Have you noticed that challahs reinvent themselves each year for the Jewish New Year? All year long, we shape our challahs into beautiful braids. On Rosh Hashanah, our challahs are round to symbolize the cycle of the year. Just like our challahs, the new year is a time when we too can consider how to transform ourselves in a positive way during the coming year.

This recipe makes two traditional-sized round challahs for your holiday table and uses the remaining dough to turn challah into "challah poppers," mini roundish snacks, that will appeal to adults and kids alike. They are a great nosh before the big holiday meal.
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While we love organic grocery stores, it can be very pricey to shop at such places (we have friends who jokingly refer to Whole Foods as Whole Paycheck). So we were very intrigued when Danny Seo — who has become such a popular, helpful resource for economical, eco-friendly, and stylish living — hinted to us that he'd found ways we hadn't even considered to save at these stores.

And, in a surprisingly related side note, he also shares his secret for organizing his holiday ornaments! Come read his tips for saving money — have you tried any of these? More

Germaine Leece lives in Sydney, Australia, where she writes a blog called Some Home Truths, a collection of good cooking and meditations on the concept of home. She brings us a small essay today on our dishes — does our china have stories to tell?

I’m not sure when my obsession with old china and silver cutlery began but it was certainly reignited when my son dug up a piece of a china plate in our garden late last year. It’s white porcelain and was obviously a plate or saucer as you can see the rim on the back of it. A pale blue flower is painted on giving the impression it was once part of a ‘good’ china set. But how did it end up here at the back of the garden?

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I am delighted to welcome Jessica Goldman of Sodium Girl to The Kitchn today. Jess has an unusual mission for a young writer: Make eating sodium-free food sexy, fun, and delicious. Jess has a type of lupus that requires her to eat a very low-sodium diet, but she has turned this challenge into a quest for flavor without salt — and she has done it so well that it earned her a book deal. Look for her book on fresh, flavorful sodium-free eating next fall. Here she shares with us three low-sodium appetizers that are fantastic for summer entertaining.

Here’s the scene: You’ve spent the day prepping for a little get together (okay, what’s bound to be the hottest party of the summer). You haven’t left one detail unchecked. You’ve procured the wine, built a tremendous cheese platter, and constructed impressive apps full of smoked fish, sea salts, and creamy sauces. Even Ina and Martha would be impressed. But with thirty minutes before the gang arrives, you suddenly receive a call that throws all the hors d’oeuvres and garnish into the air. Sodium S.O.S.! More

Summer means fresh garden produce, and fresh garden produced needs preserving as much as possible. So we turned to Tigress for a summer series on quick and easy pickling, which is just one way to preserve the bounty of summer a little longer. She has showed us quick picked mushrooms and quick pickled roots — and today, in her last installment, it's pickled berries!

If you're a regular reader of The Kitchn then you've been with me for the last couple of weeks in my attempt to make your summer soirees a tad more tasty. I really do hope you've tried your hand at quick pickling. Because done just once, you'll surely be tempted to add this fearsome technique to your repertoire. Here's the last of the series, and this one's good not only with your summer cocktails, but in them as well: Quick Pickled Berries.
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Summer means fresh garden produce, and fresh garden produced needs preserving as much as possible. So we turned to Tigress for a summer series on quick and easy pickling, which is just one way to preserve the bounty of summer a little longer. Last week she showed us quick pickled roots — this week, it's pickled mushrooms!

Welcome to the second installment of my quick pickling guest post series! Trust me on this one, if you've ever enjoyed gourmet deli-bought pickled mushrooms you are going to love these. If your ancestry hails from basically anywhere across the Atlantic, you probably have them in some form or another deep in your past. In other words, your grandma is going to love them. So, if you see a family picnic lurking anywhere in your future this summer, bring these. They will be a hit all around. More

Summer means fresh garden produce, and fresh garden produced needs preserving as much as possible. So we turned to Tigress for a brief summer series on quick and easy pickling, which is just one way to preserve the bounty of summer a little longer. Pickling is surprisingly easy — take a look at this first post to see just how simple it can be.

Oh snap! Summer is here and you want something snappy to ward off the heat? Or, you need something whistle-wetting and at-the-ready for impromptu summer cocktail munchies?

I'm happy to be back here at The Kitchn for a series of three summer guest posts that are going to help you do just that. One word my friends: Pickles. More

Entertaining is our main topic this month, and we wanted to give a little attention to that biggest of bashes: weddings! One of my favorite resources for planning a sane, practical, personal wedding is Meg Keene's site A Practical Wedding. We're swapping posts today — I will have a post there this afternoon on building a practical wedding registry. Here's Meg now with some practical advice for doing some or all of the cooking for your own (or someone else's!) wedding.

First of all, let me just throw this out there: the phrase 'Self-Catering Your Wedding' is terrifying. Even for serious cooks, this is enough to send you into the fetal position, weeping with fear. But there are lots of ways to do some self-catering at your wedding, and just as many reasons to consider it. Some people will self-cater their whole wedding meal, because of financial realities. Other people might contribute one or two items, because they want to share their love of cooking with friends and family. If you're pondering self-catering your wedding, here are a range of ideas to get you thinking. More

Last month when I visited the home of Philip Sumner and Leona Laurie to shoot their House Tour feature for Apartment Therapy, the two of them fed me a delicious lunch and dinner. They have chosen to follow the Paleo diet, adopting it as a way of eating, and also as a lifestyle. Here's a peek into what dinner with them is like, eating the Paleo way. More

Yigit Pura and I have been friends for almost a decade and as the years have passed, one true thing remains — his absolute labor of love for the mastery of sugar, confection and all things pastry. I was not surprised at all, when he was a contender for the first of Top Chef Just Desserts, and I was absolutely thrilled when he won. During his last visit to Los Angeles, he joined me inside the stunning home of John Saint-Denis for a quick cooking lesson. More