Anjali Prasertong

When people find out I am a dietitian and the mom of a school age kid, they often assume my son eats colorful, varied, and healthy packed lunches every day.

Here's how to tackle this short-term problem while we wait for long-term change.

Forget gingerbread men. These warmly-spiced cookies will become a new holiday tradition.

It's pretty old-school, and it's pretty great.

This coffee concentrate — the same type used to make stellar iced coffee — can turn out a cup of hot coffee that is just as good: rich, flavorful, and mellow.

You already have the solution in your pantry.

Bonus: They all can be made ahead of time.

No bleach!

The merits of a simple frittata are many, including the fact that it makes ideal leftovers! Not only can this baked egg skillet be cooked up with whatever veggies, cheese, or meat you have handy, but you can also count on it to hold up quite well in the fridge for days. You could eat the leftovers as is, but I have a much, much better idea for you! Even if you have just a small slice, this is the most ingenious way to eat a leftover frittata.

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of one-bowl meals. Give me a bowl, a spoon, and a comforting mix of grains, vegetables, and protein and I’m set. Kimchi fried rice satisfies all those requirements — and even includes the underappreciated “pickle” food group — but I always like to add a couple handfuls of shredded greens to the mix for a boost of color and nutrition.

In case you were starting to worry the internet held no more surprises, we present the fact that — you guessed it — you can buy cereal marshmallows in bulk. Finally, a way to live out our childhood fantasies of eating bowls of all-marshmallow Lucky Charms! This fact first came to our attention through a short piece on the site called Cereal Marshmallows, which is devoted to the crispy dehydrated marshmallows of our childhood dreams.

Even if you’ve never been to New Orleans, you probably have a picture of it in your mind: brass bands marching through narrow streets, brightly colored Creole cottages, Mardi Gras beads raining down from the sky, and of course the food: roast beef po’ boys, gleaming platters of oysters, bowls of steaming gumbo, and fat muffuletta sandwiches. That was the picture in my mind anyway when I moved to New Orleans in 2014, having never visited before.

If you’ve ever been to New Orleans, you know it is a city made for food-lovers. As such, there is no shortage of food-related souvenirs to take home — or vendors happy to sell cheesy, food-related souvenirs to tourists. My advice? Skip the crawfish-shaped bottle openers and support the city’s vibrant network of small businesses and food producers by picking up one of these five locally produced items instead.

I still remember the controversy in 2007 when Jessica Seinfeld came out with a cookbook about how to sneak vegetable purées into kid-approved dishes like mac and cheese and brownies. It sounded like a bad idea to me. How would a child learn to recognize and eventually enjoy vegetables if they were eating them unknowingly?

Green smoothies started showing up everywhere a couple years ago, followed quickly by the green juice craze. But wait — aren’t those two the same thing? No, there is actually a key difference between smoothies and juices, and that difference has a big impact on how you digest the two. In a nutshell, the difference is fiber. Smoothies have a lot of it; juices typically have very little. A smoothie is made by placing all the ingredients in a container and processing them together.

When I was young, poor, and just starting to cook, I dreamed about one day owning a food processor, just like the chefs I saw on TV, who used them to make big batches of pesto, silky-smooth hummus, and perfect pie crust in a flash. But dropping over $100 on a kitchen appliance wasn’t a priority — or even a possibility — especially when I could use my clunky old blender or even (gasp!) my hands to do what the food processor could do, albeit more slowly and inconveniently.

I got a pressure cooker long before I started thinking about kids, back when I was just a busy person who loved being able to cook quick weeknight dinners. Then I had a baby and realized that a pressure cooker is even more essential for new parents, with uses I never even thought about before I had an infant.

You hit it like a wall at work. That drop in energy, accompanied by a deep need for a snack that is sugary, fatty and/or crunchy — it’s the 3 p.m. snack slump. Have you ever wondered why it happens so predictably on weekday afternoons? Here’s a look at the science that may help explain the late-afternoon slump, and why we crave snacks when it strikes.

So you made yourself two-dozen homemade granola bars over the weekend. Congratulations! That means no more mid-afternoon raids of the office vending machine. The only thing is … now you have to eat the same snack for the next 24 days. Or, what if you found a few healthy-snacking friends and organized a snack swap at work instead?

Sometimes when you start dreaming of Doritos during that yawning space between an early lunch and a late dinner, it’s because you are actually hungry and really need a snack. And sometimes it’s because you’re exhausted, bored, or just craving a little social interaction after hours of screen time. For those afternoons when your snack cravings are about more than simple hunger, here are a few suggestions for beating them — in five healthy, satisfying ways.

My dog, Goblin, is what dog trainers like to call “food-motivated.” She will do anything for a morsel of something good and always tries out her most plaintive puppy dog eyes on every friend who comes to visit for dinner. It’s kind of pathetic — especially because begging for food off our plates has never, ever worked. But the endearing-slash-annoying thing about dogs that every dog lover knows is that they never stop hoping.

Most dogs spend their whole lives begging for their favorite foods, and we pet owners spend a lot of our time staring into those puppy dog eyes, wondering if we should give in. So when the worst happens, and illness, pain, or age brings a beloved companion to the point when prolonging his life would be cruel, one small consolation of that saddest of days — your dog’s last day — is being able to feed him any kind of food his doggy heart desires.

As an introvert, I don’t always love having other people in the kitchen with me, but I always love having my pets in the kitchen while I cook. Some people find the idea of an animal in the kitchen unsanitary — all that fur! Those dirty paws! — but having to give the counters an extra wipe-down is worth it for the presence of the quietest, least judgmental, silliest, and most useless sous chefs a gal could ask for.

Does your grocery store have a nutritionist on staff? The answer may very well be yes. As shoppers are becoming increasingly interested in improving their diets, more and more supermarkets are hiring in-store registered dietitians to help educate customers, answer nutrition-related questions, and even provide one-on-one consultations. They are the resident experts on all the good-for-you foods in the supermarket.

Not so long ago, I was watching an episode of a “Top Chef” spinoff show, “Top Chef Duels,” in which canned salmon was one of the ingredients featured in a “high-end and humble” cook-off between chefs. The chef tasked with using it said the only thing she could think of to “save” the salmon was turning it into a mousse with smoked salt, so it might taste more like smoked salmon.

You can’t trust your feelings during the first couple weeks with a new app. It can be intense — you’re spending all your time with it, you’re telling all your friends about it, and you’re maybe even thinking this app, it completes me. But that hot-and-heavy time always comes to an end, and more often than not, all you’re left with is a neglected, vaguely embarrassing reminder of how you fall for any slick new app that comes along.

A couple months ago I shared some of the woes of feeding a picky toddler, as well as the lessons I’ve learned so far, and many of our readers shared their own stories of the challenges of feeding picky kids. There was some great advice in the comments, and two tips in particular really resonated with me; I was inspired to totally revamp how I plan meals for our family.

It might not be the prettiest, but this puréed soup more than makes up for its homely appearance with the deep flavors of roasted broccoli and extra-sharp cheddar cheese, and a creamy yet cream-free texture. Best of all, it all comes together in about 30 minutes, making it a quick and easy weeknight dinner option. This soup was born on a hungry weeknight, when I was looking for a meal made with ingredients I almost always keep on hand.

Campbell’s new “Real Real Life” ad campaign got people talking with its commercial featuring two gay dads feeding soup to their son, but to me, there is nothing complicated about that particular spot. It just makes me feel good. No, there is a Campbell’s commercial that brings up feelings that are much more complex and uncomfortable. It’s called “Phones” — have you seen it?

I grew up in the ’80s and watched a lot of TV, so when I was a little girl it was my understanding that stressed-out grown-up women liked to take Calgon bubble baths or eat Nestlé chocolate bars to help them relax. Three decades later, I am a bona fide adult woman, and while bubble baths and chocolate can certainly improve a bad day, the way I treat myself is indulgent for reasons no one in the ’80s could have expected.

As a cook, I see Thanksgiving as one of the most exciting holidays of the year — an annual excuse to spend days or weeks planning, cooking, and eating a feast with friends and family. But as an introvert who loves small, intimate dinner parties, I also find Thanksgiving exhausting and emotionally overwhelming, especially when I’m the host. Are you an introvert too?

In the United States, one in seven people struggles with hunger, and many rely on food from local food banks to help feed their families. We’re about to embark on the holiday season, which is an especially difficult time to live with food insecurity — that is, not knowing when you will get your next meal. Many of us think about making food donations to local food banks at this time of year. But what types of donations help most? And what kinds of food should you avoid donating?

I’ve shared a home with my cat Milhouse for over seven years, and I still find myself asking, “Why are you doing that?” at least once a week. Many times, this question pops up in the kitchen, where he has some odd habits he has picked up over the years. He hasn’t answered me yet, but a cat lady can dream. And in those dreams, this is how he explains himself.

The cooking and sharing of food is not only used to celebrate life; since early human history, it has also played an important part in marking the death of a loved one, and these rituals continue in many different forms today. From Mormon funeral potatoes to bread shaped liked bones, here are five food-related death traditions from around the world. Did you know in Japan it is terribly rude to stab your chopsticks into a bowl of rice and then leave them there?

You’ve probably been hearing for years that eating a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast is a healthy way to start the day — but do you know why? What is it that makes oatmeal so special, and how much of it should you eat? And does instant oatmeal count? Here’s a quick, science-based breakdown of the health benefits of that morning bowl of oatmeal. Oats are whole grains, which means they haven’t been stripped of their nutritious bran and germ.

Before I had a kid, whenever I crossed paths with a child who was a picky eater, I was sympathetic about the problem. I know there are a lot of factors contributing to a kid’s limited palate, especially when they are very young, and parents have little to no control over many of them. “I totally get it!” I’d say, while watching a friend’s 3-year-old methodically munch through an entire restaurant bread basket and eat nothing else.