Marlon and I just don't do Valentine's Day. When we were still dating long-distance, it was rare for us to be in the same country on the 14th of February. Then when we were married, we celebrated our first day of hearts as husband and wife by waltzing into the Singapore Valentine trap: an overpriced set dinner. All the nice-ish restaurants do this, so you have very little choice in the matter.
Singapore seems to have only one major flower supplier, so everyone and her mother carries the exact same bouquet of roses wrapped in pastel tissue. Marlon ingeniously found something that wasn't a cloned bouquet and got me a single gerbera. Carrying it around and seeing all the identically dressed girls with their identical dates and identical bouquets, I felt both horrified and extremely lucky.
Because of the mind-numbing sameness that surrounded us that first Valentine's, Marlon and I gave up on the whole idea entirely. I don't remember what we did last year, or the year before.
But since this year, everything has changed, we decided to give Valentine's Day the old college try. We toyed briefly with the idea of a canal cruise, but opted to stay in. Marlon volunteered to be our chef for the evening and plan a special menu.
As for me, I had a doctor's appointment in the morning, dilly-dallied until 2pm then got my butt racing. Inspired by the heart garlands from this awesome Valentine fort on Design*Sponge, I dug into the moving boxes still scattered around the house and turned up some red art paper, magazine pages, double-sided tape and A4 typing paper. I found nylon string in my sewing kit, selected 75 photos of Marlon and me, and set up the printer in the bedroom.
Four hours, five paper jams and countless snarls of nylon string (the.worst.idea.ever!) later, I managed to transform our kitchen into a romantic restaurant for two.
I mixed paper hearts with photos of us. I had to cut the photos really oddly to make sure I got our faces in. Every single one of them has a congenital heart defect, lol.
At 6.30pm Marlon called me from the supermarket to ask if we had red wine vinegar at home. Thank goodness for the transport union strike today that kept him from coming home early! I even had time to paint him a 5-minute Valentine, which I blow-dried and stuck on the kitchen door.
Pardon the cheese!
At 7pm Marlon came home with the ingredients for dinner and flowers for me!
When I finally brought him into the kitchen, to see his joy and wonder made the four hours of desperate nylon-untangling and frenzied paper-cutting so worth it. Then I left the happy chef to get started on our Valentine's Day dinner.
We started with a surf and turf salad of prawns, spiced sausage, parsley and rocket...
Mediterranean-inspired cod and couscous for our mains...
And for dessert, a sinful, oven-warmed apple and almond tart from Le Fournil, the excellent French bakery on the corner.
By the end of the meal, both my stomach and heart were full to bursting with contentment.
And the best thing was, I knew my Valentine felt the exact same way.
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