Here's how to make simple syrup, essential for bartenders, hosts and the occasional chef.
These frozen foods pay big dividends.
Laziest days of summer? It's a great time for hassle-free entertaining.
Should your home office go in your bedroom? Alicia says NO!
One week alone at my parent’s beach house in North Carolina. Is this too much to ask?
We decided to make over one of our favorite bacon dishes: The simple, sublime – BLT sandwich. And that’s just what emerged from the kitchen!
Do you rearrange your furniture? Alicia contemplates her new digs and a different design.
After having this dip at a party, Alicia just had to have the recipe. It's fantastic!
Do you cook with Swiss chard? Have to admit that it’s a new veggie for us!
Send us your cocktail recipes and we'll enter your name in our drawing!
This salad is a cross between a margherita pizza and a buffalo mozzarella salad -- with a little romaine thrown in for summer crunch.
Clean that kitchen even faster!
The flavor of cooked onions is subtle yet distinct. If they’re going to be the main ingredient, you want to keep things simple so as not to compete.
Windowsill herb pots sprout into a full-fledged garden in The Berkshires.
This appetizer pizza is essentially topped with a jazzed-up version of an old Junior League cookbook standby – artichoke dip.
How to save $$ with a shopping buddy.
Need a simple, fresh dinner entree? Try this pesto pasta!
By now you’ve probably heard that salsa and guacamole are top causes of restaurant food poisoning. What to do?
Watercress? Isn’t that the stuff British matrons use to decorate tea sandwiches?
Here's one of Alicia's favorite go-to side dishes.
We suspect that beets are one of those polarizing vegetables that you either love or loathe.
Here are some nifty ways to use our homemade Classic Basil Pesto.
Make that summer pantry work for you!
This salad got raves from our newspaper readers. “I loved the brightness of flavor!,” wrote Ada Winters of Raleigh, N.C.
A bunch of gardening mistakes doesn't deter this rookie farmer.
As the heat of summer sets in, we start focusing on our freezers -- a true friend for helping reduced food costs.
Salad spinners make quick work of drying not only salads, but basil leaves for pesto.
Visiting the North Carolina Farmer’s Market in Raleigh and seeing the mountains of peaches makes Beverly delirious.
This glorious tart got a gourmet beginning and has been streamlined a bit to fit today's hectic lifestyle.
An inexpensive cherry pitter will transform your relationship to fresh cherries.
Today is National Sugar Cookie Day, and I'm a sucker for anything that promotes eating more homemade cookies.
Everyone we know who's tried Topsail White Shrimp Spaghetti loves it.
Stuffed Olive Bread is either a light dinner for four, or you can serve it to accompany soup or salad for a filling meal for six.
There's just something about Snickerdoodles that make you smile.
Potato salad isn’t cheap, and after you taste this version, you’ll never even think of purchasing it again – at any price!
Pat Hoffmeister of Coppell, Texas, had a problem with stuffing her manicotti. Here are your answers!
We love these funky posters made from vegetable collages by our friend and colleague Lee Svitak Dean.
With this fresh tomato sauce, you won't waste even a single red-ripe tomato.
Just about any way you make it, quiche is delicious!
Here's a great Father's Day recipe that's great on the inside (sans grill, that is!)
From Parmigiano Reggiano to Prosciutto di Parma, DiPalo's Fine Foods offers the best -- amazing gourmet Italian imports and first-rate conversation, too.
If it seems like we’re pushing Fred’s Red Barbecue Sauce on you, well, we are. This is by far our favorite BBQ sauce, and it’s easy to make. Great with chicken or pork.
At its heart, gardening is the urge to add order and context to the landscape, to somehow harness and humanize the wild.
Alicia shares her organic farm Community Shared Agriculture experience.
When did bread become an appetizer? What do you think?
Here's an update on mercury in fish complete with a chart showing what's best to avoid and what's safe to eat.
If you don’t want to waste a lot of exceptionally fine produce, you’ll probably need to cook in some new ways.
A traditional Greek salad does not include potato salad. But try it, you'll like it! Readers weigh in.
Meatloaf Sliders are packed with flavor, but thanks to extra-lean ground beef, each mini burger has only 227 calories.
No matter what your summer entertaining needs are, our recipe for Chocolate Custard with Chantilly Cream will impress the guests.
I decided to plant a raised organic garden in my front yard. Here's how it went.
It’s a lucky kid whose visits to Grandma come with cookies -- especially Grandma Gayle’s!
With the ability to watch cooking on TV around the clock, are people more educated about cooking? Or have we become a bunch of food watchers and not doers?
California Chicken Burgers rely on some unlikely ingredients to make them especially easy.
That first blueberry crisp recipe was chosen out of desperation, but the results were so wonderful that I make it every summer.
My CSA farm share boxes are oh, so bountiful. Each week’s ingredients are a delightful surprise.
We’re always in the mood to try something slightly different when it comes to salad with Greek influences.
Now that I'm an adult, I long for those bountiful summers of all-heirloom, all-organic, all hyper-local vegetables. Finally I understand what drove my mother and grandmother to become field hands every summer.
As many empty nesters do, I’m downsizing. The four-bedroom house I have lived in for the past 12 years is way to big for just me and two dogs.
Crock-Pots are hot, but not everybody loves them and not everybody trusts them. When we asked folks to share their slow-cooker hesitations, we got questions -- and answers!
Years ago, I went to a little mom and pop hardware store that sharpened tools and knives in the back. Unfortunately, they went out of business. So I’m on the hunt for a new place to sharpen my knives.
Sliders are a great way to get your hamburger fix without going overboard. An even healthier version are these Herb Chicken Sliders.
Refrigerated mashed potatoes have come a long way since we started writing about them, but we still like to add our personal slant!
What would happen if you simply gave in to your chocolate cravings? Well, if you did it correctly, you could jump-start your metabolism to help lose weight, says a Cleveland psychiatrist.
There’s nothing ordinary about homemade meatballs -- especially these Greek-inspired gems!
This is not your mother’s quiche -- but it’s a great one to fix for mom on Mother’s Day!
As we age, our bodies change. How are you going to deal with it?
I'm still looking for the ultimate, perfect coffee travel mug. This one comes pretty close!
We never thought we could turn out the creamy smooth crème custards you find in restaurants until we tried this.
What are your favorite Mexican dishes to eat for Cinco de Mayo?
As the kids showed me the results of their labor – fresh collards, pigeon peas, tomatoes, eggplant, papaya and habanero peppers – it literally brought tears to my eyes.
I'm looking for tips from Empty Nesters out there. How do you typically eat -- cooking at home or eating out?
European breakfasts of muesli change my attitude about the dreaded first meal of the day.
What are your favorite types of salsa? Tell us at Kitchen Scoop!
Trust us: Microwave risotto is easy and elegant!
I'm hoping for school cafeteria change but will it ever come? Turns out there's tons of information, conversation, governmental hand-wringing, advocacy and journalistic reports over the plight of the hot school lunch.
Discovering the secrets of panko crumbs opens up a whole new world of recipes.
How hard is it to improve the way students eat in the school cafeteria?
In honor of Earth Day, what will you do to make a small, but important difference?
Homemade meatballs are a blank slate. What are your favorite flavorings?
Calorie counts are coming to a menu near you. Why should you care? Will it really make a difference in the way you order in restaurants?
Wild-caught salmon is a lot leaner than farm-raised, so if I’m going to like it, the recipe has to have a bit of fat.
Sinfully rich Greek yogurt tastes great with no fat! Have you tried it yet?
Four contestants won $5,000 each last night at the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Can you guess which one will win the million dollars?!
As school's Healthy Choices campaign brainwashes two young men, Dad wages a food fight on the home front.
Microwave risotto is really just a formula. What flavors do you like?
How fast you can cook depends a lot on how the recipe is organized. Desperation Dinners maximize every second at the stove.
So what's the problem with your dried-out Crock-Pot chicken? We've got everything covered in this practical post.
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