For everyone who likes eggplant, don't miss this very unusual recipe for Cold Eggplant Salad from Lydia at The Perfect Pantry. Just click the title of this post to get to the recipe that may just go to the top of your to-try list, especially if you have eggplant in your garden or CSA share box.

"For the most part, I cook alone. For one. Well, actually, I cook for three. It's just me at different times. Dinner tonight, lunch tomorrow, and then dinner tomorrow night because I'll probably be too tired to cook after classes or the gym." Though details will vary, doesn't this describe many of us? Garrett from Vanilla Garlic writes about what it's like to cook for one, on a budget. Just click this post's title to get in on the thinking.

After Cathy from Not Eating Out in New York gets to judge the third annual Brooklyn Chili Takedown, she shares the winning recipe on her blog. Click the title of this post for Cathy's observations about chili ingredients, and don't miss the X-rated name of this year's award-winning chili!

Grab your remotes, get set, go! The 2008 Summer Olympics begin on Friday with the flag-waving pageantry of the opening ceremony. To mark the occasion, how about cooking up the Kung Pao Chicken from Appetite for China? Just click this post's title for the recipe.

A week ago today, the NYTimes startled the food world by lauding the taste of chocolate chip cookies baked after first chilling the dough for 12 hours, 24 hours, all the way up to 36 hours. Joy the Baker had to know and launched a live taste test. Is it worth the wait?

Screenwriter and author Amy Ferris (guest posting on Women & Hollywood) tells us what she initially loved about Charlize Theron's character in Hancock, and explains why her love had waned some by the film's end.

To boycott or not to boycott can be a tough decision, depending on which set of personal principles trumps the other. Click the title of this post to see what prompted one food blogger to change her usual anti-corporate fast food stance.

It's obvious that Jennifer Mattern is a professional writer, even if you don't click over to read her about page. In this post she writes about her very recent divorce with all the mixed emotions of it showing through her words: "There is a divorce epidemic, I am now convinced. It is spreading like wildfire, like the plague. This morning, I bring coffee and donuts and children to his place. The four of us eat breakfast at his counter. When the girls run off to play, D and I talk about this epidemic, about all the couples we know who are splitting.

What's your favorite part of the Fourth of July fireworks show? Scargosun writes about the beauty that can be found by looking down while everyone else is looking up: "The colors and the light make everything appear so ethereal. The light is never harsh like say a fluorescent bulb or beating like the sun. It is a soft glow that brightens and then fades, then replaced by another. When you couple that with the inner glow of the faces watching the show, the world seems a very different place."

Most of us tend to measure a comic's success by their ability to leave their audience laughing so hard they can barely breathe. Suzy Soro's goodbye to George Carlin reminds us that there is, of course, more to it. "Driving into Vegas and seeing Carlin's name on the marquee at Bally's and knowing I was going to be in the same place, doing the same thing made it seem like I had moved for all the right reasons. I immediately wrote him a note saying I was at Catch and that I wanted to see his show. I dropped it off at reception and wondered whether George would get it."

In what may be one of the greatest examples yet of local eating, the blogger and mom at Organically Cooked in Crete makes Snails in Tomato Stew (with local snails!) and offers video proof that even her kids are eating it. Just click this post's title, then scroll down a bit to see how she does it. Learn more about BlogHer's From the 'hood.

Rebecca Woolf, author of Rockabye, stirs up baby lust in her readers with this post about holding her first born while feeling her unborn baby kick. Learn more about From the 'hood.