From Diana Rattray,
Your Guide to Southern Food.
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Valentine's Day is quite an event in the South! Heart shaped cookies, petit fours, and cakes and pies with "I Love You" written in icing are filling the aisles at the local grocery stores.

The color, flavor, and smell of food all play an important part in a successful romantic meal. The Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation in Chicago discovered that kitchen smells, like cinnamon buns, doughnuts, and pumpkin pie, may be more powerful than the finest perfume! Other aromas with positive effects were vanilla, strawberries, lavender, and black licorice.

The authors of "Food As Foreplay" say it all in this excerpt: "...an aphrodisiac isn't something you buy from a gnarled old woman who lives in a tree. It is the resonance, tone, timbre that YOU bring to cooking. Love radiates from your heart, seeps into the food and gives it the mystical quality that ignites the soul. The real aphrodisiac is you."

Whether you're serving an elegant meal or everyone's favorite spaghetti or pizza (heart-shaped), do it with some candles, good wine or champagne if you like, and a loving smile!

Recipes

Chocolate Truffles
Cherry Chocolate Cookies
Chocolate Hazelnut Cookies
Layered Brownie Torte
Individual Chocolate Bread Pudding Cups
Individual Baked Alaskas
Coconut Nests for Ice Cream
Cream Cheese Cookies
Easy S'Mores
Southern Pralines
Cream Pralines
Marshmallow Fudge
Hazelnut Shortbread
Chocolate Bread Pudding
Baklava
Frozen Chocolate Delight
Strawberry Cupcakes
Chocolate Covered Cherries
Sour Cream Fudge
Five-Minute Chocolate Fudge
Cheesecake Cookies
Chocolate Fudge
Chocolate Meringue Cookies
Matrimonial Bars
Buckeyes
Sugar and Spice Cookies
Strawberry Delights
Choco-Marshmallow Bars
Bourbon Pecan Pralines
Raspberry Bonbons
Butter Pecan Turtle Bars
Easy Mock Party Truffles
Coconut Corn Flake Cookies
Favorite Peanut Butter Fudge
Heavenly Hash Candy
Macaroon Souffle
Orange Balls
Quick Peanut Butter Bon Bons