I know, bringing a knife on vacation sounds a bit precarious, especially when facing an airport security line. However, if you're traveling by car or can check a bag at the airport, bringing one or two of your favorite, sharpened knives could save you from major cooking frustration later on.

By now, we’ve all been guilty of doing it. It’s one of the fastest epidemics that not even scientists can explain. Anthropologists and historians hundreds of years from now will find landfills of objects once known as a DSLR camera, lenses, hard drives and memory cards. To their surprise, they will discover that their ancestors and predecessors have been taking pictures, tons of pictures... of food?!  

Shooting food has become one of the fastest growing hobbies for hundreds of thousands of people internationally and many have made the successful leap into the professional side of it. Naturally, everyone wants to get better at it too. 

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!

I'll never forget the time I bought some food souvenirs on a trip to Seattle, immediately popped them into the plastic zip-top bags I had brought with me, and the merchant chuckled and said, "You must be a visiting food blogger." How did he know? Do all food lovers and bloggers carry plastic bags when they travel? I'm not sure, but I certainly do. 

We know that fresh fava beans can be a pain to prepare (...or maybe not), but once we've got the pesky little things, what do we do with them? I've got an idea or two that will make shelling a bunch of fava beans worth the trouble.

How boring is it that I learned the secret to making perfect pasta in Italy? Yes, fresh made pasta is amazing, and no, that's not the technique I'm about to share with you. (Now that you know I'm not going to talk about fresh made pasta, are you a) disappointed, b) disgusted, or c) totally excited, because pasta should be easy?) My friend's Italian husband Peldi taught me the five steps to a perfect bowl of pasta:

Dehydration leaves you tired, anxious and queasy. The best thing you can do for yourself on an airplane is drink all the water. Every time you are offered a beverage, just say yes to good old H2O. I do, and I arrive at my destination feeling refreshed and ready to enjoy myself.

Although we deal mainly with human food here at The Kitchn, many of us travel with our pets when we go adventuring. Here are a few tricks and tips to keep your pup happy and healthy. 

Perhaps you reached into the cherry bowl recently and did a double-take at the doubled-up cherry you found in your hand. These cherries — two whole cherries joined like Siamese twins and sharing a single stem — aren't weird mutants or products of a cloning experiment gone awry. Disappointing, at least little, isn't it? Here's what actually causes them...

When I visited Lebanon earlier this spring, fava beans were in season, so every place we stopped seemed to have a big basket of the green pods, ready for shucking and nibbling raw. My Lebanese hosts looked on with bemusement as I painstakingly peeled off and discarded the translucent skin from each individual bean. "We don't do that," they said. And, it turns out, neither does much of the rest of the world.