My mother's first job, at age 14, was as a soda jerk at her local ice cream shop. It was there she picked up a super simple tip for scooping ice cream that produces perfect scoops and saves a little torque on your wrist. Read on for her pro tip!

One of the challenges for a single diner is what to do with an entire loaf of bread. I'm not talking about the pre-sliced, sandwich-style bread that lends itself to being divided up and frozen and then defrosted when needed. That's a simple problem with an obvious solution. What I'm talking about here is a nice crusty loaf, the kind that you go out of your way to purchase from the bakery with the wood-fired oven.

We've explored how helpful xanthan gum is in gluten-free baking, but another place it often shows up, along with other stabilizers like carob bean and guar gum, is in ice cream. Why is xanthan gum in ice cream? And does it belong there?

I can't begin to count the number of dinner parties I've had that have ended with ice cream as dessert. As much as I love to bake a pie or a cake or whip up something brûléed, sometimes the only way I can make a dinner party manageable on a busy schedule is to serve scoops of high-quality, store-bought ice cream for dessert. And so far, no one's complained!

I'm a cook and so therefore I like to mess with things. I've always been this way. When I was little, I would run to the bathroom as soon as I heard the phone ring because I knew my mother would be occupied for a while. I would climb up onto the counter, pull up the silver knob that closes the drain on the sink and start "cooking." In would go a little toothpaste, thinned with some mouthwash and followed by a glug of Bonnie Bell's 10-0-6 lotion or maybe a dollop of creamy eyeshadow to add some color. After mixing that up with a nail file, I would sift in some baby powder and a pinch of Epsom salts and fold. And there the fun would end because I didn't quite know what to do with my 'mixtures' once I was done mixing, lacking the convenience of an oven in the bathroom.

Now that we know lard isn't the devil's plaything that we once thought it was, many people are interested in rediscovering how this healthier fat can be brought back into their kitchens. The editors of Grit Magazine heard our cries and created a cookbook packed with homespun recipes and fun, nostalgic reminiscences of the days when nose-to-tail eating was simply called dinner.

What are some good ideas for a kitchen-warming gift box for a young person in a new place, cooking for themselves for the first time? I thought long and hard about this because I love this question. What would I give to a new cook to help them to get started in the kitchen? What are the most essential tools, the most important things to have on hand in your first kitchen?

When norcalgirl21 put in a request for a Lava Cake recipe, the first thing I thought of was Nigella Lawson's Choco-Hoto-Pots, although I like to refer to them simply as chocolate pots. This is a classic Nigella recipe: simple, quick and outrageously decadent. Warm, gooey, chocolatey heaven! I have yet to serve these and not have the conversation come to a halt, leaving only the sound of spoons scraping against porcelain and the occasional sigh of pleasure.

I developed this recipe specifically for those times when I'm dining solo. It's not that it can't be expanded to feed two or more, but I like the fact that it is my special, alone-time treat. It is truly one of my favorite meals: good, basic, hearty eating that fills me up and makes me ready for whatever life is throwing my way. It's suitable for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I am very happy to share it with you today.

The old joke about someone being 'vegetarian except for bacon' is a bit stale but nonetheless, it harbors some truth. Bacon is one of the most missed foods when people give up eating meat and often the first one back (the "gateway meat"). Still, most vegetarians I know have found many inventive ways to add bacon's delicious qualities into their food without using actual bacon itself. For me, bacon's appeal is the coming together of three things: fat, smoke and salt. I suggest addressing each of these when searching for a way to add bacon-y goodness to vegetarian and vegan foods. Read on for several suggestions.