Valentine’s day feast

When I thought about what Jackie and I might do for Valentine’s day, the idea of going out to a restaurant didn’t appeal. Fixing her something special seemed like a better idea. After pondering for a while, I came up with a plan for a collaborative feast, which seemed even better.

A bit of history: Just a few days after we started dating, Jackie said that she was tired and thought she’d go home early and spend an evening resting. I didn’t want risk letting her get away, so I proposed that she could come home with me and take a nap, and that I’d prepare dinner while she slept.

She was dubious but agreeable, and that’s what we did.

I don’t really remember what I fixed. Mainly what I remember is that Jackie was astonished—and remarked on it more than once to other women—that I actually succeeded in producing a meal entirely on my own: “I just slept!” she said. Which always seemed odd to me, because I’d been a bachelor for close to ten years at that point; it didn’t seem so remarkable to me that I could manage to cook a meal.

As best I’ve been able to reconstruct what I must have served, I think it would have been Rock Cornish game hens with Uncle Ben’s wild rice on the side. They were both staple items that I kept in my kitchen. The hens were purchased frozen, and could be quickly thawed in the microwave. Uncle Ben’s was also something I often had a box of on hand.

So, for Valentine’s day, I thought we’d recreate that meal, with some adjustments for the way our eating has evolved over the years.

I searched on the web for some recipes that were supposed to be like Uncle Ben’s, then used them as a model to create a recipe that I thought would be as much like the original as I’d actually want to eat. (I call it Uncle Phil’s long grain and wild rice.) We went to the grocery store and bought a rock Cornish game hen. (We got a fresh one, rather than frozen; because it was larger, we just ate one rather than two.)

Jackie made us salads. (I don’t remember, but I probably served salads that first time as well. I was eating a lot of salads right then.) She also made stuffing for the bird. (I’m pretty sure I didn’t stuff the birds that first time. I didn’t know how to make my own stuffing, and not having store-bought stuffing on hand is probably why I served Uncle Ben’s as the starch course.)

I stuffed the bird and roasted it, prepared the rice, and made gravy.

It was a wonderful feast.

After we’d eaten our fill, we finished butchering the hen, then boiled up the carcass for soup.