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When I was growing up, my mami made a batch of frijoles de la olla every Monday to use in meals all throughout the week. The smell of beans slowly cooking away on the stove reminds me of my childhood. Now, as a mami myself, I make beans every Monday, just like her, but I like to let my slow cooker do the work.

These frijoles are the perfect base for Charro Beans, or they can be used to make refried beans. Have leftovers? Simply freeze them for another meal. Thaw the beans overnight in the fridge when ready to use.

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Seeing as chicken breast is one of the most versatile ingredients you can have on hand for dinner, it’s no surprise it’s something we all turn to no matter the season. When it’s warm, however, we like our chicken breast dinners to be a bit lighter and brighter (keeping them easy doesn’t hurt, either!).

Here are 10 of our favorites.

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It finally happened — I am obsessed with my Instant Pot. In the past four days I’ve made six dishes in it, and I can’t stop. I’m about to pressure cook everything in the house that isn’t nailed down.

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My 6-year-old is transitioning from kindergarten to first grade this summer and suddenly objects to new foods — even some of her old favorites. Generally, this kind of behavior doesn’t bother me — kids will have “seasons” where they are more picky than others, and they don’t last very long if we as parents keep our cool.

Still, I’m glad that this season of pickiness has arrived during her summer break from school, when we have a few road trips, plane trips, and other excursions planned. It may surprise you, but vacation is my favorite time to get my picky eater to try new foods.

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Whether talking about polka-dot blouses or gold hardware, you know what they say: Trends come and go. You may hate that yellow Formica countertop in your fixer-upper, but we can almost guarantee that the original owners installed it because it was in fashion.

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“My perfect breakfast: scrambled egg, sautéed mushrooms, and tomatoes,” Gordon Ramsay explains before showing us his technique for scrambled eggs. With 30 million views and over 28,000 comments, the kinetic four-minute tutorial is one of the most-viewed videos on YouTube.

But here’s the thing: The video really isn’t anything special. It would be considered too long and somehow too rushed in any other setting on the internet, but it still managed to claim an audience that the Food Network could only dream of. That’s YouTube magic — and it’s going to shape how the next generation learns to cook.

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I’ll be honest with you: I’ve been a cucumber skeptic for years. It’s not that I ever disliked the vegetable — it’s just that it never really did that much for me. The crunch is fine, but the flavor is, well, nonexistent. Especially in the summer, when there is so much abundance around, I always felt my time was more well-spent on things like tomatoes and corn.

Clearly I wasn’t in the know, because there’s a cucumber out there that’s pretty much as cool as those summer sweethearts: the Persian cucumber. It’s crisp and refreshing, yes, but it’s actually got some flavor and spunk to it, which automatically makes it hip and, excuse the pun, the coolest cucumber you can enjoy this summer.

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Because we’ll never get sick of backyard cookouts and pools and everything else that goes with summer, we’ll also never get sick of stocking up on summer supplies. And though CVS sometimes gets a bad rap as an expensive place to shop, it can actually be good for summer bargains.

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In the deepest part of our hearts, we all believe one thing: You don’t really have to cook in warm weather. (You can blow it off entirely, in fact, if you cover your tracks well.)

That’s because the vegetables are blooming and the ambition is wilting just in time to call in sick and head to the beach with a bag of apricots. But after we’ve had our fill of unadulterated spring produce, our stomachs might finally start grumbling for cooked food.

Luckily, there’s a fresh batch of cookbooks this season that are going to let us outsource the thinking and planning parts, so we can pull together easy summer dinners that hardly feel like cooking at all.

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You know how sometimes you hear things that are supposed to be conventional wisdom but you don’t necessarily buy it? For example, I knew Walmart was supposed to have super-low prices on groceries, but I thought maybe they’re just good at putting out that image. I can’t remember the last time I was in one, though, so that was based on no facts at all.

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