PSA: You have a little more than a week to get your menu together for Valentine’s Day. Maybe you already have dinner planned for your sweet thang (please, ditch the restaurant this year), and maybe you’ve already decided to pick up some flowers. But what about desserts? Sure steak is great, but dessert is essential on this beloved holiday.

If you’re stuck in the dessert department, Costco has your answer to love day bliss: heart-shaped macarons. Provided by Le Chic Pâtissier, you can have 25 of those classic delicate, almond-y cookies that melt in your mouth for only $12.49 at Costco. In comparison, a box of 24 cookies from the legendary Ladurée costs $73, so this Costco find is a total steal.

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It’s no secret that Ina and Jeffrey are pretty much everyone’s relationship goals, so obviously when it comes to finding ways to celebrate our own love on February 14, we want to try to copy our barefoot queen as much as possible — and she’s happy to make that just a little easier on us: this morning she announced on Instagram that she’d published her playlist of the best romantic love songs of all time. Go ahead and find yourself a Jeffrey!

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Here at Kitchn, we talk a lot about all the ways that your Instant Pot is surprisingly useful. It can make yogurt! It can make Ree Drummond’s chocolate lava cake! But it can also help out with those everyday tasks that could be even easier than they already are — like boiling an egg.

Now, boiling an egg is not the toughest kitchen task out there, but it does have its pitfalls: One common mistake people make is that they often overcook the egg, which gives it a gray-ish tint and thoroughly unappetizing sulphuric odor. If you have an Instant Pot, turns out there’s an ingenious hack for making sure your hard-boiled eggs turn out just right: It’s called the 5-5-5 method.

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Back in the early spring of 2016 I tore down a little house my family had purchased 18 years earlier and, taking it on as finally my own and with money that I inherited when my father passed away, I rebuilt it from the ground up (actually below the ground, up) with the help of three wonderfully skilled people, John Berg (architect), Peter Germano (contractor) and Rebecca Robertson (interior designer). The project took nearly two years, allowing me to move in by Christmas 2018. I documented every step of the way (here’s where I left off in July 2017), BUT had to stop when it got close to the end so I wouldn’t spoil the final reveal AND so I could get it photographed by House Beautiful, which gave the team props. NOW, however, I can show everything in great detail, so please come with me as I roll out the whole finished house in a number of posts, starting with this one, which features….

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A good chef’s knife is one of the few truly indispensable parts of your kitchen arsenal. We’ve covered them extensively, and the one that we keep coming back to is the Victorinox line — it’s been Editor-in-Chief Faith’s go-to for over 10 years! While the 8-inch is the model so quickly listed by many home chefs as their go-to, we have a major reason you might want to consider the 7.5-inch right now: It’s currently on sale for $28 on Amazon.

But it’s more than just the discounted price we like: The lost half-inch isn’t a huge difference, but can be more manageable for people with smaller hands. A shorter knife also gives you more control as you chop and dice. If you’re not regularly cutting up larger pieces of meat or produce, you might not even miss it.

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Here’s a simple truth about food that everyone should know: Bread and cheese are a match made in culinary heaven. It is so difficult to go wrong if you just put these two ingredients together on the same plate. And when it comes to bread and cheese, pretty much no one does it better than the French. So when I saw that Trader Joe’s — which long ago earned its title as the king of snack foods — had released a new package of French fromage slices ($5), I just knew that I had to try it with a fluffy baguette. A plain ol’ cracker would never do for this taste test.

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For years, I was a toaster oven denier. Who needs a miniature, worse version of something already in your kitchen? Sure, it heats up quickly, but many of those little jobs could probably be handled in a toaster, and it never seemed worth the extra counter space. Then my sister told me she wanted a toaster oven for Christmas. Mind you, I remained personally anti-toaster oven, but for the sake of my little sister, I’d do the internet research and pick out a nice one for her.

Which is how, a few years ago, I found the Breville Smart Oven Pro. Slowly, via my sister’s glowing reviews, plus getting to used it myself, I started to revise my convictions. And while I remain toaster-less myself (a tiny Manhattan kitchen makes even the world’s best toaster oven impractical for the time being), I have become a convert. So much so that this Christmas, I decided to get my mom one even though she hadn’t asked for one. (Spoiler: It was a hit.) Because I planned poorly and inspiration hit me late, I had to pay full price. Luckily for you, the exact model I gifted is now on sale, meaning you can get one for yourself or your loved ones for over 20 percent off.

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No one cares about corn syrup in Bud Light, and everyone cares about the Backstreet Boys. That’s the general consensus from watching all of the food-related commercials that aired yesterday during the Super Bowl. A major misunderstanding that companies have — stemming, perhaps, from articles like this about the ads — is that people can actually hear what’s going on and follow complicated story lines in these commercials. They are wrong.

When you’ve been drinking beer all day and are chatting about the game and/or the Puppy Bowl while the commercials air, not every ad is going to land. So we decided to give the companies something of a report card. This is, in our opinion, how good — and bad — the ads were, ranked from worst to best.

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Dear readers, hello! Hello, hello, hello. It has been a long time since we spoke directly and a lot has changed at Kitchn. So starting now — right now! — I am going to write you a note every month about what’s happening at Kitchn, what’s cooking in my own kitchen, and see how we can do even more for you in your daily struggle and joy of eating well.

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Around the World in 30 Soups: This month we’re collaborating with chefs, cookbook authors, and our own Kitchn crew to share a globetrotting adventure in soups from countries and cuisines around the world. Today’s stop: Tanzania.

Supu Viazi, or coconut potato soup, is a simple dish that screams the flavors of Tanzania. It’s packed with some of my favorite ingredients (like coconut milk and potatoes) and it’s why I love it so much. It has an underlying taste of coconut that doesn’t leave the soup tasting sweet, just deliciously velvety.

Soups in Tanzania are often thickened with coconut milk — since there’s an abundance of coconut trees on the coastline. You’ll find that coconuts, whether it be the flesh or the milk, are used a lot in Tanzanian cuisine. One bite of this soup instantly transports me to a tropical state of mind.

The base of the soup starts with peppers, onions, and tomatoes — a trio that is quite common in African cooking. The potatoes and green banana add some starch and are quite filling since this soup lacks any meat. Finished off with some sliced avocado on top, this soup is delicious and brings me so much comfort. You can serve this as a meal on its own or as a starter before any other meal. While the ingredients may be simple, there is nothing simple about the taste.

—Evi Yaki, author of Flavors of Africa

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