Sarah and I celebrated our seventh Valentine’s Day together today, but this one was a little different. For the past six, I have prepared a special meal for my sweetie. Some of those meals were quite memorable. Like our first, when I bought a bottle of wine and then, minutes before serving the food, realized I didn’t own a corkscrew. So what did we do? We took out a screwdriver and tried hammering the cork into the bottle. As we were doing so, the bottle split in half, nearly slicing Sarah’s arm in two (she was holding the base of the bottle; real smart, right?). We had a good laugh, and Sarah stuck with me for some odd reason.

The Valentine’s Day meals were equally delicious and creative each year. One year, I made a Thai dish. Another we had a pork loin encrusted with my own mix of special secret ingredients (OK, Cavender’s and Italian dressing, so sue me). Most of the time, I’d steam some asparagus and have a fresh salad to start things off.

Well, this year was a little different. Due to a little snowstorm that blew through the area two weeks ago (thanks a lot, Mother Nature, you heartless wench!), our lamaze class got pushed back an extra week. So our final class was tonight, Valentine’s Day.

With only an hour or so between work and the start of class, we decided to share a romantic dinner out — at the St. John’s Mercy Medical Center cafeteria. I helped myself to a large serving of sweet and sour chicken that even the most ardent fans of La Choy meal-in-a-can dinners would have probably not found overly tasty (see the photo below and notice the fake smile smirk). Sarah had some pizza that reminded me of a ketchup-on-bread sandwich.

Yep, it was a holiday for the ages. And our last together as just the two us. I’m sure this meal will be ingrained in our memories for all of eternity. The things we do for love …