Walk into any grocery store and you’ll witness the stunning proliferation of new snack products — from Beanitos and Lentil Chips to Halfpops and Coco-Roons. It’s a stunning transformation of the grocery landscape, as Americans are now spending more on snacks than on regular grocery foods. Sales of nuts, nutritional bars, and meat snacks like jerky are growing at 2.5, 4.3, and 6.2 times the rate of overall grocery spending respectively, according to data from Nielsen.

Is the ever-widening snack landscape, and our reliance on it, a good thing — or problematic? Our packaged snack options are often healthier than the snacks of yore, which is great, but the language we have around when we snack and what constitutes a snack raises some questions about how and why we snack so much more, and how it affects our waistlines and our wallets.

So let me let you in on the little secret of snacking in America today: We have our work ethic to blame.

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Have you noticed a proliferation of teal-hued pumpkins adorning the steps and porches in your neighborhood? No, you haven’t stumbled into a particularly ardent enclave of Martha Stewart acolytes. These bright turquoise jack-o’-lanterns, whether a simple paper cutout or an actual pumpkin that’s been given a fresh coat of paint, indicate a home that is participating in the Teal Pumpkin Project.

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I love having friends over, but with three kids; big writing dreams; and the never-ending onslaught of preparing and cleaning up breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, snack, snack, and snack, having a friend over for a meal started to feel too much like work and less like the break I craved.

I am not a neat freak or perfectionist by any stretch, but having company came to mean clearing a path in the explosion of crafts and creations on our floor, folding the mountain of laundry on the couch, and finding the source of that questionable smell. I started to feel grumpy when preparing for visitors, snapping at my kids to pick up their underwear and wipe the toilet seat, for crying out loud.

In one part of my brain, I knew that this reaction was ridiculous — my friends were coming to see me, not my home; they would understand the scribble marks on my hardwood and my 9-year-old’s unmade bed — but the other part of my brain said that pride in ownership is a healthy thing and germs are not.

Then I discovered the “Crappy Dinner Party.”

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The one thing I love about fall, even more than pulling out my stash of cozy sweaters, is baking. While I am always ready to fire up my oven for a batch of cookies or muffins all year long, there is no better time for baking than right now. From apple pie and oatmeal cookies, to pumpkin muffins and a rustic pear galette, these are the 15 can’t-miss recipes to add to your baking roster this year.

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When I want to find some next-level meal-planning inspiration on Instagram, I don’t dive into fitness feeds or the #mealprep hashtag. And I don’t look for the glossy, perfectly photographed food feeds where you wonder if anyone actually eats the meticulous dish you’re drooling over. I look for chefs churning out a week’s worth of meals with passion, grit, and a Costco membership.

I look for sorority chefs.

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Celebrity chef Tyler Florence recently made the bold declaration that recipes are dead while attending Seattle’s Smart Kitchen Summit. In fact, he feels our whole approach to making food — from purchasing groceries and stocking our cupboards to choosing, prepping, and cooking our meals — is out of sync with the way we actually live now.

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You don’t have to be a vegetarian to appreciate the goodness eating a meal full of veggies brings. We love squeezing more of them into whatever we happen to be cooking up, even if meat is in the equation as well. These 10 dinners make colorful produce the center of the plate and they’re quick and easy enough for the busiest of weeknights. Some skip the meat, others don’t — but regardless, they’re all worthy of adding to your dinner roster.

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So, you want to stock the home bar with a decent selection of spirits but you don’t want to blow the bank. We hear you. That’s why we’ve gone to experts to find their top picks for American whiskey, tequila, and vodka so you can have a respectable bar — and still have cash left for other important stuff.

If you’re scared off by lower-priced vodkas, don’t be, says Joseph Fredrickson, owner of Society Lounge in Cleveland. “Even the worst products now are better than what they had back in the day,” he says. And it’s kind of pointless to splurge anyway, given that it’s probably going to end up in a cocktail. “Vodka’s one of those things,” he says. “We can argue all day if Aquafina tastes better than Glacier water but if you mix it with Kool-Aid can you tell a difference?”

And common distilling methods mean most vodkas will be fine these days, he says. So pick from any of these value vodkas and you’re good to go!

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British royals are Food Network fans, just like the rest of us. Except that when they have cooking problems, they get to go right to their favorite chefs and ask for help in person. So when Prince William needed help making lasagna, he went right to Giada De Laurentiis and asked her to tell him what he was doing wrong — and he absolutely made her day when he did it.

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While a lot of us are all still mourning the recent news that Chip and Joanna Gaines are ending their hit HGTV show, Fixer Upper, there is some good news to look forward to: The couple’s new Target collection, Hearth & Hand, is hitting stores on November 5. And many of the pieces are on the Target site now for our perusal!

We spent some time looking through and picked out the 10 things we’re most excited about.

Related: Chip and Joanna Gaines Fans: Mark Your Calendar for November 5

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