When your friends have a baby, showing up with a small present is a really thoughtful gesture that will always be appreciated. Choosing a new baby gift, however, can be difficult. Do you want to get something for the baby, or for the parents? Do you get something cute and fun, or something practical that will actually be used?

These are tough choices, unless you’re shopping at Aldi, apparently, because this awesome friend was able to curate a wonderful gift basket with something for everyone for just $25.

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Trying to decide whether that about-to-expire milk is still OK to drink is a good way to make breakfast feel a little like Fear Factor. Like, how much do you trust your sense of smell? And how bad do you really want that Cinnamon Toast Crunch? But a Danish dairy company and a London-based food-tech startup have joined forces to launch a new label that will let customers use their fingertips to determine whether it’s a good idea to get the cereal bowls out.

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Everyone, raise your “Be the Leslie Knope of Whatever You Do” coffee mugs in a toast to the poetic, noble land mermaid Amy Poehler. Netflix just announced that she will be bringing her luminous brilliance — plus her best friends and a lot of wine — to Netflix this year with a new movie called Wine Country.

And in true Leslie Knope fashion, Amy Poehler is doing all the jobs on that set. She’ll direct and produce the movie as well as star in it. Good thing she’ll have Maya Rudolph, Tina Fey, Rachel Dratch, and Ana Gasteyer there to help.

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Modernist Cuisine is like the Mythbusters of food. “Is whole-wheat bread really more healthful than white bread? Let’s do science at it and find out.” It was a game-changer when it came out in 2011 and, along with its follow-up book, Modernist Bread, has really changed the way we think about food, science, and traditions.

Now Nathan Myhrvold and his crew of researchers, chefs, photographers, and whoever it is that cuts ovens in half, are turning their attention to the mysteries of pizza.

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We recently broke the news about the Instant Pot Max coming out in the spring. (See: Exclusive Scoop: Here’s a First Look at the Brand New Instant Pot, Coming Out in Spring.) And now we want to take a minute to point out why we’re so excited about it.

Sure, there are already a few Instant Pot models — in various sizes — on the market, but none of them offer a pressure canning function like this one does.

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Sometimes I wonder what it is like to work at the USDA and be tasked with giving people advice that you must know a lot of them are just not going to follow.

“Cook that hamburger well-done!”

“LOL, no.”

“Cook eggs until yolks are firm. Don’t eat homemade mayonnaise, Hollandaise, or good Caesar salad!”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of this eggs Benedict.”

I always imagine it’s a lot like when my mother would tell me not to eat raw cookie dough, but I’d do it anyway and she’d shout, “I’m just trying to keep you from getting salmonella! Do you want salmonella?”

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Kitchn readers love pork chops a lot. Like, a lot, a lot. Since we published our tutorial on how to make tender, juicy pork chops a handful of years ago, it’s been one of our most popular recipes. There are currently 150 comments on the recipe itself, many which talk about the ease of the technique. “Just created an account here to tell you this is my go to porkchop recipe,” said Crystal Z.

The tutorial itself is pretty basic. It creates great results, but there’s no crispy-crunchy cheese coating, and they aren’t smothered in a fancy basil-plum situation. So it got me thinking: What other recipes are there out there for pork chops that go above and beyond?

That’s where Pinterest comes into play. The most popular pork chop recipe on the social platform is slow cooker angel pork chop from Plain Chicken – it was saved 77,000 times in 2017 alone. The pork chops totally take a back burner to the pasta and sauce.

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I absolutely love kombucha. What I absolutely don’t love is paying $5 a bottle for it — especially now that I’ve gotten my husband and my youngest daughter hooked on it too. With them guzzling down my precious stash, kombucha has morphed from a virtuous, gut-friendly mode of hydration to a flat-out budget buster.

Instead of giving up the tart, refreshing, fermented tea drink, I decided to try making it myself. I’ve wanted to do this for ages, but could never drum up the courage. I kept envisioning my countertops lined with sticky, murky jars draped with flaccid cheesecloth and filled with slime. Gross.

And then I saw this Montreal-made beauty.

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I wish I could tell you that my keyboard is as fresh and clean as the day I bought it, but unfortunately I cannot. Like many people, I take my computer from home to office to Starbucks and back multiple times a day, and all those croissants generate a lot of crumbs.

Keyboards are worse than couch cushions for attracting dirt, crumbs, hairs, and other debris. Someday the archaeologists of the future are going to analyze the junk under our keyboards for clues to the dietary habits of 21st century humans, but they might lose a valuable source of data in the next few years, because Apple has filed a patent for a crumb-resistant keyboard.

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For weeknight dinners I lean on meals with a short, simple list of ingredients. Bonus points when I can skip the store and pull everything from the pantry or fridge. After spending a long day at work, I just don’t have it in me to make a dinner that requires too much attention. Instead, I rely on recipes that are easy and come together fast.

Whether you’re in the mood for chicken or pork, or prefer to keep things meat-free, these 20 recipes will help you get an easy and satisfying dinner on the table.

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