A February Round-Up: Valentine Hearts, Pasta and Truffles!

With February coming to an end this week, March seems to have RUSHED here and the months are flying by.  To be honest, I would love some more snow before Spring comes but I am excited for new crafty and baking plans I have coming up!

Before the month is out I wanted to blog a few photos and ideas both my husband and I have been working on over Valentine's Day and with his new Pasta Maker attachment for our stand mixer :-)

First up is my crafting for Valentine's Day.  During Movember moustaches (see them here or buy them here!) and over Christmas I discovered a love for felting and stuffing!  I decided Valentine's Day would need something like this too, and with my new pinking shears (thanks Mum!) I got to work.

I chose some less Valentine-like colours for Jonathan, the darker red, grey and black (with just a little sparkle) rather than the pinks and reds we see all over the stores in February!

Using a heart cookie cutter I was able to trace the shape of 12 hearts per page of felt and so ended up with 36 heart shapes that I could then cut out, piece together, sew, stuff and then close up!!  And voila 18 hearts!

On Valentine's Day morning I left 1 in a jar to add a little intrigue... he knew what they were but not where they were!  I had hidden these little hearts (I like to call them 'pocket sneakers') all over our apartment... And now, nearly 2 weeks later he still has a few to find but the jar is getting fuller!

Now most are found, they're perfect for Valentine's decorations, or for sneaking into pockets or bags, or somewhere fun just to say I love you! (...I found one in my glasses case just the other day!)

Moving on to some foods... For Jonathan's birthday this year he received the Kitchen Aid stand mixer pasta attachment and he tried it out for the first time on Valentine's Day.  Incredible to have fresh made pasta when you get home from work late in the evening, along with his amazing veal milanese.  He really had been hard at work all day!!  He even made a four cheese stuffed, heart shaped ravioli, who knew his creativeness would be that cute :-P

For the pasta dough he used Jamie Oliver's recipe (click here).  Yes it says it serves 6, and yes there are only 2 of us - but the amount he made meant we got the heart shaped ravioli for dinner that night, a few leftover for lunch the next day and then the remaining dough we made into linguine a few nights later which served us twice more!!  A great recipe if you want lots of dough to try different things with, or if you're giving away some of the pasta/saving for later in the week!

Not that I can claim to any of the cooking that night, but I can however share the links he used to make my delicious meal!  He used the Food Network recipe from Giada for the Veal Milanese, and also her Vodka Sauce from this recipe (minus the penne!), and then for dessert he made a chocolate truffle mix which we could make our own truffles with!!  He used Alton Brown's recipe with a few tweaks... Sherry instead of brandy, and in fact he refrigerated the whole mix in a dish and we did our own scooping and coating with a choice of powdered sugar, cocoa powder, crushed pistachios and my FAVOURITE - crushed Amaretti biscuits :-)

Valentine's Day was so fun and very delicious!  And it left us with lots of leftovers and ideas of things to try next...

We made Jonathan's family some truffles and delivered them to church... We ate pasta for a good few days afterwards, and I got to try out the pasta cutter when we made our linguine, and we have also since made a fresh pasta lasagna!  SO GOOD!

A few days of linguine and sauce leftover from Valentine's Day and then this week's lasagna!

So here we are, novice pasta makers...expert eaters... and with our heart filled house this Valentine's Day and month! ♥

Hope you've all had a great February celebrating!  Let me know what you've been working on this month, I'd love to see :-)