Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

It’s been quite the celebratory week for us, with Dan’s birthday, Fat Tuesday and Valentine’s Day all occurring within a few days of each other.  And you know if we are celebrating, there is good food involved.  We started with an amazing birthday-eve dinner at our favorite Dallas restaurant, Lucia (where it’s too dark this time of year to take any decent flash-free photos, sorry.)  Although everything we’ve ever had at Lucia has been really good, we have to insist that if you ever go there and the veal “breast” is on the menu, you have to get it.  Best. Veal. Ever.  The next day, we had a proper birthday brunch sitting on a patio with mimosas, eggs benedict for me and a burger topped with a fried egg for the birthday boy.

It’s a good thing that birthdays only happen once per year, since fried game hen (and/or chicken) has become the go-to birthday dinner favorite for both of us.  Its un-healthiness only makes it that much more of a special treat.

Fat Tuesday had us thinking about New Orleans and wishing for a trip there, so we settled for the next best thing and put on a big pot of New Orleans-style shrimp and sausage gumbo.  It’s not a quick recipe (and we learned a few things this time around and updated the original post accordingly), but it satisfied our craving (at least until we can get to the Big Easy for the real thing.)

We celebrated Valentine’s Day this year with many of our great loves:  each other; lobster & pasta in a silky, spicy tomato sauce; an episode of Downton Abbey and two episodes of Homeland.  Pretty much a perfect evening.