Nov 23, 2010 9th Anniversary

It was our 9th year anniversary yesterday and it was a super great day. My first surprise was a dump of snow and I loved it. The second was:

Flowers from Kent. It's funny because they told him the roses were a yellowy gold. Well I don't know about you but they look peach colored to me! Either way they are beautiful. I love, love, love getting flowers. Then the 3rd surprise was a package from my sister I have been waiting forever for. In the package was lots of surprises. One of them was for me and she had made me some pillow shams to cover pillows on my couch.

Kent had made plans for the night and it was a surprise. I had found a babysitter. Just to preface, this is a big deal. Kent and I haven't been out on a real date with out Cooper since I think last Christmas. I think because we are too uptight about him and I am not really sure why else. We were a little nervous but Cooper loved having new faces to play with. He was really good, or at least that is what Juliet said.  

 Here is a picture of Cooper with Juliet and Victoria. They are sisters and both are rock solid, good, amazing people. We are super impressed with these two. They are in our branch and our institute class we teach.

So the 4th surprise was where we went for dinner. It wasn't in St. John's but in Portugal Cove. I had no idea where we were going but I love surprises so I just enjoyed the ride and wondered. The restaurant was at this up scale bed and breakfast called The Beach House Room and Suites. Inside they have one of THE best restaurants on the island and I was about to find out why. It was really nice inside and a lady took our jackets and showed us the our table. There were about 10-15 tables total. It was nicely decorated in my favorite style. . . Christmas!  

I don't know if you can really see much but the restaurant looks out on to Portugal Bay and if it isn't pitch black out, I am sure has a wonderful view. All we could really see was the Bell Island Ferry and the other side of the Bay that was lit up by street lights. But still very nice and it set a cool mood.

So we chose to do this thing on their menu where you have a 6 coarse taste meal. It can be different from the day before but the chief cooks up 6 different dishes that he feels good about that night and does them in smaller portions so you can eat them to have a taste of more than one thing. I was really excited about the experience. Might I also add that the menu had about 4 words on the entire thing that I knew what it was. It was really exotic and way over my head. I felt a little out of place but our server was great and for the first part of dinner we were the only ones there until a second couple came in.

So this was not part of the 6 course meal but all I am going to say is Holy Good! My mouth is watering just looking at it. It was some kind of thin sliced meat with all sorts of things on it, including goat cheese (my fav). He called it a "tongue pleaser", and he was right. It had about 5 different flavours all at once and each one complimented the other perfectly. It made me wonder how it is that people can come up with such amazing things.

The next was a beat salad. Can I just say I had no idea there was more than one kind of beat but apparently there is. This was also very exquisite.

 As you can see the next plate has nothing on it. That is because I forgot to take a picture before I ate it up. Tasty is not even a good word to describe it. It was a high end meat that I had never heard of before cut so thin it tore like wet paper. It had some nuts, cheese and greens with it but my favorite part was a drizzle of balsamic vinegar with a 7 spice and herb Japanese blend that was a little hot. It was divine. Once again an explosion of flavours all working together lovingly in my mouth.

I wish he would have written down what all of these were called for us. It would take him about a minute or 3 to tell us what the dish was, what was in it and then answer our questions about it after. This was called something like water and land meet. To the bottom right of the plate is duck liver ( I loved the taste but I couldn't handle the texture). To the top left was cod cheeks over pork belly and onions. The red stuff was a cranberry apple chutney. My favorite was the cod cheeks. Delicious. It was all really good.

 This dish was not so exotic and more close to flavours I am use to. It was stuffed pasta with mushrooms in a very light but extremely yummy sauce. As you can tell we kept forgetting to take pictures before we had eaten almost the entire dish.

 Next was duck over green beans and lentils with 2 different sauces. Once again I don't know how chiefs can come up with combinations that work so well. I have had lentils before and I swore I would never eat them again. This dish forced me to see the light that lentils are not the devil!

 Along with the 6 tasting dishes we ordered a tasting cheese platter. It wasn't only cheese but also candied roasted pecans, figs, honey and bread to got with the cheese. I liked all of the cheese except for the blue cheese in the top left corner. I am just not a blue cheese kind of gal.

 And the last coarse was dessert and it was wonderful. Nice and light, not overpowering. It reminded me of the Sydney Australia Opera house because of the shape of the cookie on top.

 Here we are. It is hard to believe it has been 9 years. A wonderful 9 years I must add. Life just keeps getting better.

 By the end of dinner we were both stuffed. I was surprised by this as I thought the portions were going to be so small we were going to leave hungry. We joked about hitting A&W on the way home during the first half of the meal. It took us about 2.5 hours for our meal and we had wonderful conversation in between the different dishes coming out. Kent said that this was a lot like how the French eat. It is much more slower paced and long stretches between each coarse. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. It was a memorable surprise.

The last surprise of the day was when we got home and I went to pay my babysitter, she refused payment and would not take money despite my protesting. We had every intention of paying her but she babysat not for the money but as a gift instead. I was touched as it was such a difficult thing for us to leave Cooper. 

Sorry for the snooze fest. This entry is more of a journal entry for me so I don't forget the little details. 

Luvs,

Domestic C.O.O.