Date Night: Dinner & a Movie

Since getting married, Brian and I have had a Date Night every week. For us this involves dinner (either out or a nice dinner in) and usually a show. Thanks to my job at an arts nonprofit I get tickets to lots of shows either free or heavily discounted. In the past few weeks we've been to the Symphony twice, seen a couple fantastic musicals, a horrid play, and last night we attended a showing of our local Film Festival. It was, appropriately, a collection of short films titled "Date Night."

Since this was a work-night Date Night, dinner had to be on the table pretty fast to make it to our movie. For a fast dinner, I always make a plan and cook ahead. So, we decided on pizza and I planned accordingly:

For toppings, roasted red bell peppers were in the freezer, a jar of caramelized onions in the fridge. (My secret weapon. You know, if I were a kitchen super hero -- which I kinda am.) We bought sausage and mozzarella during our regular grocery trip this past weekend. On Wednesday night I threw together my favorite pizza dough, spiked with olive oil and white wine and let it sit in the fridge overnight. I also opened a large can of crushed tomatoes, minced 3 large cloves of garlic and let them reduce and thicken on the stove top, for a super-easy red sauce. On Thursday morning I pulled out the pizza dough to let it rise all day.

Fast forward to Date Night! When I get home from work and know I'm going to baking something relatively soon, I turn the oven on the minute I walk in our back door to the kitchen, before I've hung up my keys, shrugged off my coat and kissed my husband hello. Because everything was prepped, we opened wine (red for Brian, white for me), and he crumbled and cooked sausage on the stove top while I rolled out the pizza dough. Within 15 minutes the oven was blaring hot, the pizza was topped and we were good to go. We stood around and chatted while the pizza baked, then sat down at a cleared off dining table with candles lit and gave thanks for all the many blessings in our lives -- then dug into hot, delicious pizza!

The rest of the night was a success- the films were a mix between funny, adorable, tear-jerking and downright bad. We stopped for frozen custard on the way home (Mint chip for Brian, rocky road for me.)

As newlyweds, it seems like a no-brainer that we would go out all the time, laugh together, smooch inappropriately in public, etc. But we're kinda homebodies and now that we're living together, there's nothing we like more than snuggling up on our comfy couch (aka Sunday Movie Night). So to balance all the couch snuggling, we force ourselves to get a little dressed up, leave the house and hold hands in public, over drinks or ice cream (or frankly, both). We both want kids, sooner rather than later, so we're consciously taking time to enjoy this pre-children part of our lives. We're grateful for how much fun we have together.