Get a head start on your sweetest gifts this holiday season.

Before we get into the full-on holiday swing, let's consider a low-maintenance option for company: a pizza party! 

When it comes to Holiday Survival Recipes, we knew we could count on Tom for our No-Fail Potato Side.

Join Amanda & Merrill in a Twitter conversation all about meat.

Today, we're exploring Hanukkah food traditions with Jewish culture and food experts.

Merrill shows us a trusty last-minute hors d'oeuvre.

Put time into dinner now, and you can make it last forever -- or at least the whole week. Welcome to Halfway to Dinner, where we show you how to stretch your staples every which way. 

Today: Why use a gremolata just once? Phyllis from Dash and Bella raises the bar, times six. 

We're feeling a bit French today, and we thought you might be too. What'll be on our tables tonight? We're getting our vegetables in (and greens too, please) with Amy_N-B's perfectly Parisian, earthy French "Peasant" Beets. Eaten with a glass of Sancerre on the side, we could easily stop there, but tonight, we're skipping happily along to dessert. Because our night wouldn't be truly French without a little sliver of something sweet, now would it? 

Jenny's found a weeknight soup that is also a full meal. 

Pears are so distinct that the only word we have to describe their shape is "pyriform," which means, literally, "pear-shaped"! They've been cultivated for millennia -- there were pear tree groves in China 3000 years ago -- and there are thousands of varieties, many of them decorative or inedible. In the US, you'll find about 10 common varieties, among them Comice, Anjou, Bartlett, Seckel, and Bosc.