Columnist Kelly Burgess is on vacation this week, so we decided to run last year's New Year column because the advice is timeless. The New Year traditionally brings resolutions, and the most popular are to lose weight, improve health, spend more time with the family, get organized and save money. Getting more comfortable in the kitchen can help you achieve all five of these goals. 1. Lose weight.  People who cook for themselves tend to make food with fewer calories than restaurant or packaged food. So, even if they don't actually eat less, the chances are they're ingesting fewer calories. 2. …

  Want to start cooking healthier this New Year? Or just want to freshen your recipe book? Patch columnist Kelly Burgess' weekly columns are devoted to preparing easy, healthy meals from scratch — but with the understanding that "from scratch" doesn't mean what it did when our grandmothers were cooking. Her recipes include helpers like canned, jarred, frozen and pre-cut and washed basics, making the recipes just as fast as ordering a pizza or hitting the drive-through, but the results so much better for you and your family. As for those who "can't" cook, the fact is that cooking is a skill, …

Columnist Kelly Burgess is taking time off to enjoy the holidays, so we thought we would rerun her very first column, which debuted on Christmas Eve of last year. Theories abound for why Americans are becoming obese at alarming rates — eating junk food, lack of exercise, too much sugar, and overeating are a few that come immediately to mind. My theory? People aren't cooking enough. And no, I'm not talking about nuking frozen meals, which usually have a long list of unpronounceable ingredients. I'm talking about cooking from scratch. Or at least near-scratch. This column is going to be …

Got cookies? I know I do. And candy. And pastries. And fruitcake. And chocolate-covered anything-you-can-think-of. 'Tis the season to be overloaded with sweets and the closer it gets to Christmas, the more sugar shows up at your door. Not that I'm complaining or saying you should slam the door in the face of the next neighbor who comes over with a tray of gingerbread men. That would just be rude. What I am suggesting is that — because everyone else is handing out cookies, fudge, and chocolate-covered pretzels — you do something different. That may be easy for me to say because, I must confess…

Kelly Burgess is on vacation this week and thought you might enjoy this column, which was published in May when she was just returning from another vacation. I have always loved Lewis Carroll. He's best known as the author of "Alice in Wonderland," but I particularly enjoy his clever, nonsensical poems, especially "The Walrus and the Carpenter," which is from "Through the Looking Glass," a sequel to Alice. It's an amusing story about inviting a group of oysters on a walk and then working up an appetite and being unable to resist the urge to eat the fat, fishy little nuggets. The two friends …

My daughter moved out this weekend. Not far, just to Shadyside with her boyfriend so they can be closer to school. She's attending graduate school at CMU on her way to, hopefully, going into contract law. He's in pre-med there. It's definitely time for her to move out, and I won't miss her messiness or her dumb TV shows. Still, we enjoy each other's company and do a lot together, particularly related to cooking and eating, so it's going to seem very quiet around here. Last weekend, we went through the kitchen to see what I had duplicates of or rarely used items she could take to help stock …

Articles about what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers are a dime a dozen this time of year, although, to be honest, we never have that many leftovers around here. We're good eaters.  We also always have sandwiches the next day and 5 or 6 or 7 people times a piled-on sandwich each pretty much takes care of whatever was left. So, while this column does give you yet another recipe for what to do with leftover turkey if you have it, I'm also going to introduce you to an ingredient you can use year 'round -- canned chipotle chilies.  If you've never heard of chipotle chilies, or just never tried …

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. There are no gifts to buy. There are no long, drawn-out shopping "seasons." There is no annoying music played over and over at the supermarket until you want to stab yourself in the ears with your car keys. It's just making a nice meal for people you love and then enjoying it with them. What could be more joyful? My best childhood memories of Thanksgiving are of the women and older girls in the kitchen stirring this and tasting that while the children watched parades and the guys watched football. A stereotype? Maybe, but we still do it that way as well. …

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about saving time by making big batches of food, having one main meal, and using the leftovers for several different, quicker meals. The recipe that accompanied that column was chili, but I received several emails asking me for a recipe for something I had only mentioned in passing -- carnitas. Carnitas are a pork main dish and are as ubiquitous in Mexican cuisine as ground beef is in American. It's no secret that I absolutely love Mexican food. The best Mexican foods are the fresh seafood dishes and the slow-roasted meats, like the skirt steaks that, in Mexico, …

I don't remember the first time I ate "Buffalo" chicken wings, although it couldn't have been that long ago because they're a relatively recent addition to our food lexicon. There are a few different stories of how the Buffalo chicken wing came to be, all of them involving Teressa Bellissimo, owner of the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, who needed to come up with a quick midnight snack. She hit upon frying up a batch of wings that would normally be thrown away and tossing them with a hot sauce mixture. The rest is history. Hot wings may have been the first incarnation of wings, but now there are as …

Last week I wrote about Marcia Russotto, who recently published a book about growing up in an Italian family. When I interviewed her, I discovered that the two of us have a lot in common, food-wise. We both grew up in families where food was a centerpiece of gatherings. My family was not Italian, but they certainly could have been considering the spreads we had. Marcia and I also agreed that even busy people can have healthy, from-scratch meals with a little planning. What she does, and what I do as well, is cook big batches or multiple dishes when we do have the time. Working from home, my …

Marcia Russotto lives a very different life from that of her mother and grandmother. "My mother and grandmother never worked," says Russotto. "They spent three-quarters of the day in the kitchen. They made all meals, breakfast, lunch and dinner, and they would start thinking about what to make for dinner right after lunch." To do that today is almost impossible, unless you're a professional chef. Even a mother who does not work outside the home finds herself with a million things to do, especially out here in the suburbs where every activity requires a car trip. Russotto, a Richland resident…

Technology is wonderful. I love being always on, always connected, knowing that I can send a text to my kids when I hear a siren with the word, "siren," and they will immediately text back that they're OK. When my husband travels to the UK, I can shoot an email asking where the gizmo is that goes in the pool, and I have an answer faster than it takes me to actually look for the gizmo. I love the Internet most of all. I remember the old days when—if you wanted to look something up—you had to go to the library and hope it had the information you needed. If it didn't, you had to request the …

Dorothy may have had to navigate the dark forest in The Wizard of Oz, worrying about running into lions and tigers and bears, but we have tinier enemies to guard against. For us, it's bacteria and viruses and parasites and other little things that may threaten to do us in. Turns out, Dorothy didn't have anything to be worried about. The only critter she ran into was more scared of her than she was of him. Her real enemy was still lurking. We don't have as much to be afraid of as the headlines would have us believe, either. Massive food-poisoning outbreaks make good copy and big headlines, but…

Tom Cruise and his wife, Katie Holmes, (sadly, I could not remember her last name and had to look it up) were spotted last wee at Soergel's with their daughter, Suri. That's a great place to take your kid any time of year, but Soergel's is particularly fun to visit in the fall. When our kids were younger, a trip to Soergel's was one of our favorite things to do as a family on the weekends. We still go up at least once a year a week or so before Halloween to pick out our pumpkins for carving  and drink apple cider. My daughter may be in her early 20s now, but she still loves a family outing.  …

This is going to be a bit different than my usual columns. I'm going away for the week that this is due, so I am writing it quite a bit in advance. On top off all the other work that needs to be done before I go, that means I need to make it short and sweet. And sweet is the issue here. Fruit flies are a problem for everyone I know during the warm months, but it always seems like now — right before the weather turns cold and kills them off — they are worse than ever. It's almost like they want one last buggy hurrah before they all die off.  Fruit flies are attracted to fruit, wine and other …

I love football season. Not just the NFL and following the Pittsburgh Steelers, but also our very own Pine-Richland Rams. Of course, I'm an even bigger fan of high school halftime because we've been involved in marching band forever and my youngest son is the drum major this year.  Fall is without a doubt my favorite time of the year. When the weather cools down, it's just so welcome to me after the heat of the summer. The colors are beautiful, and there's a feeling of coziness and settling in that makes me feel very homey and content. I watch the Pine-Richland Rams every week, but I'm less a…

When people find out that my birthday falls on 9/11 they invariably ask me, "How can you even celebrate on that day?" Well, I didn't on that particular day. A neighbor called just after the first plane hit, knowing I would be at my desk working. Our thoughts were that it was an accident, a plane off course. I was watching TV when the second plane hit, and I remember thinking, "Uh-oh. This is really bad." After that, I spent most of the morning on the phone with my mother. Two family members were supposed to be flying that day — my brother and brother-in-law. In fact, my brother-in-law was …

I'm something of an expert on packing school lunches because I have been packing them daily for my children for 18 years. This will be my 19th and my last as my youngest will graduate high school next spring. This column is Part Two of a focus on packing lunches for back-to- school time.  What I've learned, not only from being a parent but also from writing about healthy eating and feeding children, is that you can't stress out too much when it comes to food. Small children will eat when they are hungry, and they'll eat as much as they want. Over the past two weeks I've been in two different …

I received a 4-pack sample of Chiquita Smashers last week to test. Chiquita Smashers is described as a "healthy, crushed fruit snack for kids." It's launching in the Pittsburgh market and is available exclusively at Giant Eagle locations, which makes it very interesting to us local shoppers and eaters. This item seems to be aimed at children ages 3 to about 7 or 8, so I "borrowed" my adorable neighbors down the street, Danielle, 6; Riley, 4; and their mom, Judy, to help me test them.   The Smashers come in four flavors, Banana Strawberry, Mango, Orange and Mixed Berry. We all agreed that they…