How To Grill Even Better Asparagus — Cooking Lessons from The Kitchn

Asparagus is a vegetable that is transformed by hot-and-fast cooking. It’s why we love roasted and stir-fried asparagus, and why we fall in love each spring with grilled asparagus. Grilling makes asparagus tender while imparting a delightful char and smoky flavor — but to be honest, grilling asparagus can be tricky. Most asparagus is just wide enough to slip between the grill grates and fall into the fire.

Last summer, I learned the super-simple solution for grilling asparagus that makes them easier to flip and keeps them from falling into the grill: skewers. Threaded together, you can cook five to six skewers at once and transform fresh asparagus into a fast and fancy side with just olive oil, salt, and pepper.

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The Best Defense Against Fruit Flies — Tips from The Kitchn

Fruit flies are a fact of life — especially come summer, when fresh produce is abundant and also spoils faster on your countertop. It’s almost inevitable that you’ll find a few buzzing around your kitchen. They’ll eat anything that’s remotely spoiled, can sneak in through open doors or the tiny holes in your window screens, and multiply swiftly.

“Fruit flies have a quick gestation period,” says Scot Hodges, director of professional development for technical services at Arrow Exterminators. “It only takes them 12 to 15 hours to lay eggs, then just a week for those eggs to turn into adults, so you can develop a problem really quickly.” Great.

Don’t panic just yet. Here’s what you need to do.

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Prepare to Freak Out About Disney’s Glowing Unicorn Cotton Candy — On Trend

(Image credit: @madewithlovevlogs)

Forget lattes and bagels — the newest unicorn trend is so hot it glows. Literally. Disney’s latest treat is a white and color swirled cotton candy on an illuminated wand, as reports Disney Food Blog. The wand appears, from numerous social media posts, to change lights and make the cotton candy glow and change colors.

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These 2 New Stores Give Home Goods and TJ Maxx a Run For Their Money — Shopping News

There’s nothing quite as exciting as scoring a great deal. Maybe seeing your kid walk for the first time hits high on some people’s lists, but grabbing a crystal bowl for a fraction of its retail price or getting an artisanal food product that isn’t usually available is our idea of a great time.

That’s why the news that Southern Living and HomeSense stores are expanding is so exciting.

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Recipe: Strawberry Slab Pie — Strawberries: A Field Guide

(Image credit: Linda Xiao)

Strawberries don’t have to work very hard to earn a place as one of our favorite berries of summer. They are the first to arrive, tend to be the most affordable, and really know how to work the spotlight with very little help. So when you’re ready to take your fresh munching to the next level, make this slab pie dreamed up by cookbook author Yossy Arefi.

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Pair Dates with These Foods for a Delicious Snack — Snack Intelligence

Sticky, sweet dates have many wonderful uses. They can be chopped up for a salad, blended into a smoothie, or even made into caramels. They don’t, however, actually need that much fussing to be enjoyed. All on their own, they make for a pretty good snack. Add just one more ingredient to the equation and you’ve got a snack that’s truly great.

Even better, you don’t need to go out of your way to buy anything special. These fancied-up dates call for pantry ingredients that transform the dried fruit into something that not only feels like a treat for yourself, but can also be served to company. Here are seven combinations we love.

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grilled pepper and torn mozzarella panzanella

This salad is not here to break the internet. Even among my friends, roasted sweet red peppers seem to be a perplexingly hard sell, although I hope all roasted pepper resistors are not basing their impressions on the jarred ones — those slippery things shouldn’t even rank. Because it’s the year 2017, I’m sure at least half of the people we know at any given time aren’t eating bread, so that’s not going to go over well either. I’m not sure why people — even my own father — loathe capers, but I bet I will soon find out. I understand that lots of people don’t like onions, even marinated and grilled lovelies, in salads. I know we all agree on mozzarella, at least. (Phew.)

what you'll needtossed with oil, salt, and pepperpeppers and onions smell amazingget a lot of char on itgrilled breadpeppers, mostly peeled

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years writing recipes and sending them out into the world, it’s that not all dishes will stop everyone in our tracks and cause us to reroute our entire day to ensure it ends with this. Not all dishes elicit, or need to elicit, popular fervor.

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My 10 Favorite Road Trip Snacks from Trader Joe’s — Road Trips for Food-Lovers

I admit that my love for Trader Joe’s is a passionate affair. Their products have made themselves at home in my pantry, fridge, freezer, and desk drawer.

But let’s be honest — what we all love most about Trader Joe’s are the snacks. As I prepare for a summer of road trips, TJ’s is riding shotgun. Here are 10 of the snacks I’m taking along for the ride.

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