Valentine's Day

Ah, Valentine's Day. I'm a little behind, aren't I? Things have been going on. Lots of ... things.

I was planning on making something to send to my very dear friend who sent me rugelach right when the water heater decided it wasn't longed for this world after all. So, I was a little (lot) behind. What I wanted to make was something like this. Aren't they amazing? Guess what. You can't make macaroons with regular flour when you're out of almond meal. We ended up eating them, but they weren't decent enough to leave the house.


I still wanted to send something. But now I obviously was attracted to the more foolproof. So, back to my most-amazing-sugar-cookies ever.

I had a bunch of white icing left over from some other project, and made up some red royal icing to decorate the cookies. But, even these weren't failsafe.

Don't worry, they came out just fine. But it's like I was cursed:

• I forgot to set the timer for one batch, and they were very overcooked. Edible, but not that pretty sugar cookie color.
  
• Do you know what conversation hearts say? Neither do I. And it was hard to come up with ideas!
  
• Piping took for-ever. And after piping a whole rack? Dropped them, face down, on the kitchen floor. (Don't worry, those didn't get mailed either!)

The ones that did turn out, did so beautifully. And they're sturdy enough to travel well. So I made more to send to my parents!

As for our Valentine's day plans? We had a fabulous day in Irvine. Someone told me about the Great Park Balloon almost a year ago, and I was dying to go. We didn't get on the morning rides, so we had to wait until the evening. I had the California Roll appetizer at the Yardhouse - a lot of food, but really fancy! When we finally got boarding passes for the balloon around 7:30 that night, it started to occur to me ... the balloon would go 500 feet up in the air ... tethered only by a cable ... with a bunch of people ... all standing on a donut-shaped platform a yard wide. Whose idea was that??

FYI: I survived.