Busy week. Made dinners at home in honor of Valentine’s Day.  Decorated the house with fresh flowers from Irvine Flowers on Jeffrey, reallly nice selection.  Made Salmon Cakes from fresh Costco Salmon out of the “Crab Cake” recipe from William Sonoma but used my own ingredients, including the Panko Bread crumbs.  Made the aioli sauce from the back of the box.  Had Noel stop at Costco because I did not want pork chops I NEEDED FILET MIGNON!  He grills the best steaks and that is what he did that night…I also made a couple of side dishes, some Rice Pilaf and asparagus of course.  Dessert was lemon cheesecake bars and another chocolate marshmellow treat that was kind of gross.  Reed did not like them because I made them out of cinnamon cereal instead of graham crackers.  I also substitute ingredients if I don’t have them.  Oh well sometimes it does not work out.  I worked on my cookbook all week and the gals at Office Depot did a great job. I love Drew and Liz at the business center.  They put up with me and my several drafts of this little ridiculous cookbook.  Anyway, it has been very fun.  Went to my PBS committee meeting Wednesday, we are done with the tastings thank goodness.  Then I hopped on over to my Christmas at the Ritz wrap up committee meeting at the Island Hotel.  We had fine champagne (the best in my opinion Vieux Cliqueo or however you spell it) and fresh strawberries that were huge from our chair, Anne Manassero’s, farm.  After we all went to the bar for amazing appetizers and Sonoma Curtrer chardonnay.  The new General Manager and Barbara Eidsen let us sample the truffle popcorn, beef sliders, pizza margherita, tuna tartare,etc.  Anne hosted the meeting and gave us all crystal candle holders with a cute artichoke in them as a thank you to our committee.  We raised about $200,000 at the event for the Chapman University film school.  After this event I stopped by the Doubletree to see college pal Dabney who was in town for the night on business.  They just happened to have a huge USC OC alumni event so I was able to buy two KJ chardonnay’s for us from the cash bar, ha ha. Too much going on this week so maybe I will start another blog for the next few days!