Q: I love looking at the pictures of super-organized pantries you post occasionally. But it seems like so many of them use up all the available space. If these cooks want to add a new staple ingredient, where do they put them? 

Rachael Ray didn't invent it, but she did give a memorable name and widespread popularity to one of the kitchen tools I can't cook without: the garbage bowl. Let's take a moment to appreciate this humble workhorse of the kitchen.

See that picture above? That's the beginning of what would end up being several jars of marmalade that my friend Serena and I made a few weeks ago. We both had very little experience in making marmalade but Serena has a real pioneering spirit, so we just dove right in. Or actually, she dove right in and I followed. Inspired by the limes that were ripening on a tree right outside my front door, she brought some of her own homegrown meyer lemons and suggested lemon-lime for our marmalade's flavor. Yes! And so we set off on the somewhat risky but infinitely rewarding path of figuring out how it was done. More

"If you liked it, then you would have put a steak on it." Go ahead. Channel Beyonce and sing while you read this.

Kale, chard, spinach, and the like are super foods. I've tried to get my children to eat them in a hundred different ways. Heck, it took me a while to learn to love them, and I would still prefer a large plate of fries smothered in pimento cheese, but you have to grow up sometime. More

We love being on the front end of a long 3-day weekend. Do you have plans for Monday? Any projects you're going to finally tackle? If cleaning and organizing your pantry is on the list, allow us to inspire you: could this pantry you see here be any more awesome? It's actually a relatively small space, but every inch is accounted for and optimized, from the labeled containers to the neatly lined-up flour on the bottom shelf. A place for everything and everything in its place. More

10 of Our Favorite Ingredients for Italian Cooking

Cooking is always easier and more fun when you have the right ingredients on hand. These 15 guides cover stocking your pantry, fridge and freezer so that you always have what you need to cook great Italian food, quick and healthy weeknight dinners, delicious soups, flavorful vegan meals, and much more.

My mother was a reluctant cook, yet she still managed to acknowledge every single holiday with food, starting with breakfast. St. Patrick's Day meant green grits. (We are Southern, after all.) On your birthday, you could be sure there would be candles in your pancakes. April Fool's Day, when you might find cotton balls in your scrambled eggs or a plastic rat in your cereal, was kind of the worst. More

Here's a question: if you had a friend come to you and say that she's setting up her kitchen on a budget, but she's put aside a little money to buy one really terrific thing for her kitchen, what would you tell her to invest in? We're not talking about appliances, like refrigerators, stoves, or anything that requires serious manpower or a renovation. We're talking about something accessible and portable, the one product or tool that could make a serious difference for either her cooking, her kitchen's functionality, her peace of mind, or all of the above! What would you recommend? More

Universal Truth: When kids come home from school, they're hungry. Do you remember being thirteen years old? More

It's sad, but these front yard foraged rose hips did not become jelly.

I have been experiencing a lot of kitchen failures lately, including a rather large pot of boiled rose hips and old quince that was supposed to turn into rose hip jelly but instead ended up a rather sad, watery, flavorless mess. There were several other inedible experiments as well, a real losing streak of which I will spare you the awful details. But the great thing about being a cook is that even if you've lost your mojo, you still have to cook because you still have to eat. You can't just toss your hair and say 'oh, I think I'll move on to buying antique motorcycles and fixing them up in my backyard now' because the next day you have to get up and at the very least make toast. (I'm sure you're aware that toast is fraught with potential failure.) You have to keep cooking even though you cannot. And we all know what happens when you keep at it: eventually you round the bend, something shifts, and it gets better. Cooking doesn't let you be a quitter. More