Sweet Sixteen it ain’t.

There isn’t much love for the 16th wedding anniversary. Even we didn’t do that much for it–I neglected to add it to our calendar as I was more concerned about national holidays–although, in our defense, we did, technically, celebrate it twice.

Even tradition isn’t a big fan of the 16th. The lists of traditional anniversary gifts are fairly detailed until the 15th wedding anniversary (lace, ivory, crystal, very small rocks), and then they skip to the 20th as if they are so shocked you’ve made it that far they don’t know what to say for a few years.

(Note the librarians at the Chicago Public Library seem to have recommended gravy boats as gifts but, well, yeah. Well.)

In our case, we already had a few bottles of wine on hand and She Who Must Be Obeyed stocked up on French bread and cheese, beer, and a few other side dishes.

However, our natural laziness resulted in an anniversary dinner of chicken nuggets, bread, cheese, beer and potato chips. (She Who Must Be Obeyed counted our beer festival trip as our wedding dinner.)

Because I felt we should do a little more I offered to cook pork steaks tonight. However, once again we opted for cheese, bread and potato chips as side dishes (which means, technically, I served mean and potatoes) along side wine and Guinness beer.

(Note: in our family, beer and wine count as vegetables.)

It turned out well. The pork steak was just at the edge of over-cooked (which means I over-cooked it) but the girls snarfed it down rather quickly.

She Who Must Be Obeyed also broke out a secret cache of cheese made from Yuzu and jalepenos–A near perfect beef food–and we enjoyed some quiet time together.

Next year is our 17th anniversary. Unfortunately, tradition won’t care for a few more years, which means I’ll need to start thinking of some original ideas.