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Do you wash your coffee cup every day after using it? You might be wasting your time. According to to The Wall Street Journal,you don’t need to wash your coffee cup every day, unless you happen to share your coffee cup with someone else, or if you add cream and sugar to your coffee cup. Before your run away screaming from the germ-tastic idea, let’s break this down to figure out if it’s actually OK to do.

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How To Make Classic Baked Macaroni & Cheese

(Image credit: Kimberley Hasselbrink)

In my house, every season is mac and cheese season. Stovetop mac and cheese feeds our craving in the spring and summer, tossed with fresh peas or ripe tomatoes. Come fall and winter, baked mac and cheese reigns supreme.

Mac and cheese can be a quick weeknight dinner or a hearty side dish for holidays and get-togethers. So whether you need a single serving or you are baking a big ol’ casserole, here are five things everyone needs to know about mac and cheese.

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When it comes to holiday meals, I am all about the side dishes. I would happily forgo the turkey, ham, or centerpiece protein altogether in favor of a panoply of starchy, gooey goodness to pile on my plate.

And I’m no side dish snob. At Thanksgiving, I crave unpretentious dishes like green bean casseroles, corn puddings, and mashed potatoes choking beneath a pool of butter and gravy.

There is, however, one notable exception to my love of traditional Thanksgiving sides. To me, it is an unholy marriage of ingredients that should never sit alongside self-respecting savory dishes. It is a sticky dessert (barely) masquerading as a side.

I’m talking about the sweet potato and marshmallow casserole.

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The holiday season, and all the parties that come with it, is approaching. I need energy for all those parties, so on the nights I’m not eating rum balls and sausage dip at someone’s winter cocktail buffet, I want something comforting and light. And easy! And I’m not off the hook when there’s a party, because I still have to feed the kids.

These are my tips for making meals that are wholesome enough, easy enough, and satisfying enough so we can eat well through a busy fall — and go to all the parties (because I love rum balls and sausage dip).

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Thanksgiving is not a competitive cooking contest. Thanksgiving is a celebration of togetherness, and the unique joys of carbohydrates. Even if things go wrong — and something is bound to! — your inaugural Thanksgiving dinner can still be a smashing success. You can over-char your Brussels sprouts and still get compliments. You can serve store-bought bread and people will still have fun.

That said, while a few mistakes will hardly doom your dinner to disaster, it is generally nice to try to avoid them, if only on principle. To that end, here are five all-too-common missteps to avoid this year.

Will something else go wrong? Possibly! Just take comfort in the fact that it won’t be one of these things.

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There’s something to be said for the convenience of frozen pies. You can buy them well ahead of time, they’re supremely affordable, and some require nothing more than a few hours on the countertop to thaw. But can these frozen versions compete with their fresh-baked counterparts? Will the crust be as flaky? Will the filling be as creamy?

I tried six frozen pumpkin pies, the ones you’re most likely to find in a supermarket. I compared them based on price, ease of preparation, and taste (of the crust and filling). I looked at whether any unpronounceable ingredients were used, considered if I could finish a slice, and weighed how people would feel if I brought this as my contribution to a holiday party.

After sampling all six pies, there were a few I’d definitely toss in my cart again —and a few that are better left to freeze.

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My mother loves Thanksgiving. Being an Italian immigrant, she feels like it’s the one American holiday that is celebrated the way most Italian ones are: with food.

Every year she would commence Thanksgiving dinner shopping no less than two weeks before. First came the tableware and decor. Then, new ingredients she had never cooked with before like marshmallows for yams (“This isa wha the America eats for the Thanksgive.”) so she could put some traditional American dishes on the table and, finally, items for the Italian dishes like her Italian stuffing — which was more of a deconstructed Sicilian meatball than traditional stuffing.

Made with golden raisins, pine nuts, two types of meat, and imported cheese, the oddity of ingredients this Italian immigrant was buying in American supermarkets raised an eyebrow. “Raisins and meat together?” they would always ask. “What are you making?”

“The stuff,” she replied proudly.

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Let me begin with a caveat: I do not always do the dishes straight away. I do try to because I think it’s always easier to just deal with the mess instead of letting it pile up. Why not put that coffee mug in the dishwasher or give that chef’s knife a quick rinse and dry and put it safely back on my magnetic strip?

The alternative is that I don’t do those things and I just leave it all out on the counter. Or I’ll stack the pots and plates and assorted cutlery up in the sink, which makes me feel virtuous and like I did something, even though I inevitably take it all out of the sink in order to do the actual cleaning.

The point is, the first option is definitely preferable and I feel a tiny bit smug when I glimpse at my cleared-away counters and empty sink. But I am definitely not perfect and there are plenty of times when I let everything go and have to deal with a whole heap of dirty dishes.

Regardless of which scenario plays out, though, I always do this one thing after I’ve done the dishes.

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(Image credit: CHiP)

Cookies are not hard to make. Sure, there are recipes that call for special ingredients, or ask you to brown butter in advance, but most recipes require nothing more than the simple stuff you probably already have in your pantry. And if you’re feeling extra lazy, there’s always the frozen cookie dough sleeves that require almost zero effort (using a knife to cut into the dough counts, right?)

Yet somehow, here we are. A new Kickstarter campaign from SideChef is basically advertising itself as the “Keurig of Cookies.” CHiP is basically a mini oven that will make you perfectly baked cookies in 10 minutes. The dough for the cookies comes in a pod, kind of like the pods you find for a Keurig. The CHiP requires no preheating and basically no cleanup.

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