My Valentine's Day Debacle

With having one son at home for schooling, the planning of special days is, well, pretty much non-existent.  I did, however, manage to come up with a plan for a special lunch for my husband and a dessert for my kids this Valentine's Day.  I had steak tips thawing in the fridge so I knew I had something for dinner.  I just had to figure out how to prepare them.  No biggie (I thought).

I began my morning by making Carrot Cupcakes.  After they cooled, I frosted them in between school disruptions.

In the midst of frosting cupcakes, I realized that it was time to get lunch started so it was ready for my husband's noontime lunch.

I got the recipe out and gathered the ingredients.

As I'm gathering things together I find that I am OUT of cream of chicken soup.  How could I be out?  Oh.  Yeah.  I grabbed it in a pinch to make a pork chop dinner the other day.  Normally I would have a few but I was down to one and planned to go to the store for more.  I forgot.

Now what to make for lunch?  I'm down to 10 minutes.  I wasted too much time trying to find the missing non-existent cream of chicken soup.

I found Chef Boy R Dee.  Definitely not what I planned, but it's food.

12:00.  Lunch was ready.

While I waited for my man to arrive home for lunch, I frosted more cupcakes.  Sometimes the frosting got on my finger so I did what every proper housewife would do.  Yes, I licked the frosting off my fingers.  The frosting wasn't very good.  After trying the frosting again, I decided I had better check the date on the frosting.  Guess what?  The container said "Use by May 2012".  I had already frosted most of the cupcakes, so I tossed the frosting and found another one in the cabinet.  This time I check the date BEFORE using it.  It says "Use by May 2013".  Whew!  I'm safe.

It was now 12:10.  No hubby.  Lunch was no longer hot.

I finished frosting the cupcakes with the fresh frosting.

12:20.  Still no hubby.  I thought about my phone.  He will often send me a message if he will be late or not home at all.  I usually notice 30 minutes later (or hours), but this time, there was no message so I decided to my day might be good for my blog and started taking pictures of things while I waited for him to come home.  It's so funny how blogging changes what you photograph.

12:30.  Hubby finally arrived for lunch.  This is actually becoming more and more the norm.  It isn't his fault.  It's just part of his position at work.

12:45.  Time to go to school to pick up my other son for an appointment.  That was a short Valentine lunch with hubby, but this is life when you are married to a farmer and have children.

The appointment went longer than I expected.  I needed to stop at the pharmacy AND I needed that Cream of Chicken Soup.  Then I thought it might be nice to get them all something for Valentine's Day.  Yes. I bought gifts last minute.  I don't prepare and plan for these special days like I do for Birthdays and Christmas.  I feel like those are plenty, but since I was totally bombing everything else . . . I went to Target.  That way I could one stop shop for the soup I needed, the gifts I wanted to find (which ended up just being M&Ms & Goldfish crackers) and Starbucks.

I got home around 3:15 and needed to get some things cleaned up, put the things I bought away and still figure out what I was going to do with the steak tips.  Time was running by too fast and I never got the other dessert started.  I also had to get back to those cupcakes that I learned from hubby that no one, but me, would eat anyway.  I thought I had better toss out the cupcakes with the old frosting.  I wasn't sure they would really hurt anyone, but they sure wouldn't be very tasty.

Here is what is left from the 20 I originally baked after tossing the "expired" ones.  At least it's a more manageable amount for me to eat by myself.  

My mother in law loves to bring us food for every occasion so she stopped by with chocolate dipped sugar cookies, chocolate mint cookies and chocolate covered strawberries.  Talk about saving the day.  Now my boys all had something they liked for dessert and I didn't have to worry about that anymore.  Who know's HOW that would have turned out anyway.

By this time, it was after 4:00.  My husband would be home and hungry by 5:00 and I hadn't even checked to see if the meat was thawed enough for a marinade.  I haven't looked for a marinade.  I wasn't even sure I wanted to attempt to cook another thing.

By this time, I think my son would have referred to the efforts of my day as an Epic Fail.

So what's for dinner?

Well, I went ahead and made the Crab Mornay that I had planned for lunch.  I figured it would be a nice appetizer (and I had been trying to make this for him for 3 weeks now so I was determined).  I still needed food for the rest of the family and I decided it was time to call for help.

This pizza place is more than pizza  They have a lot of italian entrees as well as subs and salads.  There was something for everyone on the menu.  I picked up the phone and placed an order for delivery.  After all, isn't that what every mom who isn't Martha Stewart would do?

So Valentine's Day came to us courtesy of my mother in law and a pizza delivery guy.  Well . . . I did have to pay the pizza delivery guy.  BUT that doesn't change the fact that I very much appreciated him.  He doesn't know that he saved my Valentine's Day meal.  Neither did my mother in law (until now).

Huh.  Come to think of it - I forgot to give the boys their Valentine Gifts.

By the way -- he wasn't a huge fan of the Crab Mornay.  It's ok.  It's a risk you take when you try something new.  We will just stick with the Crab Dip in the future.

So now it's your turn.  Did you ever have a Valentine's Day plan fall apart on you?  Please comment below and share your story.