Valentine's Day....

I had a great Valentine's Day and hope everyone had a great day (wether you celebrate it with a significant other, friends, etc. or even not at all). I received a package from my Dad and flowers from Mr. Crafts4others.

Mr. Crafts4others and I went out for breakfast and then later on cooked dinner together. Normally, I do the cooking by myself as I love to cook. We made two new recipes and besides a few tweaks on some of the ingredients, we will definitely have it again.

I didn't get a very good picture of the side dish, which was cauliflower, onions, garlic, shredded parmesan, thyme, olive oil, salt and pepper. We accidentally put the parmesan on too early, we were supposed to cook everything and then towards the end add it. We used a whole mini package of fresh thyme, but we couldn't taste the flavor at all. Next time we plan on not adding the thyme at all, less olive oil, and making sure the cauliflower and onion pieces are bigger.

The chicken breast (we had two fairly good size breasts and I cut it into 4 pieces) we baked had olive oil, minced garlic, crushed dried rosemary, salt and parmesan. It also was supposed to have chives but we didn't have any on hand. It was really easy to get too much olive oil on the chicken, as per the recipe it says to add all the spices together with the oil. Next time I will just brush the olive oil on both sides and then sprinkle on the spices. The parmesan then only goes on the top. 

We have leftover chicken so we will see how it tastes.

Huntington Library

While in California we couldn't bypass the Huntington Library which we spent several hours visiting. This is the type of place though with various buildings and ten different gardens you need several days to see. While your a book lover (at one time this family had the largest book collection in the United States), art, or gardening there will be something to love. The had rare editions on display from Charles Dickens, Canterbury Tales, Gutenberg Bible, Shakespeare, etc. In order to preserve the books though we couldn't take pictures but at least you can enjoy a few that I took of the gardens and flowers.