Are you thinking of hosting an Empty Bowls gathering in your area? Empty Bowls is about raising funds and awareness to fight hunger and building community over a bowl of soup. While the emphasis is on raising funds, having a nice selection of delicious soups to serve is always a good idea. Here are some guidelines for your Empty Bowls soup selection, plus a roundup of our favorite soup recipes for a crowd.

Ring in the new year with a sip of something sparkling that will tickle your nose and refresh your palate. Champagne, prosecco, and even non-alcoholic mocktails are a fantastic way to celebrate — and our pitcher versions will make it easy to keep it flowing into 2017! Big-batch cocktails to easily serve a crowd.

It’s wonderful that you decided to host New Year’s Day brunch this year, but maybe you’re starting to resent the thought of having to get up at the crack of dawn (or perhaps never even going to sleep!) on New Year’s Day to pull it off? Well, with a little planning ahead, you can host a crowd and still get your beauty sleep!

We really took on the slow cooker in 2016, publishing dozens of recipes and articles and equipment reviews. Here are our 16 most popular recipes, from the best pulled pork, to Crock-Pot mac and cheese, to truly crispy apple crisp. Winter, spring, summer, or fall — it’s always a good time to pull out the slow cooker. Mac and cheese! In the slow cooker! Just add dry pasta, milk, and cheese into your slow cooker and walk away.

All smart cooks know that always having a few basic pantry staples on hand is critical for those times when making it to the market is just not going to happen or a quick supper is needed. Here we have recipes that rely on things every cook should have in her cupboard: cans of beans, tomatoes, coconut milk, and dried pasta.

Sometimes the difference between getting a hot meal on the table and not getting a hot meal on the table is a clever shortcut. Rotisserie chicken picked up at the supermarket is classic, making it possible to have white rotisserie chicken chili ready in no time. Other shortcuts can be as simple as opening a can of beans for our 10-minute black bean tacos. Here, a collection of recipes that stand as homage to all the good ways the grocery store helps us put dinner on the table.

We’re always happy to add to our of growing list of vegan recipes, especially as more people turn to a plant-centered diet. There’s just so much delicious cooking to do with plants! We’re talking beet pesto pasta, chickpea nuggets, and the most delicious broccoli salad with peanut dressing. These 15 recipes were our favorite vegan recipes in 2016, but we’re sure they’ll live on into 2017 and beyond.

Vegetarian cooking has thankfully outgrown its niche and has fully entered the mainstream these past few years. It’s no longer necessary to hide or apologize for the fact that meat is missing from the table. Instead, we celebrate the varied abundance that a vegetarian meal can have, and these 23 recipes are just a hint at what can be accomplished. So dive in!

If you love a hearty, savory, vegetable-forward breakfast, then you might want to consider the somewhat-novel notion of a salad for breakfast. Yes, we said salad. Read on for 15 reasons why this makes total, delicious sense. Need a little more convincing on the salad-for-breakfast front? It might be hard to think of prioritizing greens over a croissant, but a salad can be a warm and satisfying way to start your day. Read two takes on why the breakfast salad works.

Vegetables and pasta are best mates for life. From rich lasagna to simple 10-minute salads, there are endless ways to bring them together. In these 16 recipes there’s no need for meat — and in a few cases, no need for dairy either in our vegan offerings. Best of all, most vegetable and pasta combinations are often quick and take just a few ingredients, making them a hungry cook’s favorite go-to meal.