I don’t recommend this gesture unless you are absolutely sure it will be well-received. It worked for me in this instance as I was confident that he still carried a pretty powerful torch for us. My Cusack-with-a-Boombox moment could be your grounds for a restraining order. It occurred to me ever so briefly when he didn’t answer the phone right away on my arrival. By the grace of white beans and pretzel bites, it worked in our favor and provided us with a whirlwind make-up story.

On my first ever successful Valentine’s Day, my date made us homemade tacos, with mango salsa from my favorite restaurant. For dessert, I made chocolate covered strawberries, which are quite a bit easier than you might think and nowhere near the premium you’d pay on them if purchased in store. We both decided it was our favorite valentine’s day; low key, relaxed. And i think it may have been a strong contributing factor to us sealing the deal on this being an actual “boyfriend/girlfriend” type relationship.

In appreciation of these memories and hope for you to create your own, I’ll close with a simple recipe that can be adapted to almost any fruit. I also tried this with prunes when on a visit to New Zealand where they us prunes to make raisinette style prunes. Rather than chopping them up, I dropped mine in whole. The result were giant, ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’-style treats, which I think we can all agree is the way to go with this.

Boil water in a small to medium sized pot

Place broken up pieces of your favorite chocolate in  a glass or metal bowl, balance carefully on the pot (make sure to use an oven mitt to hold the bowl steadily). Add a bit of your favorite cooking oil if you are having trouble softening the chocolate.

Drop fruit in chocolate (use a fondue skewer for more control if you have one.), give it a little spin to cover it.

Place your chocolate covered fruit on a sheet of wax paper on top of a plate or cookie sheet.

Place in fridge for an hour or freezer for 20 minutes, and voila, you are now a casanova. Enjoy and thank me when you’re gettin’ it later.