Monthiversaries and Love

The first of every month is a day I always look forward to.  Mike and I officially began our relationship on April 1^st 2010 (yes, April Fools Day)!  Mike wanted to take me out on our one month anniversary and ever since, that day has just stuck for us to celebrate our relationship.  Today marks our 37^th month anniversary, or how we like to refer to it, monthiversary.  We have a few ground rules for monthiversaries:

1) We go to a restaurant that we have never eaten at on a monthiversary.  This allows us to try new and different restaurants every month.  That’s it… that’s actually the only ground rule.  And actually we have broken this rule since I became pregnant because of cravings and food aversions.

We have found some pretty amazing restaurants in the past 36 months and I wish I had started this blog a long time ago so that I could have shared with all of you the ones that we have tried.  I do remember a few of the really exceptional ones though…

On our first monthiversary, Mike took me to a local restaurant called, The Saucy Noodle.  This is a great family owned and family centered restaurant.  My family actually fell in love with this place after I recommended we go there.  They even catered my college graduation party.  The baked polenta is probably my favorite dish on their menu along with their breadsticks and Spumoni Ice Cream for dessert!

Another really good restaurant we have been to is Potager, which fittingly means "kitchen garden."  This is a locally owned restaurant with seasonally fresh foods.  Actually, if you go to a farmer’s market around town, you can expect to find some of the vendors that the restaurant uses for their fresh ingredients (listed right on their menu).  Their menu changes monthly and they always have 3 or 4 different specials every night.  The two menu items that really stuck out to me were the pumpkin ravioli with browned butter and buttery Parmesan cheese and the Ginger pear cake with chocolate ganache.  Both items paired their (very original) ingredients very well and each dish melted in your mouth.  I keep trying to get the recipe for that ginger pear cake but haven’t succeeded.

D Bar Desserts is another awesome place for a date night.  We had actually gone to Wahoo’s Fish Tacos this monthiversary and decided to go out to dessert afterwards.  This place is famous for their original desserts but they also have a dinner menu, which I’ve heard is also pretty good.  The owner is a chef from FoodNetwork and he was actually there the day we went.  We ordered three desserts and every one of them were to-die-for!  They also have a rotating menu based on fresh ingredients but they always have a few staples that stay along for the ride.  I ordered the “Cake and Shake” which was a very rich “old fashioned” chocolate cake with a rich dark chocolate ganache.  It also came with a tiny-sized chocolate shake with little malt balls in it!  I also ordered a seasonal dessert (which I can’t remember the name of).  This was by far my favorite.  Even though I loved chocolate at that time, this dessert was so light and summery and hit the spot.  It had just enough tartness to go with the light and fluffy cake (almost cornbread type cake) with a peach sorbet that made you go “WOW”!  Mike orderd the MC², which was a trio of milk chocolate desserts.  I only had a small taste of his but he finished it all up.  We didn't really say a word during our eating of desserts except, "mmmm", "wow", "oooh"...We both have quite the sweet tooth! 

Mike is working today and since he doesn’t get home until 7:30-8 we will have to postpone our dinner until tomorrow night.  We have to go with the flow and I’m sure that flow will get a lot more bumpy once the little one is here! 

Even though a relationship needs to be nurtured everyday, this type of ritual is important for us.  We look forward to this day all month and its fun to see the months fly by.  We do yearly anniversaries but these monthiversaries help with keeping the celebration of "us" alive!  I also think it will be good way to connect once the baby is here and will give us one-on-one time along with some baby-grandparent time… wink wink! 

I think we had a couple of glasses of wine on this occasion!

Happy May 1^st!   

And, Happy 37 months, Michael! I love you

Look out for my 37 monthiversary restaurant review soon!