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.

Q: I was recently diagnosed with a slew of food allergies. Cooking has become a challenge, but I’m managing and am being very much a control freak about what I eat. But I’m facing a big family get-together in a rented vacation home with my in-laws and at this point, I don’t want to go because of my food allergies.We’re talking 10 people for one week in a house with a kitchen with big family dinners, and Grandma doing most of the cooking and baking.

I just returned from my first trip to Lebanon, where I spent a week eating and drinking all over the country. Whether in a restaurant or someone’s home, no matter where I stopped for a drink, I was always offered a bowl or two of mixed nuts. This, I learned, was no coincidence.“If you go somewhere in Lebanon for a drink and they don’t give you nuts, you should leave,” 961 Beer’s Mazen Hajjar advised during my visit to the microbrewery.

At the end of a bumpy, red dirt driveway in a small town in southern Lebanon, you’ll find the home of farmer Abu Kassem and his family. For about 13 years, they have been growing za’atar, the once-wild herb that plays a starring role in the increasingly popular spice blend of the same name. The path from field to flatbread is simple on this organic farm, but one fueled by dedication and hard work.

Portable, nutritious and tasty at room temperature, hard-boiled eggs are pretty much the perfect travel food. It is hard to imagine improving on them — but I think you can. All it takes is a quick roll in a soy sauce mixture to make shoyu tamago (soy sauce eggs), a flavorful Japanese bento snack I like to eat on the road or at home.After writing about shoyu tamago last yearbeforeAnd they are very simple to make.

Ah, the dilemma of dinner during the busy week before a trip out of town. You don’t want to blow your budget before the vacation even starts by eating out every night. But if you cook, you want to make the most of your time in the kitchen without generating too many leftovers that you won’t be able to finish before you leave. Here is a five-day dinner plan that calls for a some extra kitchen time on Sunday to give a head start on a week’s worth of quick and healthy meals.

For coffee addicts like me, one of the drawbacks of holiday travel is not having a cup of dependably delicious coffee every morning. If you’re facing down several days of weak hotel coffee or the terrible stuff your parents drink every morning, here’s one easy-to-pack alternative: Humble Cup, a portable pour-over coffee packet that can be brewed anywhere. In each Humble Cup foil packet is a compostable paper filter filled with high-quality ground coffee beans.

In the hours before Thanksgiving, most cooks are so focused on getting the meal on the table that appetizers are the last things on their minds. And that’s just fine, says Sam Sifton. Appetizers don’t belong at Thanksgiving.Quite simply, Sifton believes appetizers take up valuable stomach space that should be reserved for the main meal.

The Dude’s White Russian. Alex’s Moloko Plus. Jay Gatsby’s Gin Rickey. If you have a soft spot in your heart for the signature cocktails of your favorite characters in film and literature, this new infographic from Pop Chart Lab is for you.The Cocktail Chart of Film and Literature illustrates 49 drinks famously imbibed by beloved fictional characters of film and literature, all contained in a clever chart that could also serve as a handy cocktail recipe guide.

Have you ever wondered why the slang term for coffee is a cup of joe? The phrase has been in use since World War I, but the original term, coined by sailors in the Navy, was actually a cup of Joseph Daniels. And it was meant as an insult. Josephus Daniels was secretary to the Navy under president Woodrow Wilson. Looking to impose stricter moral standards on naval life, he made changes like increasing the number of chaplains, cracking down on prostitution at naval bases and banning alcohol.

With the summer markets exploding with fresh fruits and vegetables and the Internet full of tutorials for making your own jams, pickles and other preserved foods, it’s hard to know where to start when you begin preserving your own food. So we asked some experts for help — and every day this week we will be sharing their picks for the preserved foods they can’t live without.

When fruit and vegetables come from the market rather than our own land, it’s easy to forget that preserving began as a way to keep the bounty from going to waste, not a weekend project with a shopping list.

When we think about preserving food, canning is what often comes to mind — but there is a whole world of preservation possibilities outside the jar. This week we are talking to experts about the preserved foods they can’t live without, and today James-Beard-Award-winning writer and wild foods enthusiast Hank Shaw talks about his passion for drying and pickling wild mushrooms, with plenty of recipes and ideas to get you started.

Preserving is a craft, but it can be an art form too. One taste of a great jam is all you need to understand that a master jam-maker preserves not just the flesh of the fruit, but its very essence, the fleeting flavor that makes that particular fruit unique.

The holidays are here, which means the stores are flooded with a dizzying array of cooking tools, cookbooks and fancy ingredients meant to tempt home cooks. What’s the discerning shopper to do? We decided to talk to some of our favorite professional chefs — the people who spend serious time in their kitchens — to find out what can’t-live-without-it cooking tools and ingredients are on their holiday wish lists this year.

Small kitchen habits can make a big difference in your cooking, so we love learning about the everyday cooking habits of cookbook authors, chefs and other food professionals. What are the small habits they practice every time they step into the kitchen? This week we are talking to our favorite food experts to find out the simple cooking practices they rely on, and today legendary French chef and cookbook author Jacques Pepin shares his five basic habits for better, happier cooking every day.

Small kitchen habits can make a big difference in your cooking, so we love learning about the everyday cooking habits of cookbook authors, chefs and other food professionals. What are the small habits they practice every time they step into the kitchen? The Commonsense Kitchen If a habit is indeed “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up,” then I have many kitchen habits: Wash greens carefully.

Will you be cooking a romantic dinner for a loved one this Friday? Or perhaps treating yourself to a special solo meal, no partner necessary? This week we are talking to chefs, food writers and bloggers about their ideal Valentine’s Day menus, and whether you’re married, single, or it’s complicated, we’ll be sharing ideas for all kinds of cooks, from the hopeless romantic to the die-hard cynic.

If you are a fan of Ashley Rodriguez’s award-winning food blog, Not Without Salt, then you know she has a commitment to sharing date nights with her husband that are romantic yet realistic, and always special. It isn’t easy to create that atmosphere with a longtime partner, especially when you have kids, so we turned to Ashley for her advice on sharing a memorably romantic meal at home, even when you can’t find a babysitter.

Will you be cooking a romantic dinner for a loved one this Friday? Or perhaps treating yourself to a special solo meal, no partner necessary? This week we are talking to chefs, food writers and bloggers about their ideal Valentine’s Day menus, and whether you’re married, single, or it’s complicated, we’ll be sharing ideas for all kinds of cooks, from the hopeless romantic to the die-hard cynic.

In 2013, 49.1 million Americans lived in households struggling with hunger, a stark number which includes 15.8 million children and 4.8 million seniors. Food insecurity is a daily reality for about one in seven households. So why do we only seem to talk passionately about it when a celebrity is involved? If you paid any attention to the recent controversy surrounding Gwyneth Paltrow’s $29 SNAP grocery shopping challenge, you know what I mean.