Valentine's Day 2014: Home Pedicures and Bourbon Steaks

For a lot of couples, Valentine's Day means a long wait in a crowded restaurant for an overpriced meal. We like to keep our February 14th an at-home celebration, which not only saves money, but lets us do plenty of things you can't get away with in public.

Yeah, while I was talking about *that* thing that first just jumped into your mind, I also meant our at-home pedicures! Below you can see our Valentine's Day spa kit. First we fill a bath with epsom salt and bubble bath to soak our feet, when we use our exfoliating gloves on each other's feet and legs. Next up is the drying, scrubbing, clipping, and covering in lotion, before a refreshing face mask treatment - all for significantly less than it would cost to actually hit a spa or nail salon, and we can do it in our pajamas!

But what about dinner? We've been trying out different cuts of meat than we normally use after the fabulous success of the skirt steak with chimichurri we made earlier this month, so for Valentine's Day we went with a beef favorite that doesn't usually hit our table: New York strip steak.

The night before we mixed together a marinade of Fighting Cock bourbon, dijon mustard, liquid smoke, garlic, brown sugar and oil.

The steaks are marinated in a ziploc bag for about 24 hours so the flavor really has time to soak in and the steaks get nice and moist. Before we start cooking though, we've got to prepare one of our sides, which will be simple baked vegetables: broccoli, baby carrots, zucchini, and yellow squash.

After dicing the veggies, they get tossed in oil, sea salt, and pepper and then baked in the oven.

Now it's finally time to pull those steaks out of the marinade and throw them on a super hot skillet for a few minutes on each side.

The New York steaks were so big we ended up cutting them in half and having part 2 of this meal the next night! Here's one fresh off the skillet with a cooked outside but slightly rare inside.

Besides the veggie side, we're also having cheddar biscuits and loaded mashed potatoes.

To take these biscuits up a notch we're not only baking cheddar in them, we're topping them with a melted butter sauce.

Here's my finished plate: delicious tender steak with a sweet bourbon flavor, baked veggies, buttery biscuit, and mashed potatoes blended with sour cream and chives and topped with bacon and cheddar.