Summer cooking - whether it's a quick grill or just tossing together fresh cold ingredients - is marked by ease and speed. That alone, is enough to make some folks dread the transition to more complex autumn dishes, no matter how tasty they are. During these next weeks of seasonal transition, though, it's a wonderful time to synergistically blend the best of both times of year. More >>

Perking up your cooking is easy, fast - and fun. Including a mystery ingredient can be responsible for all three of those desirable results. Currently, a major sugar-free gum company even has joined the escapades and has a mystery flavor on the market. More >>

July Fourth is often a time for festivities and fireworks to celebrate our nation's birthday. If we want to up the chances of enjoying more and more of our own birthdays and those of members of our families, however, we might want to turn the parties into health-improving ones. More >>

Often we buy ingredients for a specific recipe and the leftover items don't get used in a timely manner and get trashed. That's both wasted shopping time and money going out with the garbage. The easy three-course feasts below (appetizers, entrees and healthy desserts) show how simple it is to thread one or a few ingredients through every dish in the meal while still offering a tempting variety of choices. Red seedless grapes, for instance, show up in seasoned multi-item hors d'oeuvres skewers, then stuffed with its skewer companions into a delicious main course, sweet-sauced chicken and as a topping on spicy pound cake dessert toasts... More >>