Break out your best pot for Melissa Iwai's fantastic story book Soup Day -- part children's tale, part exercise in the fun of cooking with little ones.

NYC is a lot like me-- past its prime in so many ways, but in the end still able to cook up something exciting. The city continues to be a mecca for culinary talent, and it just so happens that the best of it is centered in cheaper, younger, hipper Brooklyn, so much so that it has fostered a bona fide “scene” of serious chefs and food artisans.

I'm craving something to feed a mini-cold I'm fighting off today, and I've got just the ticket: Spice.

Got Thanksgiving panic? Winemaker and entertainer extraordinaire Chris Hanna's new book of inspired dishes can help 

Ever see the Monty Python sketch of “The Most Awful Family in the World” with the idiot son who does nothing but yell “I want more beans!” while lying on his back and shoveling them into his mouth?  Well that’s me!  I’m a fool for beans these days and I’ll tell you why:  1) cheap 2) easy 3) nutritious 4) delicious.

I guess it's sort of ironic that a book would come out about food blogs, but it's the modern world of information giving and gathering coming full circle--this compendium of common, shared, and eaten experiences that you want to pour over and revisit and, if you didn't know it already, learn the stories behind. 

Melissa Clark's stories of how she gets to a particular list of weights and measures in her fantastic column "A Good Appetite" is as delicious as the final dish itself.

My new favorite word is pomarium--as in,inspired by the pomarium of apples at the farmer's market, I made two free-form apple gallettes (one with cranberry) and ginger whipped cream. It was lovely to see my friend enjoying the dinner party without once having to run to the kitchen, but most gratifying was seeing her eat her heart out.

Almost everything about Japan intimidates me, because it’s so, well, amazing, but also so foreign. That includes Japanese food. Much of the mysteriousness is rooted, for me, in the array of ingredients that have little-to-no counterparts in the western kitchen...