Sara Kate Gillingham

Salads at 4th of July cookouts and summer picnics tend to fall into a few worn-out categories. Mayo-laden potato salad. Greasy pasta salad. Maybe a tomato salad if you’re lucky. Salads and side dishes get short shrift next to the blazing grill and charcoal taste of those cheeseburgers, or the splendor of the blueberry flag cake. Well, that shouldn’t be so. Here are 15 summer salads that offer delicious summer taste, and something fresh, something new for your summer picnic table.

I’ve been in Los Angeles for a week and we’ve already grilled artichokes three times. While the earth in my neck of the woods back east still snores through its winter slumber, agriculture is full-on here. Given the warm weather, we decided to grill as much as possible so we’ve been finishing off the ‘chokes on the grill. It lends a nice crispy texture to the edges (think potato chip!) and a smoky flavor that you just can’t get out of a pot of boiling water.

You only need three ingredients, including the tequila.

What are those things and what do you do with them anyway? Toss them in the trash? Please don’t. Before you reject the bird’s vital organs, learn a little about what they are. Giblets refers to the little bundle of parts sometimes found inside the cavity of a bird, such as chicken or turkey. Can you name all the parts in a giblets bundle? A labeled version of this photo appears below, along with some thoughts on what to do with giblets.

Potatoes fall into three basic categories: starchy, waxy, and those in between (which are referred to as all-purpose). The trick is knowing which potato works best in which circumstance. Consider this a user’s guide to the humble spud. We break down which potato is best for baking, boiling, roasting, and more.It’s a good idea to inspect your potatoes before you buy them.

Skip the food coloring and the special kits from the drugstore. You can dye Easter eggs using the things you already have in your pantry.

Cheers to summer — and pretending our front stoop is an Italian piazza.

This is the light, fragrant stew created with spring celebrations in mind. Unlike the rich beef stews you cozied up with in winter, this one opts for a subtly spiced, brothy base studded with ultra-tender chunks of lamb and vegetables. It’s casual enough for a simple Sunday supper, although if you spoon it over a bowl of buttery couscous and top with a splash of fresh herbs, it becomes the centerpiece of a dinner party.

When she was still with us, my grandmother baked Mexican wedding cookies every Christmas Eve. Today these nutty, powdered sugar-coated cookies take me back to her little house in San Fernando, where it was warm on most Southern Californian Christmases; I sensed these cookies were her way of giving us snow for Christmas.

Our piece aboutJamie Oliver’s chicken in milk got me thinking about other possibilities for cooking a whole chicken in milk — what could be easier than filling a pot with liquid and spices, turning on the heat, and walking away until what’s left is the most succulent fall-off-the-bone bird? So I decided to try the sweet and pungent flavors of coconut milk, lemongrass, and star anise.

This is the soup my one-fourth Mexican mother used to make all the time, and for that reason alone, it is authentic to me. Yes, go to Mexico and you will have a pretty different soup, but this is the way she fed me as a child, and so it is how I make it today. It has a lot to do with using up leftovers. If you don’t have a sweet potato, a yellow or red potato will work fine if that’s what you have on hand. Again, potatoes came into the soup in the first place because of leftovers.

Every season, there’s that moment when the whole idea of “seasonality” wears thin — when you’re done with a particular variety of produce before it’s done with you. Or maybe it’s just the inundation of summer squash, zucchini, and tomatoes that bring on those feelings. When it does, I throw together this simple little casserole and fall in love all over again.

Every once in a while during the summer, I stumble on the sale of the season. I’m not talking about clothes or shoes — this is far better. I’m talking about fresh, ripe raspberries for $1 per pint. Considering these berries can be upwards of $5 at the grocery store, I stock up! While I could easily eat my way through pint after pint, popping berries from the container straight to my mouth, I do my best to show a little restraint.

A classic bowl of comfort that needs nothing but good, crusty bread.

Now and then, a girl needs a little magic to get through the day and fly above it all. I have a couple of pretty gigantic projects going on right now, and while moving a mile a minute isn’t my preferred way to live, it’s been a reality. At times, I move so fast that I forget to eat, and I get clumsy and frantic. That’ll knock the wind right out of a lady’s magic fairy wings. To make sure I stay on top of it all, I need a nourishing and energizing breakfast.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara: When it’s good, it can make your eyes roll back in your head with pleasure. It lurks there, beckoning, batting its eyelashes on Italian menus. When you don’t order it, you usually end up wishing you had. Do you ever make it at home? Seems easy enough, right? It’s basically just bacon, eggs, and pasta.

Five years ago, we hosted our 10 full-time staff members for a weekend retreat in the country, and I was in charge of the cooking. We were hungry worker bees, stretching our brains all day, decoding the secrets of site design, traffic analytics, and reader satisfaction. Tried as I did to push the healthy snacks on my coworkers, it was a plate of dark chocolate walnut cookies that won for best snack.

You may remember from last week that I’ve been involved in the creation of a meal around a very challenging theme: space. Last week I shared with you the Tang Cocktail that kicked off the evening. Today, I’m sharing the dessert. This dinner had been an auction item at a fundraiser for my daughter’s school, and in addition to the space theme, the friend who ultimately bought this dinner also wanted to celebrate her partner’s birthday. My challenge was the cake.

I recently came across a really old recipe post that I wrote about having a sweet potato for breakfast, and I noticed the date: May 2006, which put me at about four-and-a-half months pregnant at the time. My mother was in town to help me with a project, and one day, she made me breakfast out of a leftover sweet potato with yogurt.

How did I end up with half a dozen astronaut high-ball glasses and a 20-ounce container of Tang powder? It’s a long story that starts last December at my daughter’s school fundraiser where we auctioned off dinner for six at my house. Bidding far exceeded expectations, and the winner ended up being a friend who bought the dinner for her partner’s birthday.

It’s true: Cookbook writers actually do cook from their own books. I keep copies of the books I’ve written at close reach in my kitchen, dog-eared and stained. One of the recipes I make over and over again is the Overnight No-Knead Bread from The Kitchn Cookbook. Between morning toast, school lunches, afternoon snacks, and mopping up the evening’s soup, we can easily blow through a few loaves of this every week.

Winter storms have a way of making me want to cook something that has me over the stove for a good stretch of time. I love a fish stew, but these days you need to be careful if you want to make environmentally responsible seafood choices. The lists of what’s sustainable and fine to fish versus what’s not can shift often. I also wanted a dish with some heat and depth, without being too thick and heavy — no cream, this isn’t a time for chowder. The result?

If you know me just barely, you know that I’m summer’s biggest fan, and after 20 winters in the Northeast, I still moan and groan over winter’s double-whammy: no fresh vegetables in season and freezing temperatures. So today, in frigid Brooklyn, I give you a piece about a hot tomato soup a friend brought back from a recent trip to Egypt.

Winter has me baking a lot — bread, especially — so this week when it got unbearably frigid outside I came up with a bread for breakfast and snack-time that pulls inspiration from three very different recipes: my grandmother’s English muffin toasting bread, a thin dark 100% rye I used to be able to find in health food stores but alas no longer, and the fruity, nutty, seediness of my “truly everything bagels” recipe.

The fridge-clearing soup is a staple at my house. In fact, fridge-clearing in general is a good way to characterize my cooking style. But there is something about a sack of lentils that brings out the best of vegetables that have seen better days. After three straight weeks of intense eating and carrying on in honor of the holidays, a soup that requires no shopping for ingredients is just what I need. Clean, simple cooking. Join me.

I’ve been writing about this wreath on the site since 2008, each year updating the story, because I think it’s worth reminding you how perfect this bread is to start a holiday morning. When I say I make it every year, I’m not kidding. It weaves its way deeper and deeper into our family’s memory each holiday.

This week I’m really feeling the briefness of the December daylight and the deepening of the cold temperatures. While I normally make a big effort to eat only small amounts of meat and to eat clean and light, especially at night, this dreary week I have braises and rich sauces on my mind. It seemed only right to pop out to the butcher, buy a whole oxtail, and cook it into slow submission.

Many two year-olds won’t eat a plateful of sautéed greens even if they’re cooked in bacon, and my daughter — an excellent eater most of the time — was no exception. When she was a toddler, I could usually get by with mixing shredded greens into a few scrambled eggs, but much was my delight when I discovered the kid liked kale soup. This one is mildly sweet with a bit of apple, and it has that beloved bacon-y edge that goes so well with sautéed greens.

We make such a fuss over Thanksgiving, especially us food people. We talk for weeks about dry versus wet brines. We debate about whether to serve a traditional or more edgy menu. We plan out the table settings and the playlist. But today, I am showing up under the assumption that all your pie questions are answered and your bird is already in the oven. I am showing up to ask you about gratefulness and thankfulness. What a bounty so many of us enjoy, often without even noticing.

Which traditional Thanksgiving foods can you not do without? Is it the stuffing, the cranberry sauce, the mashed potatoes? Where I come from, it’s almost criminal if a Thanksgiving turkey doesn’t have a side of gravy. How else are you going to deal with Aunt Helen’s dry bird? This year, offer to make the gravy and learn a skill that can be utilized all year-round — make this gravy with chicken, too!

Last year I spent some time on Kea, a completely un-touristy Greek island off the coast of Athens. I went to spend a week cooking with Aglaia Kremezi, a thoughtful cook and talented teacher of Mediterranean cuisine. She had just finished the manuscript for a vegetarian cookbook and so many of the dishes I learned came from that body of work. My stained photocopied recipes and frayed notes from that trip have occupied a permanent place in my kitchen ever since that trip.

I know about a secret cranberry spot on Long Island, and from foraging trips there, this recipe was born. Each fall I’d spend two or three weekends on my knees in my wellies, gathering those ruby jewels autumn. I’d rinse and freeze enough for Thanksgiving, then use the rest to play with in the kitchen.

This is the time of year when I start craving savory tarts. This vegetarian tart has vinegar-roasted onions, mushrooms, and ricotta cheese, making it a great appetizer for a group, or a dinner for two when served with a side salad. Why not? It’s getting cold out there and sometimes you just need a dinner that feels like the food equivalent of sliding on a cashmere sweater: decadent and yet perfectly functional.

The main ingredient for making a cozy winter kitchen is of course, love and good food. But if you’re looking for a few new items to spruce up your space, let us share one more roundup from our partnership with west elm this month. here are some ideas. Oversized Raw Wood Board, $39 – $89 – I can see this board filled with meats and cheeses to start a long winter meal, or filled with individual pizzas for a main course.

Whenever I’m sick, I soothe myself with this simple tonic. Whether I actually feel like I’m coming down with something or whether my voice is just hoarse, this tonic does the trick. I recall having a bout of the flu a few years ago that lasted eleven days, and this drink was the only thing I consumed. I’m not here to give medical advice, but I can say this cocktail kept me alive when it seemed the flu was trying to kill me.

Knowing a few solid knife skills and basic recipes aren’t the only ingredients to making good food; having an organized kitchen gives you a huge advantage when cooking. As part of our partnership with west elm this month, let us share a few of our favorite organization items that make the kitchen feel peaceful and in order, which lets you get the job done without stress.