A homemade Valentine's Day

Matt and I had a 2 part Valentine's Day. On Saturday night we went out for soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai in Flushing. We got to sit next to the fish tank.. VIP, no big deal. Actually, I was pretty excited and our waiter came over right as I was greeting the fish. He laughed at me.

If you've never been to Joe's it might be a little confusing at first. You'll have to decide what kind of soup dumplings you want because you'll need to know before you even take your coat off to sit down. Once the soup dumplings arrive it's time to figure out how to eat them. Matt taught me how to do it, but if no one in your group knows, just look around to see what everyone else in the restaurant is doing! Soup dumplings are delicious.

On the real Valentine's Day we made a delicious dinner in Matt's apartment and I made up this little Valentine Kit that I found on DesignSponge. It was fun to put together and came out pretty cute. We used the contents to decorate the table.

Dinner was really, really good. We used my friend Katie's recipe as a starter, then made some tweaks based on what we had and the facts that I'm not mature enough for anchovies and am in love with Rigatoni.

I'm already halfway through the amazing chocolate that Matt got for me. As soon as I opened it I ate one of the chocolate covered pretzels so quickly that I didn't even notice there was peanut butter inside. I'm a chocolate fiend. I love Valentine's Day. I mean, any holiday that involves food and chocolate are fine by me.

It also helps that I have the sweetest boyfriend ever.