It wasn't exactly front page news, but earlier this year the FDA officially added brown rice to the list of foods that can be labeled whole grains. Previously rules about fiber content had kept brown rice from making the list. Of course you may be scratching your head if you already considered brown rice to be a whole grain, but this new ruling makes it crystal clear that eating brown rice is a very good thing.

Move over Martha Stewart, Wing-It Vegan makes the cutest little Halloween ghosts, perfect little peanut butter snacks for kids, grandparents, neighbors, the mailman, heck - ourselves! They're as fun as all get-out and easy to make with pantry ingredients, too. Just click this post's title for a picture and the recipe.

"I've had a lifelong fear of figs. I blame it on my Swedish grandmother who lovingly baked sweets that she wanted her precious only young grandaughter to try. Among these treats were cookies with fresh fig filling. Though I loved grandma and appreciated her spoiling me endlessly, I couldn't stand the texture of the fig cookies. ...

"I’m not handling this very well. I don’t want summer to be almost over. I don’t care that I love fall; I love even more not having to wear jackets and toe-covering shoes and socks. I hate socks most of all. Everyone knows that fall is abundantly short-lived and all of a sudden you’re catapulted into the longest, winter ever, and … I’m not ready." (Smitten Kitchen)

Two days before a recent last-minute vacation, one foot and half my brain were already out the door. One little problem for a thrifty cook: a still-packed fridge, an eggplant, some Italian pole beans, a beautiful melon, all likely to go to waste unless I figured something out, fast.

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.

Take along a strong back when visiting the farmers markets in August: a ten-pound watermelon will call, "Take me home! Eat me up!" Watermelons are inexpensive, easy to eat -- and with just a few minutes of research, there's more to watermelon than wedges. Here are 16 recipe ideas, all perfectly suited to hot summer days.

Deb from Smitten Kitchen asked a burning (ahem) question: What are you afraid to cook? Four hundred shuddering, knee-knocking, chalkboard-scraping comments later, a fascinating profile of kitchen phobias emerged.

The picnic gene, it's clearly in the X chromosome because we women, we loooove to eat outside, and those men, well, not so much. Give us a sunny patio, a rooftop view, a shady spot beneath a tree, any day, any evening, we're in the mood for an outdoor experience.

"Summer time, and the livin' is easy ..." (Wanna listen while reading? Open the Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong classic in another window. For optimal effect, listen to birds singing at the same time!) Okay, now that we're, um, in the mood, let's skip the birds and move straight to the bees, you know, honey bees.

My friend Anne is nuts for cherries. She has monogrammed cherry stationery! But mostly, Anne is so committed to cherry pie, cherry juice, cherry jam and every cherry recipe you can imagine that she and her husband drive from St. Louis to northern Wisconsin -- that's ten hours each way -- to pick up 360 pounds -- yes, that's pounds -- of cherries, pitted cherries. That, my friends, is one big bowl of cherries.

Food blog postings definitely come in cycles. I'm not talking about seasonal or holiday food trends, when everyone is cooking pumpkin or asparagus, or blogging events when all the Daring Bakers are making doughnuts. I'm talking about those unexplained trends, when suddenly you start to notice the same dish on lots of different blogs, and there doesn't seem to be any real reason for it. I was scratching my head recently, because it seemed like every time I checked on blogs in my feed reader, more and more people were writing about making pulled pork.