I thought I’d make brownies for Dave, but it meant getting a little creative. I couldn’t find unsweetened baking cocoa at Edeka, but I knew that with a little finagling, I could reduce the butter and substitute for unsweetened baking chocolate. But I really had no way of knowing which–if any–of the bars of chocolate I found in the baking aisle were unsweetened. So I bought the darkest looking one … the one with a word that looked suspiciously like “bitter.” But when I walked home (through an absolute deluge … I was grateful for the umbrella I borrowed from the Bible college) and tested the chocolate, it was simply dark chocolate, not unsweetened. So that meant fiddling with the sugar in my tried-and-true recipe. So to cover up all my substituting, I figured I’d just throw in a cheesecake topping on my brownie and swirl it all together. Here’s the result.
I couldn’t wait for Dave to walk home from his class. He teaches from 3:00 until 6:00, then walks the ten minutes back to our apartment, passes the building, and continues down to a crosswalk. For awhile, we just jaywalked across the road right at our building. We picked up that habit in England, where crosswalks are simply suggestions. Jaywalking seems to be a national pastime in England. But here in Siegen, jaywalking is verbotten. Plus, the students have been cautioned firmly against doing it, so we thought we’d better go along.
When 6:00 rolls around, I lean out our apartment window, look to the right, and wait.
And pretty soon, here he comes. Here he is after dutifully crossing at the crosswalk.
Coming up the steps.
The candles are lit, a playlist is going, and a big pan of cheescakey brownies are waiting.
Sometimes, 2008 fades away and it’s 1985 again, and I’m back in our tiny apartment on Rucker in downtown Everett, waiting for Dave to walk home from work.
More later. We’ve brownies to eat.
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