13

No, not the Blur album.  Good album!  One of my faves by them, and I do like a lot of their stuff.  I'm getting off track....

Yesterday marked 13 years of marriage for us.  23 years since our first date as well - that anniversary was this past Saturday.  Hooray for us!

No going out to celebrate this year.  We'll save that for a milestone ahead, perhaps.  Or just a regular date night.  No, I wanted to cook us a nice dinner.  And I somewhat succeeded - that halibut was a little over, sorry to say.  But anyway....

Shopping at Eataly this past weekend helped.  We started with a Vesper each

and some tarallini to snack on while I put together a simple burrata platter. 

Once that was on the table (and oh, what lovely flowers from Van to celebrate our anniversary - that was so sweet of him),

I poured us each some chenin blanc.  Music in the background, no other distraction.  Sitting and enjoying food and wine and talking.  I told Conrad it would be a slow meal - finish making one course and then it was on to the next.  Our second course was a simple pasta with some truffles. 

Reminiscent of what we had in Italy, but the truffles were preserved from a jar.  Not the same as the fresh item, of course, but it was pretty decent anyway.  And a splurge.  Speaking of splurge, a 2012 Amarone della Valpolicella - an Eataly purchase.  We enjoyed that one,

but when I went to the wine fridge to retrieve it, I found that we also had a 2006 of the same style of wine but a different vintner.  That one will be saved for Christmas, and may it have survived what likely have been years of moves and doubtless variation in storage condition.  We shall.  Anyway, I cooked us a bit of halibut with some lightly roasted carrots, drizzled with some olive oil we brought back from our Italian vacation and dotted lightly with some very good aged balsamic vinegar.

That was a lot, and we decided to forego the cookies and ice cream I had for us for dessert.  Otherwise just a nice and - yes, truly - simple dinner at home with some good wine to toast each other and 13 years of marriage!