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Welcome to the Great Debates, where we consider the greatest culinary controversies of our time. Our goal isn’t to tell you what to think or do, but rather to present both sides of hot-button issues, like coffee (is it good for you?) and breakfast (the most important meal of the day?). What’s being said? Who’s saying it? Then it’s up to you to make your own decisions.

Growing up, there was always a zip-top bag of raw chicken breasts cloaked in Italian dressing filed in the lowest drawer of our fridge. Later, my mom would bake or grill these chicken breasts to serve alongside a bag of Rice-A-Roni and some microwaved vegetables as a regular weeknight dinner. My mom wasn’t the greatest cook, but she believed that marinating her meat made it taste better. Marinating meat was a trend of the ’80s and ’90s that seemingly fell from fashion, as wet and dry brining became popular in the 2000s.

We’ve advocated both for marinating and against it here on Kitchn, and today we are diving deeper, exploring new insights and popular opinion on the subject of meat marinades, specifically around steaks.

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Kitchens get a lot of attention — and rightly so! We make several meals a day in there, and it’s where everybody tends to congregate when guests come over (even though you’ve set out the drinks and the snacks in the living room). So, why not start your home renovation design plan in the place where you spend the most time?

That’s what designer and blogger Brett did and the result is this stunning kitchen, which she shares with her husband, Brandon. There are tons of things to love about it, but we made a list of our favorites.

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(Image credit: Dering Hall)

From Apartment Therapy → The World’s Most Beautiful Kitchen Floors

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Open Cooking Lesson

There are two types of people in the world: people who love creamed spinach and people who haven’t had good creamed spinach yet. Fortunately, I fall into the former and plan to convert everyone into the latter.

That’s because good creamed spinach is nothing like the spinach you find wilting in a buffet tray. Good creamed spinach is pure luxury for your taste buds. It’s tender cooked spinach swathed in a gentle sauce of aromatics and fresh spices, with just enough creamy half-and-half and grated Parmesan cheese to hold the leaves together in an irresistibly savory sauce.

Good creamed spinach is a life-changing revelation. Here’s how to make it so you won’t have to reserve it for steakhouse dinners and holiday feasts.

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I have never been to Sag Harbor in the summer. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, I imagine this tiny village pulls in a tony crowd in white linen and nautical stripes. Perhaps they sit at tables on the sidewalk and drink rosé and slurp oysters! And there is nothing wrong with that. I also love rosé (even in winter), and I am quite fond of nautical stripes.

But I quite prefer the reality of this little town in the winter. Even when the sun shines and the wind doesn’t whip, the streets are quiet and there is something I love about wandering those deserted roads, with my cap pulled down over my ears and my collar flipped up. But I love even more to come in from the cold and wiggle my fingers in front of the fire, with the knowledge that a stiff cocktail is in the works or that there is a sugary confection to be inhaled.

Here, then, are five delicious reasons to go to Sag Harbor right now.

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Chocolate for breakfast! Chocolate for breakfast! There are no good reasons why a little or even a lot of chocolate can’t be part of your morning breakfast. Here we offer 12 delicious recipes to inspire your morning chocolate routine. Try the decadent cocoa & toast bread pudding on the weekends or when you have guests, and save the somewhat more wholesome chocolate cherry granola muffins for your weekday indulgence.

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Biting into a crisp apple or chomping on some crunchy chips makes a very distinct sound. For some, eating noises just signal that someone is enjoying their food. For others, though, it’s downright annoying and anger-inducing. Well, there’s a word to go along with this rage — misophonia — and scientists have finally figured out why some people have it.

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(Image credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock)

Whether you breeze in and out of a coffee shop once every seven days to get your weekly latte fix, or you camp out at one almost every day (or you visit with any degree of frequency in between), there are a few things you can do to make it a more enjoyable trip — for yourself and everyone around you.

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It should no longer come as a surprise when I see them — the stacks of crinkly plastic-wrapped miniature fruit pies and chocolate pastries, all stamped with a blue logo, piled in a wire rack at pretty much any gas station or convenience store along the Northeast roads on which I grew up driving.

I spent my childhood in Pennsylvania and now live in New York, so I have more than a quarter-century’s experience with these stores and their typical merchandise. In fact, I can picture it in my head — the standard Tastykake shelf, almost always located just inside the doors or sometimes near the cash register.

Despite the fact that Tastykakes have become a staple of my convenience store-shopping life, it never fails to give me pause when I walk into a Peanut Butter Kandy Kake-stocking establishment and immediately feel my breath catch in my chest.

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