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Are you looking for candy sugar eyes? Pale pink, ultra-thin foil to wrap your truffles? Maybe you need a cookie cutter shaped like a gnome or some special cupcake liners? Take a look at Bake It Pretty, an amazing and entertaining online shop for the creative baker.

My family was here in San Francisco for a week-long vacation and while we visited and saw the sights and took lots of pictures, mostly we just ate. A lot.

This is in part because of our involvement and interest in food, and in part because we were in the food-centric Bay Area, where an irresistible gustatory treat is just around every corner. But it is also because food is a powerful way to express our connection, love, and familial bonds.

What are your family food experiences?

This is my father's recipe for fudge, written and illustrated in his own hand. I have many fond memories of standing on a chair next to the stove, stirring up batches of this fudge in our Revere-ware pot with the copper bottom. I was one of the lucky ones whose father did a little cooking and didn't seem to mind having me and my brother around to help.

There's plenty of opportunity to wince while watching the must-see new film Food, Inc (hopefully coming soon to a theatre near you.) One of my more minor wince moments was when uber-organic farmer Joel Salatin defends the exorbitant cost of his pasture raised eggs...at $3.00 per dozen.

I wish. I pay $7.50/dozen to my farmer when she comes into the city to deliver the eggs and veg every other week. (I guess that's the difference between living in San Francisco and rural Virginia.) These are gorgeous, pasture-raised eggs (pictured above) with vivid, deep orange yolks and thick whites. They cook up beautifully and I find it almost impossible to cook with or eat anything else.

What does 'pasture-raised' mean and how is it different from 'cage-free' or 'free-range'? And are pasture-raised eggs worth it?

My mystery box included a nice bag of wild arugula last week, much to my pleasure. For the past year or so, I've been enjoying this pungent, more peppery version of arugula in salads, on top of pizzas, as a pesto. But for some reason, I've never stopped to ask what's the difference between arugula and wild arugula? Now that I'm starting to see it everywhere (even prewashed and bagged up at my local Trader Joe's) I've stopped believing that it is truly a wild plant, found growing in obscure, secret fields and harvested under the cloak of darkness.

So what is it, then? Read on for the answer and a recipe for Wild Arugula Pesto!

Here in The Kitchn we're all about home cooking. But home cooking, especially in this age of interwebs and world travel, food networks and glossy monthly magazines, is deeply influenced by things beyond the kitchen door. Indeed, far beyond our immediate neighborhoods and family traditions.

So many things influence our cooking: the seasons and markets, friends, family, tradition, budgets, time, energy...

Today I'm thinking about restaurants. This has to do in part with where I live. The Bay Area is basically just a bunch of streets and bridges that connect us to the next wonderful place to eat, a new gustatory discovery just on the other side of that (impossibly steep) hill.

I love alfresco dining as much as any romantic but even as I dream about cold roast chicken and seven-layer salad under a big tree, I also have to wonder: but what about the bugs? Mosquitos, flies, midges, gnats, no-see-ums and (classically) ants are bound to show up at most outdoor meals. So how do you deal with them?

About five years ago, I lived at a hot springs resort tucked deep in the San Lucia Mountains of Central California. During the winter months, it was a full-on Zen practice temple and in the summer months, we'd open the gates and invite guests in to enjoy the hot springs and dine on delicious vegetarian meals prepared fresh from our kitchen. The summers were a lot of work, especially when the temperatures climbed into the high 90's and beyond. My schedule was a rotation of four days on and one day off.

Sometimes, when I could borrow a car and had the energy to take the almost 3 hour journey (one way!), I would use my day off to escape this paradise and head for another: The Big Sur Bakery on Highway 1. There I would sit for as long as I could on their open front porch, drinking a hot coffee and watching the turkey vultures circle overhead. I'd have a pastry or a sandwich and maybe another latte and eventually head back to the monastery renewed and refreshed.

All this is to say that clearly I am predisposed to loving The Big Sur Bakery Cookbook. Which I do. Very much.

Do you ever get in the mood to go into the kitchen, shut the door and take on something really fussy, with a lot of steps and ingredients? Something that takes almost all your pots and pans and every inch of your counterspace and loads up the dishwasher twice? Something that asks for every drop of your attention and passion, your whole heart and soul?

Something you do just for the doin' of it.

I plan on doing a lot of 'putting up' this year, especially after my fun and successful tomato canning adventure of 2008, which led to award-winning results (at least among my friends.) And although I was raised by a father who put up a few cases of applesauce and pickles every year, I still feel I'll always have something to learn. So when I spied Well-Preserved in the soon-to-be-published section of Clarkson Potter, I just knew I had to have it.

Why? Well, to be honest, initially I was really taken by the author's name. There's something practical and hard working about the name Eugenia Bone. I felt I could trust what she told me. And, as it turns out, this just might be true. I've only had Well-Preserved for a few weeks now but so far so good. So very very good.

Interesting. What our Grandmothers and Great-grandmothers often saw as drudgery and a whole lot of messy work is now becoming an incredibly popular trend among this generation's new homesteaders. It's called canning, or putting up (or down or by) or preserving and it's not just women's work any more!

Elizabeth reported on canning from the New York Times article last week. This week, were taking a look at a few of the many exciting canning projects happening in the San Francisco Bay Area.

I try to eat food in its season because it always tastes better. Usually the texture's better, too, and the color and so on. And generally it is cheaper than when it's not in season. So for very practical reasons, seasonal eating makes sense to me.

But there are also less practical and more philosophical reasons to eat in season. Do you pay attention to the seasons in your kitchen?

Eton Mess is a lovely, versatile dessert: It's light, yet very satisfying, and appeals to both young and sophisticated palates. Traditionally made with strawberries, it takes advantage of seasonal fruit and can be thrown together in a matter of minutes. Served in bowls, it makes a nice casual family dessert or spoon it into vintage champagne glasses as a elegant finale to a fine dinner.

But how does it taste? Consider this: the sweet-tartness of strawberries surrounded by lush, cool whipped cream and punctuated by crunchy-chewy bits of crumpled meringue. The perfect marriage of taste and texture, especially if you've found a source for ruby red local berries.