A Recipe and a Love Story for Valentine’s Day

Hey y’all, with Valentine’s Day approaching in the middle of the work week, I woke up this morning with a game plan. After getting a ton of Saturday to-dos out of the way, I got busy searching for something super chocolatey to make for my man! Here’s the finished product:

Here’s the recipe:

Chocolate Caramel Sweetheart Brownies

6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

one cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1 cup all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup chopped pecans

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Melt cocoa and butter on low. Transfer to a mixing bowl and cream together with sugar. Gradually blend in eggs one at a time. In separate bowl sift flour, baking powder and salt. Stir into chocolate mix. Add nuts and vanilla extract. Stir gently. Spread into greased 8″ square pan and bake at 350 degrees for twenty minutes. Top with scoops of ice cream and swirl with chocolate and caramel syrup. Yum!

And here’s that love story I promised…

I was midway through my senior year of high school, counting the days until I could start what I considered my real life in an out-of-state college. I planned to study broadcast journalism and travel the world telling important life changing stories. I remember telling my mother that I’d never marry a farmer and I’d never live in our small town. (As a farmer’s daughter who was weary of praying for it to start raining and then praying for it to stop raining, I was bent on marrying a nine-t0-fiver and living some place else, any place else.) Mama cautioned me not to be so adamant about what I wouldn’t do because I might end up eating my words. I laughed. Mama laughed last.

I write these words from my home in that same small town, the wife of one hard-working farmer. At any given time of the farming season you can find me praying for it to start raining or stop raining– and I would do it all over again. But to tell that story, we’ll have to go back to that senior year and the girl who fell in crazy, instant got-to-be-with-this-one-forever love with a college boy who had graduated mid-term and came home to join his dad on the family farm.