Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

This year my kids will be home for Valentine's day, so we will be doing a simple yet fun dinner with them. I tried to do a nice Valentine's dinner last night just for myself and my boyfriend. Ugh.
I had planned to braise venison. I sent him home with the marinade and he put the meat in on time and everything. But then he tells me that he didn't realize that I needed a tougher cut of meat for a braise and he had taken out a backstrap tenderloin. Sigh. We grilled it and it turned out okay but not quite right since the marinade was intended to be used in combination with the other braising liquids..
I roasted butternut squash tossed in butter/brown sugar/cinnamon/chipotle. Tasted marvelous but there was too much butter so there was a pool of it in the pan and it the squash didn't carmelize right.
The epic failure of the night, though, was my attempt at a new Cinnamon Cherry Choclate cake recipe. It turned out exactly as it was supposed to. Unfortunately it tasted horrible! We spit it out and just ate our vanilla ice cream instead. I even went back and double checked the recipe to make sure I didn't do anything wrong. Just awful!!

@salpico - I was hoping for a MIL story from you...

We are having spaghetti for dinner tonight :-)

Braised venison with roasted butternut squash and a salad. Cinnamon cherry almond flour individual cakes with vanilla ice cream.

Didn't actually do any special food for the superbowl. Went with the easiest chicken recipe around - put boneless skinless breasts in baking dish, cover with marinara sauce, bake until done. Serve with brown rice on the side. Freshly grated parm over the whole thing. Yumm and no effort involved.

Although funny, the one I saw had nothing to do with pizza either.

I agree with the chicken stock plan!

I use Amazon for a ton of stuff. I buy 6-in-1 tomatoes for pizza from Amazon because I can't find them locally. I buy almost all of my gluten free flours using the subscribe and save feature on Amazon - saves me huge time from having to run all over to find the flours plus it ends up being way cheaper than the grocery store (these are not things that are readily available where I live).

I agree with teachertalk. Should be fine.
I also recommend bringing a ton of wipes - you are going to have a huge mess. Red velvet cake? Gonna have lots of stains from that one.

I had to laugh, because my first thought when I saw the subject line was "Everything in sight".
I actually did a bunch of precooking and froze lots of things like lasagna, shepherds pie filling (thawed out and topped with fresh mashed potatoes before putting in oven), chili etc. Those were more used when I went back to work and was managing a baby and a toddler and working full time. When he was a newborn I had plenty of time to cook actual dinners.
Another thing that I did was precook a ton of chicken breast and freeze them. Whenever I wanted to add them to a pasta dish or a salad or whatever, I just had to thaw them, spice them up and add them. I still do that!

25th would work well for me - no need for a babysitter then.

Love this one:
http://cleaneatingmag.com/Recipes/Recipe/Cod-with-Spicy-Orange-Black-Cherry-Sauce-Couscous.aspx

Love my cheap but decent santoku.