the big day. Have it delivered to arrive the day before you need it so you won’t be biting your fingernails wondering if it’s going to make it to you on time.

Serve a nice wine with dinner. If you don’t know how to pick a good wine, ask your friendly neighborhood wine merchant. He or she can suggest the best wines for the meal you are serving. And don’t feel like you have to go ultra expensive. You can buy a decent wine now for a good price and still enjoy every drop.

The fact that you are cooking dinner for your loved one is enough of a treat in and of itself. But make it more special by lighting candles, using the best china and silverware you have, using a linen tablecloth and cloth napkins, and serving the food from your best dishes.

Start off your adults only night by playing some romantic music in the background to set the tone of the evening. Have any disruptive pets calmly partitioned off in the other room if they’re likely to snatch your expensive dinner off your plates. Make it as uninterrupted an evening as possible so you can enjoy yourselves to the fullest.

Turn off cell phones and make it a night for conversation. Watch a romantic movie or two and see where the evening takes you. Chances are you will have a Valentine’s Day to remember.

If you have some cooking skills, a candlelit dinner is a great surprise and one that your sweetheart is sure to appreciate. For a memorable night, make something that you know your significant other really likes. You can even create a theme around the type of food they like.  If it's seafood they love, you could add accents to the table with decorative beach candles, real seashells and maybe some ocean sound CD's playing in the background.  Other theme ideas could be:

- Mexican Food - Accent with rich orange, yellow, red and green colors.  Terra Cotta pots could hold fresh flowers.  Use Chili Peppers to accent your dinner table.

- Asian Food - Cherry Blossom Accents add a romantic touch to your dinner.

- Italian Food - Grape vines set a mood for your Italian dinner.  Wine and Cheese are also a great choice.  Play authentic Italian music in the background.

If you're not the best cook, you could always order take-out and sill serve it on your table for 2.

For dessert anything heart-shaped will do!  How about a heart-shaped cheese cake? Our two pound cheese cake says "Happy Valentine's Day on top and is garnished with a Red Marzipan Rose. The Chocolate fudge and Raspberry Swirl cheesecake features a chocolate cookie crust, while the NY style has a classic graham cracker crust.