1. Valentine’s Day, also called Saint Valentine’s Day or the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated annually on February 14. It originated as a Christian feast day honoring a martyr named Valentine, and through later folk traditions it has also become a significant cultural, religious and commercial celebration of romance and love in many regions of the world. – Wikipedia

2. “They have killed skinny jeans and continue to shame millennials for having side partings in their hair. They think using the crying tears emoji to express laughter is embarrassing. But now comes a surprising gen Z plot twist. One habit that those born between 1997 and 2012 are keen to endorse is reading – and it’s physical books rather than digital that they are thumbing. This week the 22-year-old model Kaia Gerber launched her own book club, Library Science. Gerber, who this month appears on the cover of British Vogue alongside her supermodel mum, Cindy Crawford, describes it as ‘a platform for sharing books, featuring new writers, hosting conversations with artists we admire – and continuing to build a community of people who are as excited about literature as I am’”. Guardian

3. “When you’re a parent who loves to read—or as the case is for me, happily, makes his living from reading—the first time you see your child become obsessed with an author is a genuine thrill. For both of my daughters, that author was Raina Telgemeier. The graphic novelist, best known for her trio of memoirs about her anxious preteen years, Smile, Sisters, and Guts, is referred to in my house simply as “Raina.” Apparently we’re not alone, as Jordan Kisner’s profile this week makes clear. Telgemeier is beloved for the way she captures an essential part of growing up: the fear that you and you alone are strange. My daughters read her books again and again, sometimes finishing and then flipping right back to the first page. We have multiple copies of most of them, now completely tattered. Their intense love of these titles reminds me of a powerful aspect of reading—one that adults often end up forgetting.” – The Atlantic
4. Oysters with Pikliz – Today’s Meals 

Romantic Valentine’s Day Meals –  1 small head Savoy cabbage, cored and thinly sliced, 2 medium carrots, grated, 1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion2 scallions, thinly sliced, 3 medium garlic cloves, minced, 2 tablespoons kosher salt, 2 1/2 teaspoons black pepper, 2 teaspoons smoked paprika, 1 1/2 teaspoons ground allspice, 4 small fresh habanero chiles or Scotch bonnet chiles, thinly sliced and, if desired, seeds removed, 1 cup distilled white vinegar, 24 oysters on the half shell

–Malcolm