Lovely Gift

In our house we don't usually do Valentine's day. It's over commercialised and we don't need one specific day to show how much we love the other. We do usually like to have a nice dinner together, but don't do presents. We sometimes do cards, but only home made and neither of us really had the time this year.

Dinner was great (although today the flat is smelling a little too much like grease and I've got all the windows open to try and air the flat and get rid of it), and similar to the dinner we did the first V day we spend together (which was our 6 month anniversary, a time when you marked such things!). We did what we like to refer to as our 'Japanese feast'. Between us we made:

avocado maki sushi

cucumber maki sushi

meat gyoza (yum yum yum, my favourite!)

ginger pork

savoury deep-fried chicken (Tatsuta-age; marinaded in soy sauce, honey, ginger and garlic, covered in potato starch and then deep fried for a few minutes, totally yummy, but the source of the grease smell in the flat today from the deep frying).

All washed down with a lovely Sake we bought in Japan last year from the hotel we were staying in - their house sake from their super posh Japanese restaurant Kozu. Not massively healthy, all that meat and frying, but all very tasty!! And nice to spend the time cooking together and spending a long time over a meal.

After dinner we cracked open a bottle of Prosecco, which my Flâneur (the new name in here for my fiancé who objected to me calling him 'the' fiancé due to some odd family connotation with the word 'the' before a person's name or description), had bought to make Prosecco truffles. He didn't really have the time, so we just drank the fizz! Very nice one, but not as good as our favourite, which our local wine shop hasn't had in since Christmas. Hope they get it back because it's lovely!

Anyway, over the prosecco, my Flâneur produced a present for me, which he said was not a Valentine's present, but a 'just because' present. He said he wanted to get me a wee something because I'd not had a good start to the year. So lovely of him. (sniff). ;o). And so generous!! This is what he bought me:

Hardly a 'wee something'! It's a travel backgammon set, which rolls up for easy transportation, and is made from beautifully soft suede, the spikes from black and white leather, the pieces are dark and light wood. So gorgeous, so sumptious, so lovely and generous of him! It's something that I have coveted for some time but was just too pricey to justify getting for myself. I love him so much! Just have to teach him how to play now...