Favorite Day Heart Shaped Red Velvet Shortbread Cookies

Time for an obligatory heart-shaped sweets review. It's February, after all.

It's the season for American men to gift chocolate and cookies and other fattening foods to their significant others to let them know that they'll love them even if they're fat. As an aside, I will state plainly here and now that my wife is NOT fat at all which, of course, I would state publicly even if she were on the chubby side. However, she's actually in really amazing shape right now...although I would love her just as much even if she weren't.

Kudos, wifey. You deserve some shortbread cookies with chocolate chips in them. Pretty sure she likes these a bit more than I do.

They're just plain old red shortbread. The chocolate chips are a nice touch. I wouldn't have minded more chocolate chips. Sonia would have preferred perhaps a tad fewer chocolate chips. There are maybe 5 or 6 mini chocolate chips in each heart. So the chocolate content is significant, but not overwhelming. The chips are made of milk chocolate, by the way, rather than dark.

There's a "sharing suggestion" on the back of the box that mentions melting white chocolate and dipping these cookies in it. We actually had white chocolate chips on hand and we tried melting them for that purpose. Have you ever tried melting white chocolate chips? Apparently, it's not something you do in the microwave. Anyway, the white chocolate basically hardened before we could get much of it on the cookies, but we can verify that yes, these do taste good when paired with white chocolate. I'm sure vanilla icing would work, too.

Cutesy? Check. Gimmicky? Check. Edible? Absolutely.

Amazing? No. Life-changing? Not by a long shot.

$2.99 for the package of about 21 cookies. If it were up to me, I wouldn't buy these again, but like I said the beautiful wifey likes them, so I'd pick 'em up for her. Happy Valentine's, peeps.

I give these shortbread cookies 7 out of 10 stars hearts.

Good & Gather Thai-Style Coconut Curry Salsa

Happy 2022. Back to the Good & Gather stuff again. Not sure if Target is switching products like this over to Favorite Day or if they'll keep some GAG stuff around for a while. Time will tell. Items like this one could use a repackaging IMO if only because the white type on light blue background is hard to read and even harder to take a decent picture of.

This is one of the more interesting GAG products we've seen over the years. It's Thai-style curry...but in the format of tomato-based salsa. Made me raise an eyebrow when I saw it on the shelf.

As far as a chip dip, I'm not sure if I like it as much as a more traditional Mexican or Tex-Mex style salsa. It's not terrible that way, but the coconut taste is just...unusual on my palate, along with tomato sauce, tomato chunks, and jalapeño. It's almost like Thai-Tex-Mex fusion.

It works okay as a regular salsa, but it's even better when applied to food in the manner of a Thai chutney or Thai relish topping. Take chicken or fish on a bed of rice, top with this stuff before serving. Scrumptious.

It's quite chunky with veggies and moderately spicy, thanks to those jalapeño peppers. I feel like the coconut cream really helps mitigate the heat, though. Garlic, basil, and lime flavors are all present but play second fiddle to the tomato and coconut elements.

$2.49 for the jar. I'd definitely consider purchasing again in the future, but I doubt I'll eat much of it just as a salsa on plain tortilla chips.

I give this condiment 8 out of 10 stars.