we ate and ate and ate and our hearts were happy

What is more romantic than meat on a stick? Nothing. Nothing in the world is more romantic than meat on a stick, unless it is the sick feeling you wake up with the next morning, because of all the sticks full of meat you stuck in your face.

Ow.

So yesterday was Valentine's Day. And I liked it. I have always liked Valentine's Day, single and coupled, and single but sort of coupled and coupled but sort of single and pretty much in every permutation of relationshipness that there is. Because it is about love, and love is grand. I enjoy the lingerie parts of Valentine's Day, and also I call my mom and generally try to spread the joy like cream-cheese frosting with little sparkly bits on top.

My favorite part of Valentine's Day, though, is how food is love, and I love food and so does Guy (Captain Fancy Cook himself, natch) and so we decided that fondue was the only way to go. Because who doesn't love fondue? Communists, that's who.

I looked hot. I wore a dress, and, get this – slacks under the dress. And I looked hot. Not lumpy or weird or freaky. But stylin'. Without the g, so you know that it's serious. And we cooed and were lovey-dovey and were very, very funny (we are very very funny) and we ate fondue.

Fondue is funny. Fondue is food on sticks with a lot of dipping and poking and assembling and fiddling and the laughing at the dipping and poking and assembling and fiddling and the cheese that flew everywhere and the vegetable broth that splattered and the beautiful, beautiful dark chocolate that I almost just leaned over and just put my face in it. I would have been happy to spend all of Valentine's Day with my face buried in a pot of dark chocolate fondue.

The other thing about fondue is that is it expensive. It is a lot of money. It is all the money. It is a heart-stopping amount of money for food that comes in pots that you have to cook your goddamn self. We do the work and they reap the profit? That seems like cold, hard business sense right there. And I suspect that their profit margins are enormous, because you don't use half your dipping potatoes and mushrooms (though you definitely use all the bread) and so on because you are too busy making for damn sure that each bite you put in your mouth is loaded up with all the cheese a single tiny potato (or mushroom, or bread) can hold, so they take your potatoes and your mushrooms and your wide and varied assortment of sauces and garnishes back to the kitchen, and they repurpose. That means "serves your cooties to the next table."

The last thing about fondue is that it is a lot of fucking food. You do not think that it's a lot of food, because you are eating it from sticks and sticks do not hold a lot at one time, but when you've et and et and et and et some tiny filets of beef and chunks of chicken and prawns and you feel slightly sick, as if there is a towering stack in your stomach pushing up against your esophagus and shuddering with every breath you take and then you look at that platter and realize you have to keep eating until you are dead if you want to finish your platter of meat for which you have pledged the equivalent of city college tuition for an underprivileged youngster, you suddenly find yourself thinking wow. that is a lot of fucking food.

I am cheap and trashy, because I asked for it to go. Sandwiches!

We were creakingly, achingly full by the second course, but there was that chocolate fondue thing and we ate all of the chocolate fondue and sort of cried gently in our napkins and hated ourselves until the server came by with the big sexy check.

And then we stumbled home via taxi and crawled into bed and choked back the bile a little bit when we switched on the television and a lovingly filmed steak blossomed into full color on the screen and quickly switched over to the Cartoon Network, because nothing says romance like falling asleep to Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Except meat on a stick.

This entry was posted by anne, on Tuesday, February 15, 2005. You can leave your response.