I admit, my eye-catching title sure doesn’t make it sound simple, but trust me, this is the easiest healthy breakfast you could possibly create. You can plan ahead a little, right? It’s that simple.

I’ve been experimenting with oatmeal in the slow cooker and I’ve gotten it down to a science. It’s not only convenient, but it’s also the healthiest way to cook oatmeal to get all of the nutritional benefits. I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but it’s not just about the ingredients here: the process is important in boosting the nutrition of this yummy breakfast. Yeah, I admit it — there’s a place for technique.

We’re not talking some snobby French cooking school technique … just follow these three simple steps and you’ll have your healthy oatmeal.

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My Idea of something different for dinner is adding some onion or bacon to my burger instead of having them plain. My wife, on the other hand, thinks cheeseburgers once a week is too often. She likes to try different things and likes a variety in the weekly menu. This chicken casserole is a good change of pace.

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I’m aware that I put capers in almost everything lately. There’s definitely a caper energy permeating my household these days … and why not? They add a subtle saltiness and tang to any dish and I love the complexity that capers add to something that could be humdrum without them.

That doesn’t necessarily apply to this pasta recipe, because I don’t think there’s anything hum-drum about it. I have Emeril to loosely thank for my inspiration for this dish, with his fresh seafood pasta recipe, but beyond the seafood, tomatoes and white wine, they really don’t have a lot in common.

I was going for something distinctly tomato-y, but with some unexpected flavors, and I think I accomplished that, but without offending any traditionalists with a weird taste sensation. It’s traditional with a twist and it was a big hit tonight.

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I bought brown rice tortillas this week, and that means quesadillas in our house. The little tortilla pies are not something we indulge in very often because they just don’t come out great with corn tortillas. Since Owen and I don’t eat wheat, and we find it hard to work with the texture of the sprouted grain tortillas, we weren’t really left with much choice until I stumbled upon these little beauties at Trader Joe’s.

Of course we couldn’t keep it simple — it’s like unleashing a newly released prisoner in Las Vegas, right on Brothel Street. It’s hard just to ease into it once you’ve been given permission to let loose. We made two different kinds of quesadillas tonight, and it was our melding of two cultures that created the masterpiece.

Yes, we put pesto in a quesadilla, along with homemade sausage from the local meat market, two kinds of cheese and some caramelized onions and mushrooms. A little drizzle of aged balsamic vinegar and a thing of culinary beauty was born.

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How much do you love sweet and sour chicken wings? That gooey glaze, licking your fingers when they are sticky and covered in that gooey glaze, the golden-brown, appetizing color of the wings, covered in that gooey glaze.

You guessed it: for me, it’s all about the gooey glaze.

But to get that gooey glaze, you need sugar, and lots of it, right? Well, not necessarily. I’ve been experimenting with agave syrup as a sugar replacement in baking with great success (like in berry muffins, banana coconut muffins and Halloween orange muffins) , and tonight I decided to use it to make sweet and sour chicken wings. C’mon, doesn’t that picture say it all? They were fabulous.

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It’s no secret that we love pancakes in our house (chocolate chip banana pancakes, buttermilk pancakes, all good things about pancakes….), especially for a weekend breakfast. It’s pretty much a tradition that every Saturday morning, Keith whips up a batch of the-flavor-of-the-week pancakes, often involving chocolate chips. We can’t change who we are, even at breakfast time.

In fact, we’re so set in our ways, you could probably walk into our house on any given Saturday morning and find the following things going on: Keith slaving away over a hot griddle, carefully tending to the pancake-of-the-week; Owen, with a giant grilling spatula, safely helping Keith flip the pancakes from a distance; Debbie cleaning up around and in-between Keith and Owen, determined not to spend the rest of Saturday in the kitchen. You might also hear Owen grumbling at his well-meaning mother for cleaning the batter bowl before he finished licking it….

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A. Camille Nicholson is a graduate student in Cultural Studies and English Literature. Although she worked as an E-Commerce Developer during the .com’s height, she attributes her burgeoning interest in the culinary/baking arts to her volunteer duties at a local non-profit bakery and the past two years teaching cooking classes for kids.

I have loved the Twinkie since the dawn of my birth. As a child of suburban New Jersey in the 1980s, my fuschia green lunchbox frequently entertained the usual elementary lineup: Watermelon Ssips, a bologna or peanut butter sandwich, chocolate milk (which inexplicably required school permission), and a member of the Hostess snack cake family — typically, its irascible younger sibling, the Twinkie.

I have consistently defended the Twinkie against verbal assaults from more nutritionally minded acquaintances. However, the Twinkie’s reputation is slightly better than what they assert, although, admittedly, by a small margin. Surprisingly, one Twinkie provides only 150 calories and 4.5 grams of fat. Although it contains corn derivatives and two types of glycerides, the only preservative embodied within its banana yellow sheath is absorbic acid. When introduced in 1933 during the Great Depression, its offering of two cakes for five cents assisted those enduring financial deficit.

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