Elizabeth Licata

If you own a gourmet prepared-foods store in the Hamptons, you're going to be selling a lot of chicken salad.

Have random beans, vegetables, or meat that you don't know what to do with? This sauce can help.

It turns out that Trader Joe's biggest secret is completely adorable.

The Costco food court is a magical place with giant hot dogs and churros as long as your arm. It’s even a great place to take a first date. But it can be a little chaotic when it’s crowded, and nobody seems to be able to figure out the best way to form a line. Over at the Costco forum on Reddit (yes, that exists), several employees and members have been bemoaning the state of their food court lines and trying to figure out how to get people to queue up properly.

The first time I saw a top-entry litter box, I wondered where it had been all my life. That top-oriented entrance hole looked like it would cut down dramatically on my cat tracking litter out of the box on her paws and eliminate accidental out-of-the-box spraying. Unfortunately, that kind of litter box can be expensive. But now someone has figured out a way to make one with a simple IKEA hack.

The Instant Pot is one of the biggest food trends of the past few years, and it is only getting bigger. People are obsessed with it because it does the work of seven other appliances and takes up less space in the kitchen. It can pressure cook, slow cook, cook rice, steam food, make yogurt, warm food, and sauté food. And now it looks like the Instant Pot is actually an eight-in-one machine, because you can even use it to make wine. Yes, wine! It sounds unbelievable, but it’s true.

Jell-O is already one of the most fun foods. It’s just so jiggly! No matter how old you are, that wiggle is amusing. That’s why we have things like Jell-O shapes, Jell-O shots, and Jell-O wrestling. Now Jell-O has just come out with the coolest new idea: Jell-O molds that let kids make edible blocks they can stack into cars, buildings, and animals, and still eat afterwards. Technically it’s designed for kids, but I am definitely going to need to play with these.

Costco is like a magical fantasyland full of oversized surprises. A lot of the time, you don’t know what you will find there. Sure, there are some classics. Kirkland-brand olive oil and apple pies are beloved standards that you can count on seeing virtually every time you walk through those warehouse doors. Not everything at Costco sticks around, however, and a great deal found one day might be gone the next.

Every grocery store has its own strengths and weaknesses: Whole Foods is fancy, Aldi is super inexpensive, and Costco will sell you four-and-a-half pounds of its Kirkland-branded version of Nutella for $7.99. But according to a report on customer satisfaction in the U.S., the highest-ranked grocery store in the country is Publix. Publix is a Southern supermarket chain.

Trader Joe’s is a magical, cutesy wonderland full of great products that are really good at making people say, “I’ve never had that before, but now that I see it, I absolutely must try it.” Last time I was there, I went in for Brussels sprouts and left with camel milk soap, lavender dryer sachets, and four different kinds of dried fruit.

On the face of it, shopping at Costco seems like it should be a very straightforward experience. With any luck, you avoid impulse-buying a handful of diamonds on the way in (yes, Costco sells diamonds), and then you check out and stop for a $4.99 rotisserie chicken and a $1.50 hot dog at the food court on the way out. But some of Costco’s deals are better than others, and nobody knows that as well as Costco’s own employees.

If there’s anything worse than having a noisy neighbor, it’s realizing that you are the noisy neighbor. Nobody goes around intending to be overheard by strangers, but then one day a neighbor knocks on your door and complains about the sound of your footsteps on his ceiling or says he can hear you singing to your cat, and then there’s nothing to do but tiptoe around in socks and worry that all your neighbors hate you.

I’ve never been exactly clear on when one is supposed to take down a Christmas tree. There’s a fine line between keeping the festivity going as long as possible, and trying to sell the Christmas tree as a Valentine’s Day decoration. Some of my friends take their trees down on December 26 exactly, but that’s way too early for me. Christmas isn’t over until one has finished buying all the other presents one wanted and did not receive.