Dr. Dolores Lamb and her lab members celebrated Valentine’s Day by hosting their annual aphrodisiac lunch. Lamb, director of the Center for Reproductive Medicine at Baylor, and her lab team have held the luncheon for the last 17 years.

Lamb and her team start by researching ingredients that have aphrodisiac properties, and then prepare recipes at home, using the same skills they apply in the lab.

“They have to experiment and develop new skills, cook, work hard and play hard while being respectful of their colleagues religious and medically driven food choices, such as being vegetarian, celiac or gluten free or having food allergies. All of these are good skills to have in life, and everyone has fun,” said Lamb.

Members of her team are required to get creative with their dish, contributing dishes that are made in the U.S. and around the world.

Some of the dishes made this year included chili, cranberry meatballs, rice, salad, wrapped peppers, cupcakes, asparagus with parmesan and many others. Each year two winners are selected based on most ingredients with aphrodisiac properties used in a dish and best-tasting dish.

This year, Boryana Zhelayzkova, graduate student and research assistant in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, won in the category of most aphrodisiac ingredients, with 17 in a garlic shrimp salad. Danielle Dailey, medical technologist in the Department of Urology, won for best-tasting dish with a strawberry cheesecake.

Get a glimpse of the annual lunch in this video.