PB's surprising start

Here's a quick trivia question for you. How many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches do Americans eat each year? Correct answer: 10 B as in billion! I like peanut butter, but I must be a lightweight in the PBJ race.

Tosha Jupiter: Smooth over, chunky 'butter

The rock-filled sludge scraped from the bottom of a dirty aquarium. Yup, that's how I feel about chunky peanut butter. I'm a presentation girl. I appreciate texture. But appreciating texture means understanding when its absence is the better option. There are specific instances in life when lack of texture is necessary.

Brett Buckner: Chunky peanut butter — stick-to-your-ribs good

Much like pudding, there's really no such thing as bad peanut butter. And yet there is one distinction, a specific lip-smacking nuance that divides peanut butter connoisseurs (i.e. children, college students and single men under the age of 30) into two camps — chunky vs. smooth.

The Gourmet Touch: A berry good summertime dessert

Looking for a new 'cool' dessert for summertime? Perhaps you would like to make a simple parfait using fresh strawberries and blueberries. This would be an excellent dessert for your Independence Day celebration and you can make it ahead which is certainly a bonus.

Uncorked: Historic holiday calls for colorful wine choices

Thomas Jefferson's wine purchases are well-documented. Jefferson wrote astounding numbers of letters in pursuit of securing large quantities of the best wines available and seeing that these wines made their way to the Jefferson White House and to Monticello.

Simple secrets for perfect grilling

They seem to be everywhere these days. Every time I turn around, there's another gleaming, stainless steel gas grill. At my hardware store, of course, but they're even at my grocery store. It seems like you can't call yourself a cook unless you've got a grill.

Bright ideas for a blissfully sweet cherry season

We've grown happily accustomed to the pints of Rainiers and Tartarians, Bings and Queen Anne's, filling the market pints like big, ruby marbles. Maybe we've loaded them into cobblers and muffins, and now need a little inspiration.

Reasons to enjoy your coffee

A new study just published in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that those people who regularly indulge in their favorite coffee beverage may live longer than those who don't.

Don't say diet: Cut calories, keep flavor

When Cheryl Smith wanted to serve chicken salad at her parents' 85th birthday party, she called me to ask for some recipe advice. She wanted some healthy ingredients that would work well with green onion, dill and pecans.

Variations on an All-American tradition

Blue Earth, Minn., a town some 100 miles southeast of Minneapolis, purports to be the birthplace of the ice cream sandwich. It may not be true, even though it says so all over the Internet, but it's a tasty claim to fame anyway.

Adding international flair to an all-American meal

We order more than 13-billion burgers in restaurants and make another 25-billion at home, according to the NPD research group. A good many of those are adorned with oozing cheese settling into the crannies of the patty and disappearing into the bun.

Weekday dinner inspirations for the whole family

My friend Karen has perfected this recipe for the perfect hot-cold Asian salad. Before you go to work, mix cubed, uncooked chicken breast with bottled hoisin sauce mixed with a little hot sauce to marinate in the fridge.

How to make a good summer fruit cobbler

Which dishes are truly American and which aren't was the debate at our July Fourth table (evidently, all-American apple pie isn't American, for instance). Cobbler came up as being an American dessert. Do you know if this is true, and how do you make one?