This is the story of how I got my girlfriend a police escort to my house for a surprise Valentine’s Day dinner. I promise I won’t post anything personal again. I don’t want this blog to actually be about me (just about what I like and can write wittily about), but this story was just too good not to share. Just in case you don’t think it’s as entertaining as it was to those of us who were there, I’ll post something else later on today. Anyway…
I have a girlfriend and I love to do nice things for her. So Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity for me to do something nice and make her happy as well as make myself look good. Real good.
And that was my goal for Saturday night: do nice things and be awesome. How did I plan to achieve those goals? Three words: Kick. Food. Ass. No, my plan didn’t involve kicking my girlfriend, eating some food, and showing my ass. Only one of those three things would make her happy and make me look awesome, and I’ll let you use your imagination as to which of the three it is.
Friends, to understand my plan, you need to put those three words into one imperative sentence: “Kick food ass.”
So with that as my mission I went super shopping on Friday to buy all the ingredients for my menu. Filet mignon with balsamic glaze: check. Asparagus cooked with chardonnay: check. Spinach and cranberry salad: check. Awesome cabernet sauvignon: check. I gathered all the raw materials. And on Saturday at 4 pm with my cooking schedule in hand I began to cook the feast.
Now, I don’t cook often, but the kitchen doesn’t scare me, and for this meal I was amply prepared with every kitchen tool available, hand-written note cards with the recipes on them, and a carefully planned schedule for when everything needed to happen so that when my girlfriend got to the house at seven expecting a low-key dinner of chicken bog (an Horry County specialty, but not very high class) she would be pleasantly surprised to see a gourmet dinner served to her in front of a crackling fire in the fireplace. And everything went smoothly until the last thirty minutes.
You see, the last thirty minutes was when I had to turn on the broiler, put in a cast-iron skillet, and heat our oven to roughly 500 degrees Fahrenheit to prepare to cook the steaks. Within ten minutes of putting in the skillet it was creating smoke ex nihilo which was filling our kitchen and, apparently, our smoke detectors. I’m used to smoke detectors going off, but what scared a bit of pee out of me was when the house alarm went off sending a brain-piercing wail throughout the house. No worries, though. The house alarm people called, and I assured them there was no fire.
Back to the kitchen to put the steaks in. Fire alarm goes off again, but this time no call from the house alarm people. Good. I keep cooking. Phone rings. It’s the landlord who promptly informs me that the house alarm people just called him to say that the fire department was on its way to my house. Sure enough, a medium-sized fire truck pulls up to my house with his lights on as I hang up with my landlord. Sprint to the door, explain there’s no fire, and lead the fireman into the kitchen to prove it.
It is now 7:05 and I see lights in the driveway. “She’s here,” I think to myself as I realize that I’m shaking from being so stressed about all the alarms going off and the food not cooperating. But it was not her. At least not in the first car. The first car was the police “back-up” for the fireman. The car which followed the cop car down our driveway, however, belonged to my girlfriend.
So instead of walking in to see me looking all sexy sitting in front of a fire with a feast awaiting her, she walked in to see me looking all sweaty standing in front of a smoky oven explaining to three of my housemates why there was a fireman walking through our house.
Surprise!
Despite the setbacks the dinner turned out great, and we had a good time. So even with the presence of a fire truck and cop car in my driveway when my girlfriend arrived, I think it was a successful Valentine’s Day.
What Chris Likes 