Why Do We Give Chocolate On Valentine’s Day?

The history of Valentine’s Day chocolate, from Chaucer to Cadbury and beyond.

Valentine’s Day is less than a month away, which means I should probably start thinking about what I’ll give my wife. Maybe some flowers; they’re pretty, just like her. Or that other classic, chocolate. But, wait, why chocolate? Why do we give chocolate on Valentine’s Day? Not to pull a “Good Will Hunting” here, but why not caramels? Or cookies? Or pie? Oh, I wish it were pie. Why do nearly 70 percent of people on Valentine’s Day gift chocolate to their significant other or secret crush? I need to get to the bottom of this, and get to the bottom of this I shall. To the internet!

Ghirardelli Valentine's Day Sweethearts, $19.78 on Amazon

Heart-shaped chocolates—in a classic heart-shaped box, of course.

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Turns out, some pretty reputable establishments, like NPR, The History Channel, and The Smithsonian, have looked into this phenomenon too. What’s that they say? Great minds think alike? Yeah, something like that. Anyway, here’s what I learned.

Valentine’s Day is a feast day in the Catholic Church commemorating the lives of several martyrs named “Valentine.” It’s generally understood that none of these men were particularly linked to romantic love, despite an uncorroborated account that one of the Vals (my nickname, not theirs) married folks.

So, why is Valentine’s Day the day of loooooove (said in my best Barry White voice)? The consensus is that Geoffrey Chaucer, the writer of “The Canterbury Tales” (hey, I read that in high school!), linked Valentine’s Day with romantic love in his poem, “Parlement of Foules,” in 1382. In the poem, Chaucer describes St. Valentine’s Day as the time when birds choose their mates. Is that how bird mating works? I don’t think that’s accurate. Wait, it’s a poem. Metaphors. Got it. I guess other writers took notice, as more poems and songs sprang forth. Before long, life imitated art, and Valentine’s Day became a time of gifts for and gestures to your significant other. The thing is, those gifts weren’t chocolates for another 450 years or so.

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Despite the somewhat pervasive belief that chocolate was an aphrodisiac (science says it’s not), it wasn’t until the Victorian age, when sugar became less of an extravagance, that conditions were just right for chocolate to hit the scene as a Valentine’s Day staple. In addition to the economics being optimal, the times were too. Evidently, the buttoned-up Victorians got a real kick out of letting their emotions go for a day, and were really into giving their sweeties gifts decked out in lovey-dovey Cupids.

At this time, a businessman and chocolatier by the name of Richard Cadbury took advantage of this opportunity. You see, Cadbury’s primary business originally revolved around making drinking chocolate. I guess that was all the rage back then. He was somewhat of a pioneer in this industry, and, as a result, came up with a revolutionary process that produced surplus cocoa butter. Wanting to take advantage of this surplus, he decided to use it to produce “eating chocolate.” Today, we’d call it chocolate candy. Pretty savvy move, huh? It gets better. To market this new creation, he sold his eating chocolates in elaborately adorned boxes. Then, near Valentine’s Day, when folks were getting lovestruck and Cupid-crazy, he designed heart-shaped boxes and decorated them with Cupids and flowers.

Genius, right? It gets even better! To hammer the point home that his chocolates were optimal gifts for lovers, he emphasized that once the consumer was done with the chocolates, the box that once held them could also be used to hold remembrances, love letters, and things of that sort. Incredible! Capitalism at its finest.

Later, in early 20th century America, where the commercial appeal of Valentine’s Day thrived, Russell Stover took Cadbury’s idea to the next level, selling their heart-shaped chocolate boxes to department stores for mass consumption. Today, you can find them all over the place. And that’s, as they say, all she wrote.

Retro Planet

Basically, we give chocolate on Valentine’s Day because some savvy businessman took advantage of the commercialization of the feast day of several martyred saints to sell surplus ingredients he had lying around. Pretty romantic stuff, huh? This Valentine’s Day, when you receive that box of chocolate, instead of getting bogged down in this aspect of the history, let me propose an alternative. Think about how good chocolate is, and how much your significant other must like you if he or she gave you something so delicious. Chances are, he or she doesn’t know the history. They just want you to know how special you are to them. Happy Valentine’s Day!

Related Video: A Valentine for Unappreciated Chocolates

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Simply Recipes 2019 Meal Plan: January Week 5

What's on your menu this week? What about stuffed peppers? Or jambalaya?! Or mac and cheese with chorizo? Get these ideas and more in this week's meal plan.

Continue reading "Simply Recipes 2019 Meal Plan: January Week 5" »

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Instant Pot Yogurt

Instant Pot Yogurt? Not only is it easy—it’ll add a new spark to your love affair with yogurt! Just press the right buttons, give it a peek now and then, and in a few hours, you'll have amazing homemade yogurt.

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How to Make Homemade Greek Yogurt

Got homemade yogurt? Want to make it into thick, creamy Greek yogurt? Here's how! You just need a strainer and some cheesecloth. Works for store-bought yogurt, too!

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The Hottest New Spirit to Try in 2019 Is Actually One of the Oldest

Follow These Tips to Reduce Food Waste

When we waste food, we waste both our own money (an average of $1,800 per year for a family of four!) and the natural resources used to create that food. Plus, we needlessly add usable food to landfills. Luckily, there are so many ways to cut down on food waste, helping out both your wallet and the environment. Try one or two changes, or go full-on Captain Planet—the choice is yours for tackling food waste!

Waste Not: How to Get the Most from Your Food, $37.83

The James Beard Foundation presents tons more tips (and recipes) from top chefs in the interest of preventing food waste.

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Organize Your Fridge

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Just like we sift through our books and our clothes, it’s important to take stock of what’s in our fridges. This will help you avoid buying that third bottle of ranch dressing when you already have several in the fridge (one nearly expired, one years old!). Get rid of the produce and condiments that have gone bad (RIP), and place those that are nearing expiration within sight, so that you remember to use them.

Shop Smarter

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If you find you routinely throw out slimy greens and moldy fruit, you might be a little overambitious with your produce purchases. Buying in bulk makes sense for canned and dry goods that last a long time, but take a look at your produce cooking and eating habits and try to plan your shopping list accordingly. If your weekly routine can shift a bit, try shopping European-style by taking shorter, more frequent trips to the store to pick up what you need for the next day or two.

Another Option: The Best Meal Kit Delivery Services

Only get exactly what you need.

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Portion Your Plate

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We’re adults; we know how much we can eat in one sitting! Take only what you plan to eat when serving yourself, so that you don’t end up scraping good food into the garbage can. And, this goes double if you’re a dinner guest at someone else’s home—the host won’t want to save leftovers from your plate, so anything you don’t eat will certainly become trash. Remember, you can always go back for seconds, and anything uneaten in the serving dish will make for easy future leftover meals.

Get Doggie Bags

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Always ask for to-go containers for restaurant leftovers. Of course you’ll eat that leftover pizza later, but even leftover soup could be a good in-between-meals snack in the next few days. And, maybe you can use that rice as the ready-to-go base of your next home-cooked meal. Even if you’re full now, think of how leftovers can stave off that next grocery store trip!

Put Some Prep in Your Step

These meal prep containers are also great for sustainably storing leftovers.

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Buy Ugly Produce

Imperfect Produce

Programs like Imperfect Produce work to address the fact that 20 billion pounds of American farm produce is wasted every year. This type of waste occurs because most grocery stores don’t want to source and sell extra-bumpy potatoes, tiny kiwis, or oddly-shaped peppers—historically, consumers don’t buy these, and they get thrown away. By purchasing imperfect fruits and vegetables, you save them from the garbage, and if you’re lucky enough to live near a grocery store with a discount produce bin, you’ll save some money, too!

Compost

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Egg shells, corn cobs, melon rinds, oh my! Many parts of food cannot be creatively worked into new dishes, and for these times, there’s composting! Instead of adding all these leftover food parts to the trash, and ultimately, to landfills, composting turns it all into nutrient-rich soil. Check out our Composting 101 guide for the ins and outs of home composting.

Utopia Kitchen Stainless Steel Compost Bin, $21.99 on Amazon

This compost bucket matches almost any decor and fits even in small spaces between trips to the bigger bin outdoors.

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Save Scraps for Stock

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Some of those food scraps are prime stock ingredients! Onion skins, garlic tips, herb stems, carrot tops—put all of these into a freezer bag, and when you’ve amassed a good amount, simmer them all in water for an hour or a few, strain, and you’ve got a wonderful stock ready for soups and slow cooker recipes. Meat bones, cheese rinds, and shrimp peels are also excellent stock ingredients—but avoid citrus rinds or ingredients that could take over the milder flavors.

Freeze!

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Before you put that big pot of chili in the fridge, think: is my family going to eat all of this before it goes bad? Store what you will realistically eat in the next few days in the fridge, and put the rest away in the freezer—you’ll get less fatigued by the same dish every day for a week, and you’ll have ready-to-go meals when you defrost in a few weeks! Same goes for when you’ll be going out of town; make sure to freeze fridge leftovers so that they don’t go bad while you’re away.

Refrigerate Bread

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This is a contentious topic—some people hate storing bread in the fridge, thinking it gets dry, while others go to the other extreme and keep bread in the freezer, toasting slices as they need. As someone who has lived in various apartments with warm kitchens, I can attest that refrigerating my bread has prevented many a moldy loaf, and I’ve noticed little to no change in texture and flavor. To each their own, with this tip!

Equip Yourself

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Sometimes we have to admit to ourselves that we require a little retail therapy to push ourselves toward change. New gym clothes to workout more, fancy cleaning products to keep a tidier house, and our recommended Products to Help Reduce Food Waste. Juice more produce with a juicer, make preserves with a canning kit, and keep everything organized and ready-to-use with better storage containers!

Love the Food You’re With

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Finally, take a look at our guide on How to Use Food Before It Goes Bad for ways to take on what you have at home. Store your food so that it lasts longer, and think outside the box for tackling those leftovers or those large amounts of produce you bought. Creativity is king for using up every last bit of produce!

Related Video: 12 Storage Mistakes That Are Spoiling Your Leftovers—and How to Fix Them

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11 Baked Rib Recipes That Put the Grill to Shame

Some eating experiences just make you feel a bit more primal—hacking into a tremendous porterhouse steak, for instance, or gnawing on a massive smoked turkey leg. But a big prehistoric slab of ribs really puts you in touch with your inner Flintstone. Eating copious amounts of meat right off the bone, inadvertently smearing sauce on your face, licking your fingers to get all the flavor? It’s messy, and delightful, and makes you feel a little wild—and very, very happy.

Our ancient ancestors would have had to cook their meat over open flames, and barbecuing ribs is still a damn fine way to cook them; there’s nothing like a perfect pink smoke ring in your meat, or the char from a live fire, but sometimes you don’t have access to a grill, or just don’t feel like tending one for hours. You’ve gotta make side dishes, after all! And maybe it’s raining, or snowing, which doesn’t stop some people, but why be a martyr? This is where your oven comes in.

Calphalon Classic Hard Anodized 16-Inch Roasting Pan with Nonstick Rack , $65.99 on Amazon

All you need is aluminum foil and a nice big pan.

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Baked ribs are incredibly easy, and require precious little of you, save maybe a rub or marinade pregame, and then some occasional basting in the final stretch. They also take time, it’s true—usually several hours—but you’ll be free to do other things for the most part, while the ribs hang out and basically cook themselves.

The low, slow heat and moist environment of the oven makes the meat fall-apart tender and still gives you some color on the edges of the slab, where your chosen sauce caramelizes. Generally, you’ll be wrapping the ribs in aluminum foil for the bulk of the cooking time, which helps them get juicy and tender, then exposing the surface so you can slather on your sauce and get a little color.

For the best of both worlds, you can still finish your oven baked ribs on a grill, but that is certainly not required. Even if your recipe calls for a grill as a last step, as several of these do, feel free to skip it, or to heat up your broiler and add some extra char to the ribs that way (just check often to make sure they don’t burn, especially if your sauce has a lot of sugar in it). You could even finish them in a grill pan if you’re willing to dirty another dish. Sure, they won’t be exactly the same, but they will be delicious and you won’t have any complaints.

Happily, nearly all varieties of ribs take well to the oven-baked method—the one exception being flanken ribs, which are beef short ribs that are cut much thinner across the bone and are best quickly grilled, as in the Korean classic beef kalbi.

A long spell in a slow oven is a surefire way to make fantastic ribs of any other sort: pork, beef, lamb; baby back, spare, short. And you know what? Baked ribs are so delectable you don’t even need an excuse to make them that way.

Fire up your oven for one of these recipes and you’ll agree.

Vinegar and Spice Oven-Baked Ribs

Chowhound

These ribs do need to be marinated in cider vinegar, dark brown sugar, garlic, paprika, and black pepper for at least 12 hours, but otherwise, they are completely undemanding. They cook entirely in the oven—no finishing school for these down-home beauties—and any leftovers are even good eaten cold. Get our Vinegar and Spice Oven-Baked Ribs recipe.

Oven Roasted BBQ Ribs with Stout Barbecue Sauce

The Beeroness

The earthier flavor of beef ribs really benefits from a dark, sticky, stout-enriched barbecue sauce that has a little heat from Sriracha. Use a roasty, rich stout for more depth and flavor, one with coffee or chocolate notes, and drink the rest of the beer with your ribs. Get the Oven Roasted BBQ Ribs with Stout Barbecue Sauce recipe.

Extra Sticky Thai BBQ Ribs with Peanut BBQ Sauce and Sweet Thai Ginger Slaw

Half Baked Harvest

These ribs are brilliant, and concrete proof that different is good. Blasting all your standard BBQ sauces out of the water, this peanut butter based sauce brings in Thai flavors like sweet chili sauce, red curry paste, and rice vinegar. (For another Thai inspired ribs recipe, here’s a version with coconut milk in the sauce.) With this one, you get a bonus crunchy, gingery slaw recipe too—all you need to add is some sticky rice (and plenty of napkins). Get the Extra Sticky Thai BBQ Ribs with Peanut BBQ Sauce and Sweet Thai Ginger Slaw recipe.

Easy BBQ Baby Back Pork Ribs

Chowhound

These ribs swing back to the traditional end of the spectrum, but they’re just as astoundingly good. They get layers of flavor from a spice rub with chili powder, brown sugar, paprika, garlic, and mustard, and then a sticky-sweet barbecue sauce with a little tang from cider vinegar and tingle from garlic and chili powder. Don’t stress if you can’t finish them on the grill (or just don’t feel like it); a run under the broiler will be almost as good. Get our Easy BBQ Baby Back Pork Ribs recipe.

Oven Roasted Pork Ribs with Mango Jerk Sauce

Kitchenista Diaries

If you like spicy, you have to try these jerk pork ribs. The mango nectar, dark molasses, and sweet spices like cinnamon and nutmeg in the sauce temper the heat a bit, but it still packs a punch from scotch bonnet chiles and ginger. If you season your ribs with salt and spices on the same foil-lined pan you’ll cook them in, you cut down on clean-up. Get the Oven Roasted Pork Ribs with Mango Jerk Sauce recipe.

Fiery Fall-Apart Mexican Beef Ribs with Green Mexican Rice

Recipe Tin Eats

Another significantly spicy rib recipe, but with different dimensions—and made with beef short ribs instead of pork. The tomato-based BBQ sauce is smoky from chipotles and zesty with garlic, cumin, bay leaf, oregano, and orange juice. (Here’s a great pork version.) Any leftover meat would be great taken off the bone and shredded for tacos or sandwiches, or made into burritos with the accompanying green rice. Get the Fiery Fall-Apart Mexican Beef Ribs with Green Mexican Rice recipe.

Memphis Style Dry Ribs

Barefeet In The Kitchen

These Memphis-style ribs are called dry, but that refers to the rub and the lack of any additional sauce; the meat itself is perfectly juicy, and generously coated with spices and herbs. Just before being served, the ribs are dipped in vinegar for tang, and coated in extra seasoning. (For another sauce-free recipe, check out these coffee-chili-rubbed ribs.) Get the Memphis Style Dry Ribs recipe.

Melt-In-Your Mouth Bourbon-Honey Glazed Ribs

Nerds With Knives

Whiskey and bourbon show up in barbecue sauce pretty often; this one has equal parts booze and honey, plus tons of other components, like hoisin, Dijon, soy sauce, and molasses, to name just a few, for a deliciously thick and deeply nuanced glaze on the luscious meat. Get the Melt-In-Your Mouth Bourbon-Honey Glazed Ribs recipe.

Lamb Ribs with Greek Marinade

Theo Cooks

Lamb ribs don’t get nearly as much attention as pork and beef ribs, but they’re a fantastic change of pace. There’s actually an abiding lamb BBQ tradition in Western Kentucky, dating back to when it was the largest producer of lamb in the US. But this recipe goes Greek with bright lemon juice, earthy oregano, pungent rosemary, and plenty of garlic. Lamb ribs are fattier than pork or beef, but that helps them get nice and crispy when properly cooked. Note that the temperatures in this recipe are given in Celsius; for help converting, see this guide. Get the Lamb Ribs with Greek Marinade recipe.

Spicy Gochujang Pork Ribs

Hapa Nom Nom

If you’re not familiar with gochujang, be prepared to become addicted. This umami-rich Korean chile paste is sweet, spicy, and full of incomparable flavor. It’s augmented here with a little ketchup, soy sauce, cider vinegar, and honey in a barbecue sauce that lacquers the ribs. Chopped peanuts and scallions are a great crunchy, fresh garnish. (For a spicy rib recipe using another beloved Asian condiment, try these BBQ Sriracha ribs.) Get the Spicy Gochujang Pork Ribs recipe.

Oven Baked Five Spice Ribs

Omnivore’s Cookbook

While we can all get behind ribs so tender that the meat parts from the bone with little more than a gentle prod, these are a bit firmer and chewier by design (they also cook a lot faster than most oven baked ribs). They’re fragrant with a Chinese five spice blend and a little sticky from soy sauce, and just a bit more resistant to the tooth. If you crave these flavors but prefer more succulent meat, you can always bake these in foil for a longer period, as in any of the preceding preparations. Get the Oven Baked Five Spice Ribs recipe.

The Super Bowl is a prime rib-eating opportunity, and to kick off Super Bowl LIII, Chowhound has joined forces with CBS Sports, CNET, and TV Guide to dole out a meaty prize package including an LG OLED 65-inch TV (courtesy of Daily Steals), a Chefman Air Fryer, and $125 in gift cards towards CBS All Access. Enter for your chance to win before 3:30 p.m PT on February 3, 2019!

Related Video: Another Easy Method—Make Pressure Cooker Cola-Braised Short Ribs

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