52 New Things -- Week 7 -- Be My Valentine

Ah, happy childhood memories.

Valograms were the big thing at our little junior high and high school. For twenty-five cents, you could send a regular valogram (your message written on a heart-shaped pink paper), and for seventy-five cents, you could send your message with a cupcake.

On Valentine's Day, we'd sit in class and wait for the delivery girls to come around. It was always delivery girls. The club that did all the baking was called Future Homemakers of America. It was led by Mrs. Fondroy, the Home Ec. teacher. My freshman year of high school, at one of the first meetings I went to after joining the club, the girls all voted to change the club name to Leaders of the Future since "Homemakers" didn't encompass all we were destined to be. It was 1989. Feminism took a while to get to small-town Iowa, but it came eventually.

So anyway, Valentine's Day was what Valentine's Day is to most teenage girls: I'd sit at my desk, anxious to see if anyone would send me a Valogram, secretly hoping I'd get one from the boy I had a crush on.

But unlike every nerdy girl in every teen movie everywhere who transforms into some magic beauty and rides off into the sunset with a hottie, I just spent my Valentine's day stuffing my face with cupcakes from friends.

Those cupcakes were awesome. Every year they were the same -- chocolate cupcakes with a creamy center and white frosting, topped with a Jube Jel Cherry Heart. It's when my obsession with Jube Jel Cherry Hearts began.

(Sidenote: I've been trying to eat healthier lately, so this year was the first time I really thought about those Jube Jel Cherry Hearts. I mean, I know there's nothing healthy in them and that by eating them I'm just putting unnatural colors and additives and preservatives and stuff into my body. Reading the label confirmed my suspicions that there was nothing healthy about them, but they are SO GOOD. And it's only once a year, right? And they bring me such happiness every February. A few days after analyzing the Jube Jel Cherry Hearts label, I read the label on what I thought was good-for-me whole grain bread. There were more ingredients, many unpronounceable, on the bread label than on the Jube Jel Cherry Heart label! I went out and bought two more bags of gummy goodness.)

At some point in college, missing those yummy cupcakes every year, I asked my mom to ask Mrs. Fondroy for the recipe so I could replicate them at home. She gave my mom a typed-out sheet of paper with the ingredients and instructions, complete with hand-written tips. It seemed like a lot of work. I tucked it away in the back of my recipe box.

Well, it's been twenty years now since I ate a Valogram cupcake. That number shocks me. My class will be having a twenty-year reunion sometime this summer. Some of my classmates have kids who have graduated from high school. How did that happen? So anyway, I decided it was high time to dust off that recipe and make some grown-up Valograms.

(Sidenote #2: I briefly considered Valentine cards for our whole Christmas card mailing list, since we didn't get Christmas cards sent out this year. In all honesty, the thank you notes from our June wedding still weren't all done, and the thought of undertaking another mass mailing was too much for me. Maybe everyone would like a little card and a "here's what we did in 2012" letter in February, because how many of those do you get every year? But then I thought, do our friends and family really want to celebrate the holiday of love with a cheesy photo card from us? And then I thought, oh my gosh, Valentine's Day is in two days? There's no way I could get that done in two days. Personal deliveries were in order -- score one for the local friends!)

So yes, I made cupcakes, complete with the creamy centers. (The recipe called for Crisco to make that creamy stuff. Yep, Crisco. I'm pretty sure I have never purchased Crisco in my entire adult life. I now have two and a half bricks of leftover Crisco in my cupboard. I'm not sure how to use that up -- fry some chicken?)

My creamy centers were much more sparse than Mrs. Fondroy's, though. I guess I don't have what it takes to be a stellar Home Ec. teacher. But they were definitely edible. Kevin and I both taste-tested them as soon as they were frosted. Nummmmy!! Not as good as they were twenty years ago, but still good.

I delivered them to friends on Valentine's Day. It made me happy in the way I always feel happy when doing something nice for someone. Well, happy and slightly concerned that the friends receiving the cupcakes might think I was a wacko. I mean, when's the last time someone knocked on your door and gave you cupcakes?

In other Valentine's Day news, Kevin did awesome this year. On our first Valentine's Day together, he gave me a friendship bracelet in the colors of the Colombian flag. When he handed me a box of suckers for our second Valentine's Day, I thought the situation was hopeless and I was destined to crummy Valentine's Day gifts for the rest of my life. Tucked inside the sucker box, though, was a smaller box holding a diamond ring. Yay! Not hopeless!

This year he brought home tulips (my favorite flowers), chocolates (which I actually shared with him -- look how much I've grown!), suckers (a sentimental reminder of last year -- what a guy, huh??), and a gift certificate for a massage (whoo-hoo!). So he definitely did great.

I, on the other hand, had a huge Valentine's fail. I planned to get him a beer making kit, since making beer and wine is one of his hobbies but something he hasn't done since we moved north. After some internet research, I drove to the one place in La Crosse that sells beer making supplies. Here's what I found:

If you can't read that, the second word in the store name is "intimates." Lingerie instead of beer stuff. Ugh. When I went back to the website, I found that it was last updated in 2010. I guess people in Wisconsin love to drink beer but not make it themselves. Sigh.

I ended up making him a coupon for the beer kit of his choice from any online store he wants. Lame, I know.

Valentine's Day 2013: Kevin, 1; Tiffany, 0.