Valentine's Day!

Ash and I had a lovely Valentine's Day! She received a new coffee maker, some candy, and she's getting an ipod nano with watch attachment! I received an ipod touch, lucky bamboo shaped like hearts, a panda, a beautiful card that Ash drew herself, two wooden owls, and an owl that she made!!! She is so awesome!
We went to an apartment party, where we ate a little chocolate, and Ash won a Cheddar's gift card! And I made a special dinner. Bowtie pasta (Ash's favorite) with pink sauce (it's just regular smooth tomato sauce--I used Ragu--and Alfredo sauce--I used Walmart's brand--mixed together), grilled chicken, and fresh grated parmesan cheese. The key to really making it tasty is the fresh grated parmesan! With a side of garlic bread.

(As a side note, I love bread! I usually have a regular loaf on hand, but I also like to have fancy breads like sourdough, sandwich rolls, garlic bread, croissants, etc. While these can be a little expensive, I always shop the bargain rack. Lots of times, the store bakery will overbake, or they'll have extras that are about to expire, so they'll slash the price by half or more!)

Finally, I made an...interesting...dessert. It was based on this recipe for Red Velvet Cookie Balls from Kraft. They're ok. Ash likes them a lot, but I think they're just o.k. And, they definitely don't deserve to be called Red Velvet. I call them oreo candy balls. Here's how I made them:
ingredients:
-one package of cream cheese
-one package each of golden oreos and regular oreos *I used regular stuffed, but I would recommend using double stuff oreos. Really, you can use any kind of oreos you want!
-one package of baker's chocolate

1. put about ten to twelve golden oreos in a plastic bag, use a canned food and crush up the cookies in the bag. I used a combination of smashing, rolling, and banging. The more crushed up the cookies are, the better. Do the same thing with a bag of regular oreos and a mixed bag with five or six regular oreos and five or six golden oreos.

2. split the cream cheese up into thirds. Mix together one bag of oreos with one third of the cream cheese. Mix, mix, mix. You'll probably also wind up crushing the oreos a little more as you mix, and that's ok.

3. once it's all mixed up, make little balls out of the mixtures. My balls were between the size of a bouncy ball and a ping pong ball. The recipe said it'd make about 48 balls. I wound up with about 20.

4. put the balls in the freezer for a little while so they can firm up.

5. Open up all the chocolate. Chop it up into small bits. Put it in a bowl, and warm it up in the microwave for 30 seconds at a time, stirring between each heating session until it's smooth and creamy. Don't burn it!

6. Drop the balls into the chocolate, swirl them around to get them covered, take them out and put them back on the cold plate that you just got out of the freezer. Quickly add some sprinkles, and you're done! A few helpful tips for this part: I put three balls in the chocolate at a time. If you wait too long to add sprinkles, it won't work because they won't stick to the chocolate. Also, we stored our extras in the freezer for a nice cool treat on this 75-degree February day!