Ideas & Tips

If you've built up a miniature greenhouse in your home during the summer, you may be wondering how best to prepare your green babies for the harsh weather they're about to face in the wintertime. Called "over-wintering", the process of preparing house plants for winter is relatively simple, but important to perform carefully if you want your garden to live to see another year: Make sure the air is humid enough. Heating a home through the winter takes a toll on the humidity of the air, often reducing it by 10 to 20 percent. To keep your plants from being harmed...

At no time is champagne more popular and widely consumed than around New Year's eve. The bubbly beverage, and its many less expensive counterparts like prosecco, are integral to many people's New Year's festivities. But how much do you really know about this iconic beverage? Here are some fun facts about champagne we bet you've never heard: Champagne bottles used to be ticking time bombs. Back in the early days of champagne production, the process of fermentation was not particularly standardized, meaning that occasionally the pressure from too many carbon dioxide bubbles forming would cause bottles to explode. This earned champagne...

'Tis the season for hot chocolate, and if you're a real fiend for sweet, hot beverages, you can find a way to fit it into almost any situation. Need something to wake you up in the morning? Dark hot chocolate will do the trick. Looking for an easy dessert? You guessed it, hot chocolate. Here are just a few of the many variations on the hot chocolate theme. See how many you can make before the new year: Milk chocolate peanut butter hot chocolate: For those times when you want to eat a peanut butter cup, but don't want to go...

Salt is almost literally the spice of life. It makes any dish more flavorful and is therefore one of the most popular table condiments in the world. There are many types of salt on the market that serve different purposes, from cooking to pickling to seasoning at the table. Here is our short guide to types of salt and how to use them: Kosher salt. This is a common table salt and is used in kosher cooking to draw out the blood of the animal. It has a milder flavor than iodized table salt, and dissolves quickly, making it a good...

Fall is the perfect time to experiment with making different homemade soups. Soups are an especially good food to make at home because you can easily double the recipe and store leftovers in your freezer. Just make sure to cool your soup in the fridge before freezing it. Kristen Eppich of Chatelaine offers some other helpful tips for making this classic (and good for you!) comfort food: Sweat your vegetables: An integral element of any good recipe is accentuating the flavors. "Vegetables like onion, garlic, celery and carrots–referred to as 'aromatics'–are part of most soup recipes for this very reason, sautéed...