VALENTINES, FRIENDS AND GUACAMOLE

Today is Valentine's Day and we have been taking it very easy.



We have several friends who have been wanting me to make my New Mexico style Enchiladas for them, so I decided yesterday that the time had come. These enchiladas are very spicy and you have to have an acquired taste for them as they are really hot. I'd share the recipe with you, but unless you have fresh green Hatch Chiles and red Chile from Chimayo, they won't be any good. Since I use both kinds of chiles, red and green, they are called "Enchiladas Christmas" and they're wonderful.

I set my table yesterday morning and started the beans and my sauces.

I like to keep the table simplistic for this type meal, so I used a small floral arrangement on the table that we could easily visit back and forth during our meal and not have to look around or over the flowers.

Since Frank adores Guacamole, I decided to make that as well to accompany our meal. I don't usually serve a salad since the enchiladas are topped with lettuce and tomatoes, but after all, I could do this little special thing for my Honey as a Valentine extra ;-)

When I was a little girl, I would spend part of my summers in San Antonio with my cousin and his family. His Mother had one child, a son named Lucien Hunter and she loved having a little girl around to share fun girly things with. She taught me how to play Canasta, dance the Rumba and make Guacamole. Back then it was called Avocado Spread and all it had in it was avocados, lemon juice to keep it from turning black, diced onions, Philadelphia Cream Cheese and a little mayonnaise. We ate it on Saltine crackers and I thought it was wonderful. We didn't have anything like that in Fort Worth at the time. This is a photograph of her with my favorite and only cousin. As only children we were pretty spoiled but not nearly as spoiled as as their Wire-haired Terrier named Sir Yippy of York!

Lucien Hunter and I were best friends and even though we he was pretty mean to me some of the time, he was my hero and I adored him. He was 3 years my senior and in my eyes, he could do no wrong. Here we are as children.

Talk about spoiled, he even took dancing lessons from Ginger Rogers! (that was before Fred Astaire came into her life!)

To get back to current times, our guests started arriving at 6:30 with gifts in hand. I didn't expect this but was pleasantly surprised when we received wine and these lovely tulips.

They had no idea how much I love tulips. I've even painted them many times. This is one of my earliest paintings that I did in watercolor.

What a treat the flowers and wine were. I should have dinner parties more often!
Here are several candid shots of the three couples that were here. Frank and I had our photos taken with the 3rd couple so he and I could both be in the photographs. As the photographer, I'm usually not in the picture. As the cook, I'm also usually in the kitchen!

Father Jordan was out of his clerics for the evening and I barely recognized him! We've been friends for about 25 years. We met him when we made our Cursillo.

The dinner seemed to be a big success.

There wasn't a crumb left on any plate, so that's always a compliment to the cook. We finished the meal with Raspberry Sorbet and butter cookies.

After dinner we retired to the den for a nice visit and everyone was on their way home at a little after 10:00.

We were up bright and early this morning sharing Valentine cards and tonight I'll fix us a nice meal and we'll watch Frank's Valentine surprise. I ordered the Silver edition of "As Time Goes By" for him. It's one of his favorite TV shows about an English couple who fell in love during WWII, lost touch with one another and rediscovered their love again later in life. It's delightful and it's on PBS every Sunday night. We never miss it.

I want to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very Happy Valentine's Day and hope that you life will always be filled with the love of friends and family. I've been able to share my life with the man of my dreams and have been truly blessed. He's an angel for putting up with me all these years. It hasn't been easy :-)

With love, XOXOX, Pcasso