No surprise. According to the National Retail Federation, consumers’ top shopping destination leading up to Valentine’s Day 2025 is online, with a projected record spending of $27.5 billion on gifts and outings and $2.5 billion spent on flowers, alone.
Here’s a fun idea for celebrating this holiday of romance. Creative Collective Studio in Anaheim is offering a Valentine’s Day candle-making and decorating workshop in which couples will craft a dessert-themed candle and enjoy delicious desserts, all while watching a romantic movie. Sign up at Eventbrite.
Locally, some of North Orange County’s favorite restaurants are planning special Valentine’s Day menus.
Cedar Creek Inn in Brea is offering a champagne dinner with a choice of starters including stuffed crimini mushrooms, sesame calamari, brie cheese or shrimp cocktail. Entrée choices include chicken cordon bleu, Alaskan halibut, prime rib, cedar plank salmon, jumbo wild prawns, filet mignon, New York steak and rack of lamb followed by a complementary chocolate-covered strawberry.
A romantic dinner at The Cellar in Fullerton will include a first course of puff pastry with caramelized leek, blue cheese and prosciutto, crab cake or potato vareniki with fried shallots and dill velouté, followed by spinach and potato soup or caesar salad. Entrees include Boeuf Bourguignon, spaghetti and lobster or Jidori chicken with a dessert selection of raspberry and lemon pannacotta, Italian custard and raspberries or red velvet brownie.
The Valentine’s Day menu at The Wild Artichoke in Yorba Linda features their Million Dollar seaweed salad and chawanmushi (steamed egg custard), chestnut velouté, and entrée choices: nori tacos, poached oyster and shrimp, bay scallops, sous vide short rib, Moroccan lamb rack, or Wagyu ribeye cap with a deconstructed vanilla mousse cake to share for dessert.
Since ancient times various ingredients have been credited with firing up passion, so-called aphrodisiacs.
According to the “Cambridge World History of Food,” high on the ancient love list were anise, basil, carrot, salvia, gladiolus root, orchid bulbs, pistachio nuts, rocket (arugula), sage, sea fennel, turnips, skink flesh (a type of lizard) and river snails, while the love struck scrupulously avoided dill, lentil, lettuce, watercress, rue, and water lily.
Fresh out of skink flesh? Depending on which list you consult, the usual suspects for kindling romance include avocado, bananas, chili peppers, honey, almonds, figs, arugula and, of course, the top three: oysters, coffee and, you guessed it, chocolate.
Tiramisu is sure to kindle romance combining two of the top three, coffee and chocolate.
The name “tiramisu” means “pick me up.” The dessert originated in the late 1960s or early 1970s in Treviso, Italy. Ado Campeol, the owner of the restaurant Le Beccherie is known as the “father of tiramisu,” although his wife, Alba di Pillo, and their chef, Roberto Linguanotto, are credited with creating it.
You can find online the recipe for the tiramisu I made here from Gourmet magazine in 2009.
Fullerton’s Judy Bart Kancigor is the author of “Cooking Jewish” and “The Perfect Passover Cookbook.” Her website is cookingjewish.com.
