I can't believe how long it's been since I wrote in you, my poor journal. Look at you collecting all this dust.. As well as some tomato sauce stains and I think there's been at least one broken dodo egg in here from the awful smell.. I guess I'll have to be cleaning that soon then. The important thing is though, I'm going to start writing in you again.

Life's been all the same lately. Day after day spent cooking and harvesting fresh ingredients, followed by cutting logs to earn some gil. I love the culinarian trade, I really do, just there's no money in it.. Most people make do with eating raw fruits or just sticking a cut of meat over a roaring campfire. They don't want these finely prepared dishes.. Well, not if it means coughing up some of their hard earned gil.

But maybe now, with Valentione's Day nearing, I'll be able to sell some of these fine heart chocolates. And for those that take a bad reaction to the kukuru bean there'll be white chocolates available. Let's start just now then.

I pick up a bean and sniff it, just for that lovely aroma of kukuru. Next I take a small nibble off the end and chew it slowly, tasting for any sign that it might be a less than perfect fruit. This one is all good though.

Quickly chopping up a couple pods worth of beans I place them in my skillet and heat them gently until the kukuru butter fills the pan. Next it gets poured into some jars before it hardens and left to cool. And that's just the first batch done.

I fill some more flasks with the butter before moving onto making kukuru powder. For this I carefully roast the beans before grinding them up into a fine powder. Again it's all poured into the small pots. Mm, it smells so good.

I think I'll leave making actual chocolate until I have enough of the fine powdered sugar to turn them all into these Valentiones treats and put them up for sell. In Limsa Lominsa I wouldn't trust any of the locals not to try and pinch them off me.. Maybe that's a bit mean though I suppose.

But all these happy couples going about.. Urgh, when is my Tren going to be here? I'd make the biggest and best heart chocolate ever and ask him to be my Valentione if he were here.. I miss him so much...

~Rakshi Zahrann

P.S. I did actually win my linkshell's Hottie of the Moon contest, I still can't believe it.