Springtime is tough for home cooks. This is non-intuitive; after all, the markets! Ramps! Asparagus! Green good things all of a sudden! There's a lot going on, but for many of us, those exciting little bits of produce don't really show up until mid-May, leaving us bored and tired of our winter cooking routines. I don't know what it is about springtime, but I find my cooking motivation dropping off. What about you? Do you experience this? 

We're all about sourcing, prepping, cooking and eating good food here at The Kitchn, yet there's one area we seldom think about: using food plants as dye. But now that I have the beautiful poster pictured above hanging in my kitchen, I'm inspired to take another look at my food scraps and consider what color they might produce on a t-shirt, or a napkin. Take avocado pits, for instance. Depending on the mordants (used to help fix the color) an avocado pit will produce anything from a pale mauve to a deep grey. 

Even if you keep a clean kitchen, there is a good chance harmful bacteria like E. coli and salmonella may be lurking in a few easily-overlooked areas, according to new report from the public health group NSF International. But for the most part, all you need is warm, soapy water and a little elbow grease to keep these areas clean and germ-free.

Not long ago, my neighbors and I got together for a quiet tea-and-knitting evening. The idea was to enjoy some company and maybe get a small project done or add a few rows onto a knitting project. We all brought things to nibble and the hostess made ginger tea. Some of us knit, one of us sorted receipts, and the others just came for the company. Busy schedules aside, this was easy to organize and easy to pull together. Not much happened:  a few inches of a scarf came into being, a few stories were told, several cups of tea were drunk. Wild times, eh?

If you've ever read our About page, you know we say The Kitchn is a site for people who like to get their hands dirty while they cook. One way to interpret that is quite literally — as in, "dirty" from digging in the dirt! As home cooks, we know that growing herbs, fruits, and vegetables is a natural extension for many of you. So we want to know: if you live and cook in a small space but still manage to grow things in pots or containers, what advice would you give to a fellow home cook and newbie gardener who wants to try his or her hand at it?

I found myself working in the yard today, dedicating a few hours to digging up dandelions by the root. It's the best way for us to get rid of them without chemical sprays. Plus, it turns out that the oft-damned "weed" is useful:

There are no secrets about food in our home. Our children, if they're paying attention, know where it comes from and what it was doing before it ended up on the plate. Though we don't forbid anything, we aren't shy about letting them know the difference between that fast food chicken sandwich and the chicken we got from Mr. Eubanks at the farmers' market. Much like adults, kids will eat what they want, in spite of what they know. But we like them to know what they're getting into. Take soft shell crabs, for instance. 

If someone were to take the doors off all your kitchen cabinets and snap a photo, what would that image say about you? That's what Dutch photographer Erik Klein Wolterink explores in Kitchen Portraits, a photography project and the subject of his new book by the same name. 

If you need extra storage in your kitchen, it doesn't get much simpler than a basic wire shelving unit. You can find tall units for around $60 at Home Depot, and with five or more shelves per unit, that's plenty of space to work with. But if you've always thought they were better suited for storing, say, golf bags out in the garage, then these photos may surprise you. Wire shelves in the kitchen can be both practical and stylish! See a few more examples below:

Dirt free and portable. That's how Modern Sprout describes their new hydroponic windowsill planter box. While most hydroponic setups are an unattractive display of plastic bottles, buckets, and tubes, Modern Sprout's version is pretty stylish. And because it automatically waters and feeds your plants for you, it's also perfect for black thumbs. (Not that I have that problem, of course. Ahem.)