A Vegan Valentine’s Day

I hope everyone had a beautiful Valentine’s Day this year, whether celebrated with a partner or with friends or quite frankly all by yourself. This year we celebrated Valentine’s Day on February 13th instead of 14th because I scheduled an appointment get my two upper wisdom teeth out on the 14th, just incase I needed the whole extended President’s Day weekend to recover.

Austin and I aren’t big on gifting to each other on the holidays, but we are big on Vegan Treats. It’s our favorite vegan bakery and they actually made all the desserts we served at our wedding. For the past several years I’ve been wanting to buy their Fatally Yours Valentine’s Day chocolates box, but we hadn’t pulled the trigger on it because there is a bit of a hefty price tag that goes along with it. This year I finally talked Austin into it and the chocolate arrived on February 13th which was perfect timing. We’ve been sharing the box, having one of two of the chocolates a day. So far my favorite is the one stuffed with red velvet, but I still have a few to try. 

To celebrate our early Valentine’s Day we had a romantic dinner at Great Sage in Clarksville, MD which is maybe about 40 minutes from our house. Its not much different than driving down to the Baltimore, our usually culinary destination. On both the 13th and 14th they were hosting a Valentine’s Pre-Fixe Dinner of 4 courses and some bubbly at the end of the meal.

The first course was focaccia bruschetta with sweet chili-jam, herbed macadamia ricotta, beets, and arugula. Honestly, I could have eaten 10 of those and been a happy camper, but I had 2 and I have no doubts that all that bread is what lead me on the journey to growing my food baby.

The second course was a tomato soup with pesto croutons and a baby kale salad with a breaded Miyoko’s mozzarella ball. The soup was tangy and the perfect accompaniment to the crunchy croutons. The salad, yall, with that cheese ball, was over the top. I know most people don’t find salad exciting but the whole thing just worked on every level imaginable.

Our third course, which is pictured above, was risotto with mushrooms, asparagus, and a sun-dried tomato pesto. Everything was delicious except for the sun-dried tomato pesto. I am the biggest fan of all kinds of pesto but this really just felt like it didn’t belong with the dish. It was unnecessary. The mushrooms were really the star of this dish for me, perfect rendered down into a savory, hardy bite.

Dessert, which I’m still dreaming about, was a raspberry chocolate mousse and possibly the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth. The chocolate a raspberry paired harmoniously into a decadent experience so rich that we had to take it to go and even then I had to break it into a few separate treat sessions. Even more perfect was the rosé served with dessert that drove the flavor pairing over the top.

And then we came home and laid on the couched in a food coma. lol Joke’s aside it was an amazing Valentine’s Day for me and the hubs. I’m glad we got to try the chocolates and the delicious pre-fixe dinner.