Last Sunday marked two years since Mike and I first met/allegedly began 'seeing one another'. I woke up pretty early and passed the time until Mike woke up some time after noon (I, unfortunately, am not one of those people who can sleep all through the morning and afternoon - I'm always waking up hours before him); I gave him some time to wake up and then we started preparing the day's feast.
We started with the soup - a ground/chunk beef, barley and potato spice soup, to be exact. We pre-cooked the beef and barley and then threw all the ingredients into the slow-cooker along with some beef broth and water and let it sit for a few hours. Once we felt the potatoes and beef chunks had softened enough, we each served ourselves a hefty portion and indulged. We didn't follow a recipe, we just kind of winged it and added things as we saw fit, and the soup turned out delicious! There is still plenty of soup leftover in the refrigerator now too; we don't have to cook anything else for weeks!
Our stomachs were plenty full after the soup, so we waited another hour or so before starting on dinner. We stuck two potatoes in the oven to bake and then Mike stuck some fresh broccoli in the steamer and cooked two cubed steaks on the stove. The potatoes took much longer to bake than expected, so we ended up eating the steak and broccoli long before the potatoes, but I had Mike pull them out for a few minutes, just for the sake of the picture; they haven't finished baking here.
We drank a bottle of Monkey Bay chardonnay with dinner (thanks for the wonderful recommendation, Mom!) and I baked up some Monkey Bread for dessert, mini-sized! As far as dinners go, Mike out-did himself here; I can't take much credit for anything other than dessert.
We spent the rest of the night digesting this terrific gigantic meal while watching cartoons and movies and of course, smothering each other with plenty of love. Here's to another year!

Labels: anniversary, soup