Also known as my kitchen last night. I was in the middle of cooking up a portobella mushroom-polenta-spinach dinner when I decided to add a little oil to my hot-hot pan, courtesy one of those great new aerosol cans.

Bad idea.

A giant burst of fire and a loud scream is all it took for me to remember — a bit too late — the warning on the side of the can. It says something like, “Do not spray pan over an open flame.”

Ooops.

Thankfully, my eyebrows are intact and the kitchen didn’t suffer from the flame-throwing incident. Note to self: Heed warning labels. They are there for a reason.

– Jolene Thym

I hate onions!

Not me, personally, but I have to roll my eyes at those people who do. OK, if you’re allergic or food-intolerant, you are excused. But the rest of you, sorry.

Every time I start cooking dinner, say 10 minutes into the deal, invariably some onion-hating teen or other will saunter in the front door and comment about how great dinner smells. I say nothing. It DOES smell good. Onions are the single most important ingredient in most dinner dishes.

They are great in a burger. They are indispensible in a quiche, a casserole, a soup, a stock, a sandwich, anything beef or lamb, or let’s face it — EVERYTHING. And, after the first 2 minutes, they smell divine. In fact, if you’re just a little behind in your dinner-fixing, it’s a serious quick-fix. Chop it up, throw it in the pan with a little olive oil and in 3 minutes fast, anyone, and I mean anyone, will be convinced that you’ve spent at least 30 minutes, if not an hour, in the kitchen, preparing dinner.

What I especially love about onions is that you can cook them a little, until they are just soft, or A LOT, until they are nearly black, as Indian cooks prefer them. When your onions turn black, in case you don’t know, they are NOT burned. Taste one. They are perfectly delicious, carmelized slices of heaven, as it were.

I hate to be a bully, but I seriously believe that no one hates onions. Again, those who are allergic and intolerant are excused. But those who say they hate onions are simply confused, their taste-buds un-educated. I suggest that all who believe as such sit down to a series of onion samples. I will even prepare them if you like. The onions will range in color from white to black, and will range in flavor from sweet to caramel-salty-sweet. Then, and only then, would I give onion-haters permission to say WHICH onions they really do not like.

– Jolene Thym

It’s the kind of dinner you start craving the day after just before lunch: Sunset Magazine’s turkey pot pie with apples. It’s the perfect cold winter supper.

I definitely cursed the thing a bit during the extended making, and that was even cutting corners using a store-bought crust.

But nevermind. It was worth it in the end. You combine cooked ground turkey with onions, caraway seed and dried sage and simmer, then adding two (crosswise) sliced golden delicious apples and two onions. I forgot to buy the 1.5 pounds of yams, but it didn’t hurt a bit. I made it last year with other apples, but I think this is a case where golden delicious make a difference.

(How many of you are chronic grocery store forgetters? You read or think you read a recipe through, make your list, go to the store and come home to cook, only to discover you didn’t get some key herb or something. I blame my sometimes-sloppy handwriting, or maybe my children for distracting me. But that’s what husbands are for. To be sent back to the store for random items.)

Back to the pie. Once your concoction of apples, onions, meat and spices simmers covered for 10 minutes (apples soft, onions browned), you add about 1 1/3 cups of apple juice or sherry mixed with a couple tablespoons of cornstarch and bring to a boil for a few minutes, stirring of course. You’re left with a wonderful, thick filling that you could serve atop biscuits if you’re really lazy.

It’s supposed to cool for 30-40 minutes, making this a pain to do the night of eating. (You can make a night ahead if you want.) I toughed it out, sipping my $2 Trader Joe’s Chuck, dealing with the kids and snacking on a couple spoonfuls of Annie’s Mac leftover from their dinner.

Then I dumped the filling into a 10-inch pie pan, topped it with the store-bought crust and cooked it at 375 until bubbly and browned.

I had only 10 minutes to eat until I had to be somewhere else, but oh they were a lovely 10 minutes. I can’t wait for leftovers tonight.

I’m a little wary of produce these days, wondering which food will be contaminated next. But since our family lives on fresh produce, I continue to buy and cook all things green, orange, red and yellow, hoping for the best. I admit that with each new contamination report, I eye the soap and bleach containers, wondering if I should REALLY wash, instead of just rinsing our fresh foods.

This is the reason why I was happy to stumble across a great idea. It’s a recipe for making my own produce wash. Here’s one from the Pennywise Newsletter:

MAKE-IT-YOURSELF PRODUCE WASH
2 cups plain tap water
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon citric acid powder
1 teaspoon lemon extract
Few drops grapefruit oil

Citric acid powder is found in the canning section of the supermarket and is used in canning tomatoes. The alcohol in the lemon extract kills bacteria, the citrus oil is a cleaner as is the soda and citric acid.

Here’s another, even simpler idea from another Web site:

Fill a clean sink or large plastic bowl with cold water and 1/4 cup of vinegar (cider vinegar or lemon juice) and 1 teaspoon of salt. The vinegar will help clean the skins, while the salt draws out any critters. The wash doesn’t affect the flavor, and since it’s all edible, it’s 100 percent safe.

Note that plenty of people suggest that the best idea is to wash with fresh water only, since washing with anything else may either make your food taste funny or add to the whole food contamination problem.

Still, I love the idea of dunking my greens in salted vinegar water and watching the bugs float off the surface. — Jolene Thym

I am in tomato nirvana. The red juicy globes of summer are finally here, and I’ve spent the past month or so planning my week around the precious ones. As they sit on my white counter, the tastiness clock is constantly ticking down. I obsess over what to do: Should I eat the orange one today? What about the fat heirloom? If I wait until Friday will it be too late?

“I’ll have that one on a bagel in the morning,” I think to myself, plotting relentlessly my tomato eating attack. I’ll have it with red onion, cream cheese, maybe some English cuke and, as always, a few sprinkles of kosher salt. But I internally debate how much to complicate things — not wanting to lose the sweet, buttery taste of a perfect tomato amid lesser condiments and accoutrements.

I’ve been in sort of tomato recovery most of my adult life. I grew up in Nebraska, where backyard tomatoes were a dime a dozen but were often ruined by being stored in the fridge. And then there were winter tomatoes — tasteless mushy watery globs of nothingness added to salads for no good reason, their slimy seedy guts spilling out everywhere.

The only purpose of those tomatoes was to hold some salad dressing perhaps, or to serve as an obligatory layer in the BLT triumvirate.

It’s only been recently that I’ve seen the light. I’ve begun eating them only in the summer, when I can buy them weekly at my local farmers market. I protect them like a guard dog from those who want to send them to their death in the flavor-sucking fridge. When one accidentally ends up there, I am actually saddened.

I’ve pondered growing them myself, but I’m not quite ready. I sort of like going to the market and selecting my little friends. I like having to wait for something good.

I’ve been experimenting with how I like them best: A few grains of salt on a plate. Or on a sandwich with a slice of cheese, mayo and avocado. I regularly make bread salad or marinate them with red wine vinegar and olive oil.

But this summer I stumbled upon a great suggestion in the July issue of Oprah magazine. The article by Celia Barbour about rediscovering the joys of the tomato sandwich of her childhood was inspiring. I must pass it along:

Take two slabs of bread. (I used fresh store-bought multi-grain, but I imagine homemade would be heavenly.) Smear generous swaths of mayo on both slices of bread. Add a few slices of fresh tomato sprinkled with a few grains of sea salt. And yes, that’s it. Plain and simple.

I swear this sandwich (best eaten standing up in the kitchen on a lazy warm afternoon) melted in my mouth. I ate it quickly. I stood silently in the afternoon with the lights off and the kids distracted in the back yard. I didn’t want to share it with anyone. They just wouldn’t understand.

I craved a second immediately but decided against it. One would be enough.

Alas these tomatoes of summer don’t last long. If they’re perfect to eat one day, they might be past their prime the next. It’s the nature of these treats. They’re as fleeting as the month they best shine in.

– Kari Hulac