Love it or hate it, St Valentine’s Day will be here any minute. You’ll be needing a strategy, because there’s nothing worse than being that person shamed into doing something horrendously last-minute because you didn’t think it mattered to them but it did. Or worse, realising too late that it actually matters to you.
Either way, do not feel that you should make heart-shaped bacon ( see video below). Try these coping strategies instead.
Love the one you’re with.
It might be your Mum, your soul-mate, your grandkids or your custody officer; doesn’t matter. Find a way to do something special together, even if it’s just a cup of tea brought to the table, baking a heart-shaped chocolate cake, sharing a cheeky glass of bubbly in the middle of the afternoon, or time spent flaked out on the couch reading books.
Show a restaurant some love.
You get a beautiful dinner cooked for you, in a romantic setting. They get a bit of extra income at a welcome time. Win/win.
Throw money at it.
Head to your nearest food store and buy all the stuff you always look at it and never buy because it’s too expensive. First-grade peaches and nectarines, beautiful prosciutto, spindle-thin grissini. Rock lobster, prawns, oysters. Crazy-fat Wagyu steak. Organic veggies with the dirt still on them. Go home and eat your heart out.
Don’t throw money at it.
I’m not up for big treats anymore. There’s too much infrastructure and planning, too expensive, I’m too invested in the outcome and there is too much to lose if plans change - because of course, we know they will. Ah, but a small treat, that I can do. And that’s we all need. Right now, I’m excited because I have a tin of the finest anchovies in the cupboard. It’s enough.
Change it up.
St Val’s doesn’t have to be about roses and dinner. Let’s make it about coffee and eggs on toast. Or tea and yum cha, or beer and a balcony/back yard barbie, or fish and chips at the beach, or burgers and Netflix. Love can take many forms.
When in doubt, cut it out.
One heart-shaped cookie cutter later, and you have a heart-shaped fried egg to love (spear it with a Cupid’s arrow of crisp bacon). Or a heart-shaped miniature chocolate cake on which to throw many sprinkles. Or a heart-shaped sandwich to take on a picnic. You want more? I got more. Heart your pizza, mozzarella, goat cheese, puff pastry, potatoes, watermelon, strawberries. Creating negative space is also good – cut out a heart from your smoked salmon, eat it, then serve the rest with the heart-shaped hole.
Still hating on St Val’s?
Haters, you need to read this. The brutally funny Alana Massey, author of All The Lives I Want, will lethally destroy your every argument against Valentine’s Day. Lovers, you keep at it.
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Copyright © 2020 Jill Dupleix. All rights reserved. I live and work on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay my respect to elders past, present and emerging.