So this year my husband has a meeting on Valentines Day. Altough we were planning on celebrating on Friday so that there will be babysitters available to watch our three kids (or as my husband refers to them "our litter") I wanted to make sure that the kids got into the V-Day spirit. Since it's just us for dinner, I decided to make it fun!
On the menu is a heart shaped crock pot meatloaf, heart shaped squash and zucchini, and heart shaped mini red velvet cakes with vanilla icing and red sprinkles. I got the meatloaf recipe from Recipe Vegetables. Instead of cooking it in the oven, I decided to make it into a heart shape and cook it in the slow cooker on high for about 4-5 hours just so it can cook throughout the day while I did housework and prepared the other things. You can also cook it on low for 8-9 hours.
I also found a fun way to get my little ones to eat their vegetables. I got a set of 6 heart shaped cookie cutters at my local grocery store and had the brilliant idea of cutting out heart shaped zucchini and squash! I wrapped these in foil and set the oven to 400 degrees and cooked them about 30 minutes. You can cook them less time if you like them more al dente. I seasoned them with butter, oregano, salt, and pepper. I cooked the hearts and the outer layers as well so I didn't waste anything!
This last idea will probably work out better for those of you who know how to bake (NOT I). All I did was go to the store and buy a box of red velvet cake and baked it in a 13 x 9 in. pan for about 40 mins. Once the cake was cooled I used a heart shaped metal pancake shaper thing (I have no idea what it's really called lol) and cut out 4 mini heart cakes from the larger cake. I topped it with white vanilla icing (couldn't find pink!) and red sprinkles. I'm sure even though they aren't perfect, the kids will still love them.
I hope I sparked some ideas for all you mommas out there!
