On The Verge of Tears

So, May 17th was the first anniversary of my marriage to Monika.  This year, our actual anniversary fell on Monday, which isn’t the best of days to celebrate or go out to dinner.  Instead, we decided to revisit the beautiful place we got married for our anniversary dinner, the Valley Green Inn.

The VGI has great vegan and vegetarian food, but you wouldn’t exactly know it at first glance.  They don’t really have regular vegetarian choices on their menu.  However, I knew that they had tons of choices, so I emailed them to ask if it was possible if they could prepare us something special.

With better restaurants, this is a must.  As an email exchange I had with one of the managers of VGI confirmed, chef’s often enjoy the opportunity to cook something new.  Specifically, he said that their head chef was going to go to the local market to buy items that were fresh and in season for our dinner.

We arrived in the Wissahickon Valley around 530 for our 6 PM reservation.  It was a mild night and the park was teeming, so we hiked in from the upper lot.  When we checked in at the hostess desk, she wished us a happy anniversary, and we got to sit outside on the porch just 50 feet away from where we were married last year.

Of course, we order a bottle of Champagne.  The waitress handed us menus, but then quickly realized we were “the vegetarians.”  I told her we were eating whatever the cook wanted to serve us and that’s exactly how it went down.  We started with two fresh salads, and our entree was a mix of vegetables and sauces, all of which were teeming with flavor and quite satisfying.  I also had a martini and Monika stuck to the champagne.

We almost never order dessert.  Most of the time, it’s too full of fat, and neither of us like cake at all.  But, we decided we should try some and ordered a sorbet  with fruit “leather.”  When it arrived, the chef had carefulyl written in chocolate, on the rim of the plate, “Happy 1st Anniversary.”  Really, above and beyond our expectations by far.

I really didn’t care what the meal cost.  I had told the chef originally that I would be happy to pay whatever price he thought was fair for the off-the-menu entrees he was serving us.  Well, I have no idea what that price might have been.  Our entrees weren’t on the bill at all.

The waitress informed us that our entire meal, drinks and all, was on the house.  I can’t explain how floored we were at the level of graciousness The Valley Green Inn showed in helping us make our first anniversary dinner a special one.  The waitress got a pretty damn nice tip from us.

Then, we took some pictures at the exact spot we were married.  I really can’t believe it’s been a year already.  As time goes on, there may never again be such a collection of wonderful people at one of our parties.  I hope, at least, a party of two will return here every year for the rest of our lives.

Oh, and the title of this blog…that refers to the type gift one is to give your wife on your first anniversary.  So, this is what she got from me this year.

a beautiful writing journal...

...our first blotter art piece; it is the start of a new collection...

This entry was posted on May 21, 2010 at 4:21 PM and is filed under Good Times, Reflections, Vegan and Vegetarian Lifestyle with tags valley green inn, vegan, vegetarian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.