Anniversary week

Our two-year anniversary was this Tuesday and Matt surprised me with dinner at a restaurant I've been wanting to go to for a long time - Mind, Body & Spirits. Not the greatest name for a restaurant; someone even pointed out to me that it sounds more like a spa than a place you'd go to to eat. However, it's an organic restaurant that uses as many local ingredients as possible, maintains a seasonal menu and has a great atmosphere. Not quite spa-like, but relaxing.

The highlight of the meal? Our appetizer of french fries dusted with pink Himalayan salt. Piping hot, crispy but not crunchy, served in a cone of parchment paper. Absolutely delicious.

The rest of the meal was great, too, but I'm beginning to learn that my 33-week pregnant body can only handle so much food at once, so the beginnings of meals are generally the better parts. The fries, plus one and a half of a homemade rootbeer, half of a chicken puttanesca flatbread pizza, and some vanilla bean ice cream totally put me over the edge.

We continued the anniversary celebrations this weekend with a one-night stay at the Westin Book Cadillac Detroit. This is an historic hotel in Detroit that recently went through some major renovations. It was once the tallest building in Detroit and the world's tallest hotels at its completion in 1924.

Since we're not going to be doing too much hotel hopping in the near future, we made the most of our waning days of freedom and lazed around, watched TV, used the fitness center ... and of course made time to eat! We'd been wanting to go to Slows BBQ for a long time, but with threats of four-hour waits at dinnertime, were never sure when to go.

3:30 seemed like a pretty safe time to give it a shot, though, and I guess it was, even though we still had to wait an hour and fifteen minutes! It was worth it though, although, I have to confess, I'm not much of a barbeque connoisseur. I mean, I know when I'm eating really subpar barbeque, but beyond that, don't have much of a palate for what is truly amazing.

Case in point, I went to a baby shower this afternoon for a friend from Texas, so the meal was bbq. And I could have sworn it tasted just as good as Slows.

All in all, a great anniversary week! I feel like I should end this post with something sweet and sappy, something about the baby or our growing love for each other to sum it all up ... but what I really want to say is that I'm just glad I didn't ruin any of our dinners out. I have a tendency to do so whenever there's a lot of buildup for a nice night out. It's like I jinx myself and choose that very moment to let my emotions get out of control. It's quite the slippery slope.

But, perhaps my pregnant hormones have put me very much in balance, because I stayed on my best behavior. Perhaps that was the best anniversary present I could have given Matt.

She who cooks should not clean

Matt and I went to a Family Life marriage conference in Grand Rapids this weekend, which, incidentally, turned out to be quite the spot for food enthusiasts like myself. If we had restaurants like The Green Well and Real Food Cafe in our neighborhood, well, I'm not sure I'd eat anywhere else!

We began our meal last night with an appetizer of beer braised short ribs over french fries with a cheddar truffle sauce and a dijon gravy. Then, to be virtuous, I moved onto a seven-vegetable quinoa with tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, broccoli, cauliflower, fresh herbs, arugla, onion, 2 vinaigrettes and manchego cheese. I believe seven vegetables more than compensates for the fat-laden appetizer, so I happily indulged in a dessert of challah bread french toast with butter pecan gelato and brittle.

But I digress. The marriage conference was excellent and gave us so many invaluable building blocks for marriage. I could elaborate on those principles, but I'm really not sure where to begin and I might start rambling.

So I'll just fill you in one on nugget of priceless wisdom that I gathered this morning.

Nearly all of our sessions were coed, except for this morning, when the men and women met separately. Then, we reconnected for our final, joint session, during which one of the male speakers referenced a comment he had made during the men's session. He said that the rule in his house is, "She who cooks, should not clean."

Now this shocked me a little. Not because this was a guiding principle in his house, but that Matt had not divulged this bit of wisdom to me between sessions! After all, we had about 30 minutes to debrief with one another between sessions and he had ample opportunity to share with me how wholeheartedly he agreed with the speaker's most important point.

In all fairness, Matt dutifully does the dishes after meals, unless I've made a royal mess of the kitchen and I pitch in out of guilt.

Note, the speaker did not specify, "She who cooks, should not clean the kitchen after mealtime." He kept it open ended. There's room for interpretation, don't you think?

Unfortunately I don't think I can bargain a good deal out of this one. I have a feeling Matt and my standards of cleanliness are just too different.

However, I wouldn't mind seeing "She who cooks should not clean" engraved on some kind of plaque in the kitchen or perhaps stamped into the sink. We could all use a friendly reminder, don't you think?