Kate Gagnon

Most mornings when I’m frantically scouring through the fridge and cursing my lack of night-before lunch preparedness, I end up grabbing a single-serve Greek yogurt, throwing a handful of granola in a ziplock, and snagging a ripe banana from the fruit vendor outside my work. As much as I love this little routine, I hate to admit it, but I’m a little fresh fruit and granola’d out. Luckily, this fruit-and-granola routine is a pretty satisfying lunch packed with protein and fiber.

Do you buy olives at your local grocer’s olive bar? I mean, who can resist those piles of glistening Castelvetranos and Kalamatas? As a person who will buy olives over potato chips any day, this area of the grocery is an absolute weakness. But is the olive bar really worth it? I began to wonder — why don’t I just make my own marinated olives? It seems so simple! The olive bar is just too tempting, normally.

Ah, yes. The age-old question that plagues us all: How on earth do I keep my brown sugar from getting all hard and crumbly like some sort of fossilized molasses treat? One would think perhaps I would have figured this out by now, but no — alas, I cannot learn. Store in an airtight container, you say? Put a tiny terra cotta thingy in it? What sort of prepared person do you think I am?

Did you get a little too enthusiastic with the fall spirit? Did this sudden influx of autumnal festivities happen to involve picking, say, 30 pounds of apples? Oops. Never fear, the slow cooker is here to help save you from eating these one by one until you surely overdose from autumn goodness. While we’ve been visiting a lot of delicious main dish slow cooker recipes this, the ole’ Crock-Pot can do wonders for the sweet tooth.

‘Tis the season for smelly kitchen hands, right? It always seems that this time of year I find myself chopping away at clove after clove of garlic, or slaving at the cutting board as I attempt to slice onions “as thin as possible.” The result, aside from teary eyes on the onion end, is that it seems like my hands always smell like garlic, onions, or something even funkier from about November onwards.

Sometimes around the holidays, you’ve just got to give in to the cookie. They’re abundant, beautiful plates of small sweet bites everywhere you go. I can practically taste the powdered sugar now! While I love tradition, I often find myself maxed out on the sugar intake before we’ve even gotten to dinner, let alone dessert. So what about a a small savory bite to accompany cocktails? What about a savory cookie?

“How about a nightcap?” We’ve heard these words uttered dozens of times in movies, perhaps most memorably in The Graduate between Ben and Mr. Robinson. But what is a nightcap really, and why doesn’t anyone have one anymore? According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, a nightcap is an alcoholic beverage consumed right before bed. Typically it’s of a higher alcohol content than what might have been enjoyed earlier in the evening, like a bourbon or brandy.

What is Branston Pickle you might ask? Only one of the greatest condiments to come out of a jar, that’s what. After acquiring the taste for cheese and Branston pickle sandwiches while studying abroad in college, I’m officially an evangelist for how great this sweet and tangy chutney is on practically everything. There’s nothing quite like Branston Pickle in the mainstream American market.

Love the idea of hosting brunch, but begin to regret it the moment your friends start recalling their hilarious evening while you toil over a pan of bacon grease? Join the club. While I don’t host brunch often, when I do, I frame my entire menu around the fact that I don’t want to spend the whole morning in the kitchen. Sure, that chorizo and leek omelet is fantastic at your local eatery, but are you a short-order cook? No. Skip the omelets and spend time with your friends.

Looking at the big pile of dishes in my sink, you might wonder why there are so many chopsticks in there. Did I recently have a dinner party for eight and serve stir-fry? Nope. I was simply cooking for myself day-to-day, using one of my favorite go-to utensils for anything from stirring the French press to eating pasta. It all started with a warning from my brother not to stir my French press with a metal spoon.

Last week, while out for dinner at a little Italian restaurant in New York’s East Village, our table of eight gazed at the last item on the chalkboard menu with a collective blank stare: “Cencioni Bolognese.” Nobody, myself included, had ever heard of this pasta shape. Described by the server as, “larger than orecchiette, almost like a potato chip,” my curiosity was piqued. The result was surprisingly delicious.

Admit it: Part of the charm of buying your lunch is eating a fancy sandwich. Sure, you know you could make it at home, but when it comes down to it, time is short and it just seems easier to fork over a small handful of cash at that adorable gourmet deli near work. Homemade mayo is a whole other story (a very delicious story!), but even a store bought jar combined with the right ingredients can do wonders to spice up that sorry excuse for a turkey sandwich thrown together in the morning.