I just left the baby on the couch for a moment to go fix her a bottle. When I returned, she was cooing and smiling, happy as could be, playing with a condom wrapper. So that tells you how our night went.

Last night’s meal (maybe the third one I’ve cooked for Nate in so many years) was flawless. Despite the fact that he called it The Dare Me Not to Fart Meal. A classic cheese fondue accompanied by perfectly roasted Yukon Gold potatoes, wedges of crisp fiji apples and bosc pears, morsels of crusty baguette, and a simple arugula and endive salad with a sprinkling of slivered almonds, julienned apples, and fresh chevre. In non-food writer speak, that translates to: I’m not a seasoned cook, but I can pick out expensive fruit, cut it up, and put it in bowls. Just working with what I got.

I decided to break open one of the many bottles of champagne that line the bottom of our fridge. Like the fabulous overpriced baby outfits you receive as gifts, you save them for special occasions. And save them, and save them, and save them…

I selected a hefty bottle of Veuve, thinking it would be a little more special than whatever else was in there. We popped the cork, toasted to something appropriately romantic and cheesy, and took our first sip at which point Nate’s eyes bugged out of his head. He snatched the bottle off the table and stared disbelievingly at the label.

“1989? You opened the ’89 Veuve Cliquot?”

“Why, is that bad?”

“It’s a $500 bottle of champagne.”

Oops.

We don’t know how this fancypants champagne found its way into our relatively modest refrigerator. Our best guess is that someone as clueless about ’89 Veuve as I am regifted it to us when we moved into our apartment. No one likes us enough to give us a $500 bottle intentionally. Nate then went to the computer and started googling it — the only reason I would have allowed a trip to the computer during Valentine’s Day dinner –and determined that it was in fact just a $400 bottle of champagne. Which only diminished our enjoyment of it by one-fifth.

He spent the next half hour posing for pictures with the bottle, a series he’s entitled “Me and My BFF.”