happy chinese new year...

and valentine's day! valentine's day has sure come a long way. you can click here to read history.com's extremely non-committal article about the orgins of valentine's day. an interesting fact from this essay: 85% of valentine's are purchased by women. i did in fact have to buy some valentine's this year. i forgot to grab the free ones we're allowed to give the kids at work, so i ran to smith's and bought some two dollar batman valentines and scrawled my kid's names on them. truth is they'll never even notice that i got them a valentine, but you know, it's what you do when you work at a school.
this year i learned how to make cheese fondue. my past experience with fondue has been chocolate fondue from a fountain at weddings and banquets. and it always tasted nasty. based on these experiences i decided that i hated fondue. so when i was invited to a fondue party i figured it would not be so great. i was in charge of the cheese fondue (which i'd never had before). i found a recipe and whipped it up. not so bad. don't use swiss cheese in fondue though. it makes it all clumpy and won't stay melted like other cheeses will. my friend had fondue chocolate chips. they melted quickly and hardened on the food quickly. but it tasted okay. not like the nasty pants fountains from the weddings. but last night i discovered the trick to really great fondue. get a really good chocolate bar and melt it it the microwave. not hershey's or anything like that. real chocolate. no silly fondue pot is necessary. it stays melted for awhile without any extra heat. and it tastes amazing...no matter what you put it on ;)