For the benefit of 2 of my favorite foodies, I thought it might be nice if I posted about the Valentine's Day dinner that Mrs. Bali Hai and I put together last Tuesday:

The missus made a Cuban pork roast with mango sauce in our shiny new crockpot. We got the recipe out of a fabulous cookbook called, ¡Cuba Cocina!, given to me as a gift by my most favoritist foodie bud-ette in the whole wide world. In addition to the roast, she whipped up an incredible batch of frijoles negros with white rice.

My mission, which I decided to accept, was to use my top-sekrit training to produce a chocolate-pudding souffle. Inexplicably, my souffle-fu was weak, and my offering came out only partially cooked through, so we wound up with a dessert that was part souffle, and part mousse. Still delish though.

As an apertif, I uncorked a bottle of Renwood 2004 Zinfandel Amador Ice, an incredibly delicious Eiswein that had us both drooling uncontrollably after the first glass.

Thank God Valentine's Day only comes once a year!