It's June and the summer fruit is starting to roll in, which basically translates to jam time in my kitchen.  Like many people, I love jam but sometimes I'm a little taken aback by how much sugar is called for in many classic jam recipes.  For this reason, I always keep a box of Pomona's Universal Pectin in my cupboard.  Pomona's is a low-sugar pectin, meaning you can make jams and jellies using very low or no sugar. 

Accomplished home canner and blogger Allison Carroll Duffy has been working with the people behind Pomona's to create a new cookbook, just released this month, with recipes that use this marvelous product.  Read on for her take on the 5 essential things a home canner should know!

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Q: In the Midwest, a 'pudgy pie' is a popular camping food. They are generally made in pie irons, which are often cast iron gadgets with long handles. We'd love to try making them at home, but I can't find an appropriate gadget to do this. It seems pie irons are only a camping tool. Any ideas for how to find or DIY a pie iron for indoor use?

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Have you had Thai- and Vietnamese-style iced coffee? A combination of strong black coffee, sweetened condensed milk, and plenty of ice makes these drinks a refreshing change from your standard brew. From Girl Versus Dough, here's a frozen version topped with toasted coconut. What a treat! 

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Traveling can always be filed under the category "learning experience." For a moment's time, you're set outside your bubble and thrust into the unknown with unfamiliar cultures, traditions, and thoughts. Those elements are why so many people become enamored of travel — it's fuel for an open mind. Though not as cultural as a trip abroad, perhaps, my most recent trip took me to the fields of Driscoll's berry farms on the coast of northern California. I learned quite a bit.

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Grilled asparagus is a beautiful thing. Watching those slender spears roll through the grates when you try to pick them up is not. Aki and Alex over on Ideas in Food have apparently experienced the same frustration, and I love their simple and elegant solution.

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I ate my first kouign amann from the palm of my hand at a farmers market in Oakland almost two years ago, and I will never in all my life forget the taste of those first buttery, caramelized, incredibly flakey morsels. I dream of traveling to Brittany to try a kouign amann straight from the source. Then again, now that I know that making them at home is not only doable, but just as buttery and flakey as anything coming from a bakery, I may not need to. Kouign amann? At home? I'm not kidding. Here's how you, too, can have a fresh batch of kouign amann cooling on your counter right now.

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The moment I stepped into the little neighborhood bakery near the coast of Lebanon, I knew I was someplace special. Furn Al Sabaya ("Bakery of the Ladies") is run by three sisters, Martha, Lorenza and Lucie, who work together behind the counter to sweetly and almost magically churn out an array of unusual breakfast pastries from their fiery oven. The one that captured my heart was a thin egg tart flavored with butter and mint, sort of a cross between a quiche and a pizza. This recipe keeps the buttery goodness of the original, but bakes the egg filling into a flaky, free-form crostata that would make a uniquely tempting addition to a weekend brunch or a special lunch alongside a crunchy green salad.

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Ok, I'm going to be frank: there is really nothing quite so uncomfortable and embarrassing — for you and the people around you — as having digestion issues when you're on a plane. You can pop a Gas-X, but I hate those chalky, chewable tablets. This is why I was really intrigued to hear of another remedy: bitters!

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As any coffee addict knows, in places where a decent cup of coffee is hard to find, you'll always find Nescafé. Though the coffee snob in me feels I should turn up my nose at instant coffee from a packet, I have a soft spot for those brown crystals that make it easy to find a steaming cup of hot coffee no matter where in the world you are.

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Rootstock is a wine word that many readers probably have heard mentioned with regard to viticulture and the growing of wine grapes. Today most vines are planted on rootstocks. This means that they are not planted on their own roots; rather the vine is grafted onto the root of a different vine species.

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