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As I just mentioned, it appears that Gretchen and I are not alone in not going out very often because we prefer our own cooking to that which can be had in local restaurants. However, we do go out occasionally. If you are like us but thought that Valentine’s Day would be a good time to break that “eat at home” habit, here are a few people that would caution you otherwise:

Valentine’s day is not a good night to go out to restaurants. Basically, people who go out to dinner only once a year go out on Valentine’s Day. The restaurants have to cater to these people’s narrow tastes and enormous expectations. Not a good night to go out. [tastingmenu.com]

Then there is this:

Ah, Valentine’s Day. It makes me think of red roses, candy hearts, snuggly kisses, over-booked restaurants, grumpy servers, and the time I was seated next to couple that was breaking up. It’s hard to be cooey with your love while over-hearing, “Nope, not once. I faked it every time.” And, as you may recall from my New Year’s Eve column, Valentine’s Day is one of the worst days, service-wise, to go to a restaurant.

I say skip the dinner out, make a kick-ass meal at home, and go out to brunch on Sunday morning. [Cinnamon Cooper]

And this just supports that belief:

With Valentine’s Day falling on a Saturday for the first time since 1998, restaurants have been turning away hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of frustrated diners who didn’t make reservations early enough. One restaurant had to buy more dishes, tables and silverware.

“You hear this phone ringing?” said Ken Lurie, a partner and front-of-the-house manager at Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant in Ellicott City. “Every call is for [tonight], and we’re just filled. We’ve turned away thousands.”

At restaurants across the area, the message seems to be: If you haven’t secured a Valentine’s Day dinner reservation by now, you might as well forget it. [Baltimore Sun]

So, I hope you have a nice romantic dinner at home planned!

Because of a medical procedure I was having done today, I have not been able to eat anything for the past 27 hours. Everything turned out fine, so now I am breaking my fast with hot and sour soup, egg rolls, lo mien, general tso’s chicken, and fortune cookies.

I find it oddly coincidental that yesterday the Baltimore Sun and the San Francisco Chronicle both decided to feature recipes for baked beans. I do not normally think of February as being baked bean season. On the other hand, I have been looking for an excuse to get one of these bean pots, so maybe I should give these two recipes a try.

Boston Baked Beans

Makes 8 servings

• 16 ounces (2 cups) dry navy beans
• 2 quarts cold water
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ½ cup molasses
• ⅓ cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 4 ounces salt pork
• 1 medium onion, chopped

Rinse beans; add to water in saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer 2 minutes; remove from heat. Cover and let stand 1 hour. (Or, add beans to cold water; soak overnight.) Do not drain. Add salt to beans.

Cover and simmer till tender, about 1 hour, then drain, reserving liquid. Measure 2 cups liquid, adding water if needed; mix with molasses, brown sugar and mustard.

Cut salt pork in half; score one half. Grind or thinly slice remainder. In 2-quart bean pot or casserole, combine beans, onions and ground salt pork. Pour molasses mixture over. Top with scored pork.

Cover; bake in 300-degree oven for 5 to 7 hours. Add more liquid if needed.

Per serving: 394 calories; 12 grams protein; 12 grams fat; 4 grams saturated fat; 60 grams carbohydrate; 12 milligrams cholesterol; 365 milligrams sodium

Nana Laurette’s Baked Beans

This dish is a time commitment that is worth the effort. The beans taste even better the next day.

• 1½ pounds navy beans
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• ¼ cup molasses
• ½ teaspoon dry mustard
• ½ yellow onion
• ¼ pound salt pork

Wash and pick over beans, discarding any stones or debris. Place in a 6-quart pot (not cast iron), cover with water and let soak overnight. The next morning, drain beans and add fresh water to cover. Bring to a simmer and cook until the skins of the beans break, about 30 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Preheat the oven to 250°.

Combine the salt, brown sugar, molasses and mustard in a Dutch oven, stir to combine. Then add the beans and stir to evenly coat with the mixture.

Press the onion half and salt pork into the middle of the beans. Pour in boiling water to cover.

Cover the pot and bake for 5 hours without stirring. Add hot water as necessary to keep beans covered with water at all times. Uncover the pot for the last half hour of cooking so the beans will brown.

Serves 8

Per serving: 425 calories, 18 g protein, 61 g carbohydrate, 13 g fat (4 g saturated), 12 mg cholesterol, 792 mg sodium, 20 g fiber

Breakfast started with half of a white grapefruit and a glass of orange juice. The grapefruit arrived by mail yesterday. I ordered them from Sun Harvest Citrus. Later Gretchen made mushroom and cheddar omelets and toast from her oatmeal honey bread with strawberry jam. I weighed 155 pounds.

Rosemary Hignett, the Head of Food Labelling and Standards at the [Food Standards Agency], said: “We know that consumers often place particular value on terms like fresh, pure and natural when buying food.

“They rightly expect foods labelled with these terms to be different in some way from products that don’t carry these descriptions.

“For instance, they don’t expect items labelled ‘fresh’ to have a four-week shelf life, they don’t expect items labelled as pure to have added ingredients and they don’t expect products with ingredients described as natural to have used artificial preservatives and additives.” [BBC]

Breakfast was a half of a glass of orange juice and two sausage and scrambled egg wraps. I weighed 154 pounds.

I had a morning meeting at the Nittany Lion Inn with another networking vendor. The Inn provided food. I had two servings of yogurt with granola. I walked there and back — about three miles total.

Dinner was vegetable lo mien, I had two servings and then had a couple hands full of peanuts for dessert.

I was reading Leah’s latest post over at Struggle in a Bungalow Kitchen. She is talking about an article in Newsweek called “Takeout Nation”:

I definitely do not live in Take-Out Nation.� In fact, I laugh to think that I have pretty much cooked myself right into a corner; we almost never want to go out anymore because the food available in this town’s restaurants, fast food or otherwise, is simply not as good as what we can eat at home. [Leah Adams]

Gretchen and I have noticed the same thing. After my parents retired and moved to Florida, we used to really look forward to going down, not only because we would get to visit with them, but because we also got to eat out at so many good restaurants. For various health reasons, they can no longer go out to eat, but we have no complaints when we visit them. My Mother is an excellent cook and they both have excellent taste in wines.

Also, we used to budget eating out once a week. As we learned to make more things better, we cut that back to once a month. Now we almost never go out to eat. We feel that we can make better tasting food, with higher quality ingredients, for much less money, at home than we can find in any restaurant, and we have a great time doing it.

Breakfast this morning was a glass of orange juice. I weighed 154 pounds.

We had a meeting with a networking vendor this morning and they brought in Krispy Kremes. I had two — I think I’ll call that lunch.

I was reading : : mum-mum : : eat-eat : : this morning and saw that Wena has the hots for the new Canon PowerShot S1 IS. I have to admit it is a sweet camera. Unfortunately, I just bought a Minolta DiMAGE Xt. The Canon has a log going for it over the Minolta, but what I was going for was size. The Xt is tiny! It easily fits into my shirt pocket so I can take it with me everywhere. For instance, today when I was out walking over lunch — maybe three miles round trip — I walked by the Nittany Lion Shrine.

Of course, that was planned and since I knew I wanted a picture of it, I could have carried along any camera. Where you need an omnipresent camera is when you are walking along and discover the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile™.

Here is the conversation going on behind me as I took this picture:

“What the…”

“Who would park the Wienermobile next to Thomas building?”

“Are they giving out free hot dogs?”

“My life is complete.”

Literally seconds after I took this picture, it drove away. That is why you need a pocket camera.

As Fortune recommended the other day, Gretchen made a boule on our stone. We used a recipe for Oatmeal Honey Bread. I thought it was a little heavy, but tasty. Gretchen liked it (and gave me dirty looks for saying I thought it was heavy). Dinner was the last slice of that turkey pie with a small green salad and a slice of the oatmeal honey bread.

Breakfast this morning was a glass of orange juice. I weighed 154 pounds.

I walked over to the new IST Building — maybe three miles round trip — and grabbed a Penn State Creamery low-fat cherry yogurt.

Dinner was another slice of that turkey pie with a Waldorf salad and a hand full of peanuts for dessert.

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of steel-cut oats with brown sugar and milk with a glass of orange juice.

Gretchen and I split one of our little turkey pies for lunch with a glass of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon.

Gretchen and I worked on perfecting our pizza technique tonight. This one is sautéed onions and peppers. We split it with two glasses of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon and had a handful of peanuts afterwards.

The cheese on this pizza is mozzarella. We find it a little bland. If anyone could suggest an appropriate cheese that was slightly sharper and perhaps a little saltier, please leave a comment. Thanks!