Happy (almost) Valentine’s Day, my friends! I confess, I rather love this holiday. I love the sappiness, and the silly heart-shaped everything, and I love the food!

Valentine’s Day brings about grilled steaks and luscious pastas and darling little chocolate mousses and lava cakes. It’s a chance to throw caution to the wind and make caprese salads with great slabs of mozzarella and drizzles of thick balsamic vinegar. It’s the time to try out that fried bread panzanella recipe you’ve been wanting to make, and to break out all the fun little appetizers such as baked Brie and chocolate covered strawberries.

Although in the US it is foremost viewed as a romantic holiday, I’ve never been captive to such notions. In Honduras it is called Día de Amor y Amistad, or, Day of Love and Friendship, and that’s how I love to celebrate it. It’s a chance to tell all your dearest friends how much they mean to you, and to buy them awful Nicholas Cage mugs to honor an inside joke. It’s a chance to write cute little notes to your kiddos and serve them jello in little goblets, as my sister does. 

My favorite iterations of the holiday have been the years when I throw a party for my single girlfriends and fill up my table with candles and merry chatter and French silk pies. Buy the roses, buy the chocolates (or better yet, cut them from your garden and make your own), and spread the cliché love! Going out to a nice restaurant is fun, sure, but I tend to prefer the years when I just cook everything I’ve been wanting to eat for everyone I’ve been wanting to hang out with.

Clichés are clichés for a reason, you know. There are those who love to grumble about the commercial revenues of the holiday, and love to hate on all the money Hallmark has rolling in. Let them grumble if they like, but don’t let them convince you to eschew a chance to bake a cheesecake and have a favorite friend share it with you! It’s no secret that the desire to be loved is one of life’s great driving forces, and if we have a chance to spread the love and take a little time to make each other feel special, why not?

One of my favorite Valentine’s gifts was one year when my parents dropped off a big box of chocolates and a whole sack of cuties, perfect for me to share around the office, or to stealthily eat all alone while nobody else was watching. It doesn’t take much effort to make someone feel special on a day like this, so why not just let go of your preconceived notions about the holiday and make someone’s day? See if it doesn’t make your own day, in turn. 

Are you stuck on ideas? Here are a few to try:

• Buy the dumbest Valentine’s Day card you can find, and give it to your friend who appreciates dumb humor. The cheesier, the better. 
• Throw a little dinner party and invite your favorite people. Better yet, invite your least favorite people and see if you can’t come to like them a little. 😀 Have dinner and a leisurely dessert, and after the table is cleared, play a card game together. Here are some menu ideas for you-
  • Brown sugar dry rub on chicken thighs, atop basmati rice, with a side of parmesan plum salad. 
  • Indian butter chicken with freshly made naan. 
  • Chicken baked in crushed corn flakes, with a side of heart shaped biscuits.
  • A massive Caesar salad with a side of sliced steak topped with fresh chimichurri.
  • Honduran enchiladas, not to be confused with Tex-Mex enchiladas.
  • Spaghetti carbonara with garlic bread and a perfect caprese salad on the side. 
• Invite a few girlfriends over and watch the worst Hallmark movie you can find. Make fun of it the whole way through.
• If you have kids, throw a dinner party for them, and make it as special as you can with things around the house. It doesn’t need to cost anything more than a regular dinner to be special. Candlelight and your fancy china are a good start, and make as much of the food heart-shaped as you can. You can add an activity like having each child write a little note describing something they like about each person at the table, then take turns going around and reading all the things everyone likes about you. My family did this, what, fifteen years ago maybe? and it turns out multiple of us still have those notes tucked into our Bibles or other safe places. 
• Go through your phone contacts, and text a bunch of people you love, but whom you haven’t reached out to in a while. Tell them how cool they are. 
• Get some cheap flowers from Trader Joe’s and make a few cute li’l bouquets. Drop them off to people who have recently broken up or experienced another form of loss. I promise they’ll appreciate it. 
• Bake the exotic layer cake or cupcake or pavlova recipe you’ve had pinned on Pinterest for years. Share it with your neighbors whom you haven’t yet met. 

See if this doesn’t transform your day from blah to something to look forward to every year!