This Valentine’s week has me thinking of chocolate and flowers, two wonderful symbols and facilitators of romance and love.

In the east, in India, there is the lotus flower as a picture of the chakras, so there seems to be a connection between flowers and a person’s soul.  A soul opening up has a relationship to falling in love, and to loving.

The rose is a classic symbol of love in western literature and among western lovers.  It has both beauty, and also, with its thorns, a certain amount of experience.  This contrasted with the lily, a flower of innocence.

In the final lines of T. S. Eliot’s poem Four Quartets, he writes: And all shall be well and/All manner of things shall be well/When the tongues of flame are in-folded/Into the crowned knot of fire/And the fire and the rose are one.

The rose is not consumed by the fire, but one with the fire.  We can hope that for our love life too — on fire, but not burned.

Of course, in addition to their loving message, cut flowers bring color and cheer to any home.  Try to go green:  grow your own flowers –or is it snowing?  Pick a bouquet of wildflowers (if you can find any in winter time).  Or when buying, choose organic, look for the Veriflora seal.  Organic bouquet sells flowers grown in a sustainable way.

Though love and flowers may be intertwined, Valentine’s Day has only fairly recently included the exchange of flowers, it is February after all.  Formerly people had to content themselves with pen, ink and paper.  A little poem is always appreciated around Valentine’s Day.  This brings to mind the old poem “Roses are Red, Violets are Blue, Sugar is Sweet and I love you.“   This catchy verse gets right to the point and is believed to be derived from a poem written by Edmund Spenser in 1590.

And actually, violets were associated with Valentine’s Day in the in the early 1900′s, when florists first recognized Valentine’s Day as an opportunity.  Purple (for violets) was also the color associated with the celebration.  But violets are short-lived, which is hopefully not a reflection on (all) romance, and by the mid-century, roses and carnations and pinks and reds were well established as a Valentine’s Day tradition.

Chocolate is a wonderful food, intimately associated with love and romance, a sweet for the sweet.  Chocolate contains several chemicals that promote good feelings, some of which are the same as chemicals the brain produces on its own when a person falls in love.  And falling in love is just the point on Valentine’s day, so a little chocolate might help with the mood.  Casanova mentions chocolate as a stimulant for love in his Memoirs, and he apparently knew what he was talking about.  Or he at least had an idea about the seduction part.

With chocolatiers (is that a word?) popping up all over the place, going local is a great way to support your local sweet makers.

My problem with chocolate these days is the sugar — though certainly the extra high energy of the sugar and also the caffeine in chocolate might assist a romantic evening.  However, like any good self-denying descendant of the puritans, I choose to refuse the pleasures of refined sugar and corn syrup.

Luckily, these days it is easy to find chocolate sweetened in other manners, say with agave or honey.  And I like raw chocolate too (though I wouldn’t thumb up my nose at cooked, mind you).   Blissed Out Chocolates are heavenly; they are raw, sweetened with Agave.  I like the mint flavored especially.  Hail Merry has yummy raw chocolates too, their Miracle Tart is, well, miraculous.

Chocolate with strawberries is a winning combination, and Valentine’s Day bonus:  Strawberries look like little hearts!

If you are reading this and your mouth is watering and it is snowing outside, well don’t forget the pleasures of hot chocolate.  Daily Juice makes a wonderful hot chocolate mix called Chocolate Prana, it’s got a little kick of cayenne in it.  They might send you a jar if you ask them.  But I’m not sure the puritans would approve.

What are your favorite flowers and chocolates?  Or perhaps a Valentine’s Day massage and bubble bath is more your (leisurely) speed.  Just enjoy your Valentine’s Day!  Fill it with love and pleasure.  And take it slow (ly).  It’s more fun that way anyway!