Valentine’s Surf & Turf

Happy President’s Day bloggers (and readers who are non-bloggers…love you too, but comment and leave some love so I know who you are!).

If you missed it, go check out my recap from my St. Augustine, FL Valentine’s day trip. My husband and I had a very enjoyable first married Valentine’s Day. I think our favorite part was the lighthouse, so fun!

One of our stops in St. Augustine’s Historic District was the Vino del Grotto Winery. I know many people go to the San Sebastian Winery when they visit St. Augustine, but having a little knowledge about wines/ the wine making process, I know that Florida grape wines really just can’t be that tasty because Florida is not at ALL a conducive grape-growing environment!! The really cool thing about the Vino del Grotto is that all of their wines aren’t grape-made, they are made from tropical Florida fruits! If it hadn’t been Valentine’s Day/ the store hadn’t been so busy, I seriously would have tried every single wine the store offered! As it was, the wines we tried were:

• Blueberry Blue: Sparkling (a sparkling blueberry wine – probably in my top 3 that we tried).
• Honey Wine (basically a mead, made from Florida Orange Blossom Honey – WAY too sweet, disgustingly so in my opinion)
• Mango Mama (mango wine – made from purely fermented mangoes, also too sweet. We tried it as we were thinking of getting the Mango Champagne).
• Sangria – Hurricane Class 5 (a super tasty white sangria; their best-selling wine; made from their Passion Fruit Wine, Watermelon Wine, Key Lime Wine, Mango Wine, and Pineapple Wine). **This was what we ended up buying**
• Sangria Smoothie Mix (she just had us try this after we tried the Sangria)
• Kiwi Wine (this was actually a lot better than I thought it would be, and probably with the blueberry and white sangria also in our top 3).

Obviously we had a fun time! If you check out the link to the Vino del Grotto website, you’ll see many more yummy looking wines that we’ll definitely try next time we’re in St. Augustine! We ended up buying the delicious white sangria and I used that as inspiration for our surf and turf Valentine’s Dinner:

To be kind to our wallets, we opted to make our own romantic Valentine’s dinner and dessert. All of the ingredients (excluding the wine) totaled $18.43, and that includes an extra Filet Mignon, dessert for about a week, and extra ingredients leftover! I don’t think I need to tell you how much we saved by not eating out.

The Menu:

Filet Mignon grilled in a cracked black pepper, kosher salt, paprika, red pepper, garlic, and marjoram rubbed; grilled salmon marinated in lemon and fresh mandarin orange juice with a sprinkling of the same steak rub; fat free sour cream mashed potatoes; Caesar salad.

(Check out those day-after miniature roses for $1.25!! yeah yeah!). I probably only ate half of the salmon fillet, gave the rest to Ross, and had about three small bites of his steak.

SO delicious. One of those meals that later throughout the night you just keep mentioning, “wow, dinner was so good! I can’t believe how good dinner was!”.

Dessert will have to be in another post later this week, because I have to photograph it! And this is getting long.

Please come back later to see what my husband is cooking for dinner (it’s a surprise!), to see our menu for the week, and to help us decide between Carnival cruises for our first anniversary trip!!

Have a great evening!!