Finding the perfect Valentine's Day menu with Foodily

romantic couple My husband, Paul, and I were comparing our calendars the other day trying to figure out when we could have Valentine’s Day dinner. Between the golf expo, our son’s birthday, the city bowling tournament, a couple of college basketball games, and the birthday party that our daughter is going to this weekend, there’s no time to get away. Of course, we’re free on Monday, the actual Valentine’s Day holiday, but we hate to go out when our favorite restaurants are packed.

A DIY Valentine’s Day dinner

So what to can we do, but plan a romantic Valentine’s Day meal at home? Sure, there’s the issue of what to do about the kids. Oh heck, they can have Healthy whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce while we nosh on a Valentine’s Day menu of:

Detect a seafood theme here? Luckily for me, shrimp, lobster and scallops are totally OK even with my food sensitivities. Sounds like I’ll have to pick up some lobster at the Asian market this weekend. And maybe a little saki, too.

For a side dish, I’d make roasted purple, gold or red potatoes. (I can’t have white potatoes, but the others are fine.) Or maybe some rice, because that’s all I eat these days – rice tortillas, brown rice cereal, and brown rice congee. A risotto could go well with lobster, too.

And since I can’t have sugar, milk or vanilla, most desserts like Julia Child’s Chocolate Mousse are out. I have made it with stevia instead of sugar and I Can’t Believe It’s Butter instead of butter. But there’s the issue of the cream. I’ve read you can chill coconut milk, skim off the cream and whip it like heavy cream, but that sounds kind of tricky.

Instead, I may make a chocolate mousse using tofu from a recipe in Clean Start: Inspiring You to Eat Clean and Live Well with 100 New Clean Food Recipes, the new cookbook by Terry Walters, the author of of the Clean Food: A Seasonal Guide to Eating Close to the Source with More Than 200 Recipes for a Healthy and Sustainable You. Pictures and recipes to come soon, I promise.

Share your Valentine’s Day and get featured on Foodily.com!

Don’t know what to make for your DIY Valentine’s Day menu? Foodily.com can help you figure it out. Even better, you can then let the folks at Foodily know what you’ll be planning and maybe they’ll feature it on their site.

Here’s how:

1. Go to Foodily.com and login with Facebook Connect. Or you can create a login account.

2. Play around with recipes and find your favorites to create your perfect Valentine’s Day meal!

3. Once you’ve selected a recipe save it to a menu:

From the recipe, select the “save” button, save it as an appetizer, main, etc. Then you’ll be asked to name your menu, so create a special Valentine’s menu title.
Continue adding recipes and saving to that menu

4. View your menu (either from tab at top or from your profile) and grab the URL (you can also share your menu on Facebook and grab the URL there). Note: the URL will look similar to this: http://foodily.com/m/1234.

5. Tweet the following and be sure to include the #foodilyvdaymenu hashtag at the end: Check out my @foodily Valentine’s Day menu! Create one of your own! (your menu URL here) #foodilyvdaymenu

6. Foodily will be watching and selecting menu winners daily to be featured on the Foodily site!

7. You can also enter by sharing your menu on Foodily’s Facebook wall.
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Disclosure: As a Foodily Brand Ambassador I’m compensated for my time and efforts.

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