Happy Valentine's Day!

Well, even after five years of being in a relationship, I'm still not a big fan of Valentine's Day. Just hate all the marketing pressure, y'know. Still, I'm giving in enough to take TQ out for dinner. We're going to a local favorite, Mamma Lucia's - not as fancy as some of the Cortelyou Road places. I love those, but I'm not such a food snob that I can't relax and enjoy some good pasta at an unpretentious, old-fashioned northern Italian* red-sauce joint that's been around for a long long time. I'd asked to take him there for a welcome-to-Midwood dinner the weekend he moved to the neighborhood back in January (he's a ten-minute walk away now and I'm loving that) but he was so wiped out from the move that he had to cancel. He's taking that rain check tonight & that'll be nice.

And this Celtic heart knot is nice, too. Thanks to the Old Salt for sharing!

*Note - Hm. From the learn-something-new-every-day category - not surprisingly, a link on the Ditmas Park Blog led to a couple of mean comments from food snobs who not only can't relax & enjoy a red sauce joint, but can't handle it when somebody else can. One of 'em did have a point - I think they were being needlessly overbearing about it (love 'em or hate 'em, everybody in New York knows from "red-sauce joints", that's hardly some new coinage of mine), but at some point when I first moved to New York, I was acquainted with somebody who called them "Northern Italian red sauce joints" and so that's what I always thought the phrase was. Turns out that red sauce is more a southern thing (makes sense, of course, more southerly = warmer = more tomatoes, tomatoes like it warm, I grow tomatoes, so I know that!) while the northern Italians are bit more haute-y in their cuisine. #liveandlearn

As far as that other guy, I'm gonna borrow a phrase from a Hawai'ian friend:

Eh, Ainokea!!!! :D