Click "more" for the recipe for David's Stout Chili

Heat olive oil in a big dutch oven over medium high heat. Add onions, carrots, and celery. Cook until the onions start to become translucent and the carrots soften a bit, about five minutes.

Add the meats, and cook until brown.

Drain fat off the mixture, season with cumin, chili powder, salt and pepper.

Mix in tomatoes, beer and peppers, return to medium high heat until simmering, then drop to a low simmer for at least 30 minutes (I like to simmer this for a couple of hours).

Add mojo and black beans before serving, mixing in well.

The seasonings may be adjusted as you see fit, as may the peppers. Serve over cornbread, rice, pasta, or by itself.

Chili: When I was growing up, my siblings and I would often come home from school to the aroma of a meaty chili. In our houses, chili was always served over rice, and served with a salad. Now, I often make up a huge batch of my chili with Guinness, and we have enough for several meals to add to the freezer.

Stew: Another childhood favorite that I haven't outgrown. The difference now is that I use less meat (chicken, pork, or beef) and more fresh vegetables.

Soup: We love soup, and hot soups warm the body and soul when the days are short.

Casseroles: We love casseroles, they give us the chance to experiment and empty our cupboards. When we are both working long hours, it's wonderful to have real food waiting to be warmed up in the freezer.

In the next few days, we'll be sharing our recipes for the comfort foods we love.

As for cooked onions, the researchers didn't test whether cooking affects their cancer-fighting ability.

The onion's cancer fighting abilities showed up best for colon cancer. Combined with apples, which are also know to be highly beneficial against colon cancer, something like an apple-onion salad can deliver a healthy one-two punch.

So tie on your apron, tuck in your napkin and don't forget your breath mints!

The Scharffen Berger site is informative and interesting, but my favorite chocolate (and food) site on the web is bread coffee chocolate yoga (bccy for short). Fortune has a true passion for three of my favorite things (I'm not much of a coffee drinker). Every day brings news, insights and recipes on the four major topics, and bccy starts my morning on a great note (not unlike a strong cup of quality joe).

First, we solicited recipes from family and friends via e-mail and word of mouth. As these trickle in, we are adding them to the book. Hopefully, we'll be having the book bound some time after Thanksgiving to be ready for Christmas.

The best thing about gathering these family recipes is the nostalgia they invoke. We all have our favorite foods, and these dishes remind us of the people we love.

Linda's birthday was last week, and Friday night we had a surprise party for her. When the party committee (two of Linda's sisters, her mother and myself) convened via e-mail, we decided to keep things simple. The resulting combination of antipasto and smörgåsbord was a huge hit. Our casual buffet pleased both children and adults with a variety of meats, cheeses, breads and vegetables. The best thing? With a light dinner, everyone had room for birthday cake and cheesecake!

Today is Linda's birthday. Since she worked later than me, I made her one of her favorite meals, lamb chops.

The wonderful thing about tonight's meal was its simplicity. I salted and peppered the lamb chops, seared them, then placed them under the broiler for a couple of minutes. While the chops were broiling, I steamed some broccoli and boiled some sliced new potatoes. Once the lamb chops were out and resting, I deglazed the pan with beer (Sam Adams cream stout) added sliced cremini mushrooms to the pan drippings, then a touch of butter. To the potatoes I added some butter and chopped rosemary from the garden. The broccoli got a small touch of butter, everything was seasoned with salt and pepper, and the meal was set.

When I read this article profiling the inventors of the corn dog, I had to chuckle. In my adult, pre-marriage life, I always kept a stash of corn dogs in the freezer. These snacks (and sometimes meals) were perfect when I was in-between grocery shopping visits and just wanted something to tide me over.

When it comes to corn dogs, I am a purist. Put dab of yellow mustard on my plate, add corn dog and it's mealtime. I never saw people put ketchup on hot dogs before I moved south, but to each his own. My favorite corn dog is at the fall county or state fair. Nothing tastes better (though the deep-fried Twinkies come close, I may have to run a couple of taste tests).

This leads me to a funny story. Using this theory in one of their many excursions around the country, my parents pulled off the road in the middle of one afternoon and booked a room at a motel with a restaurant attached. Mom was excited to see that the parking lot to the eatery was packed and, therefore, was really looking forward to dinner. Unfortunately, they discovered the restaurant had been closed for some time and was actually a used car lot. No plan is fool-proof.

We were lucky in Austin this trip. We managed to eat at several good restaurants, tex-mex eateries topping the list. First on the venue was El Sol E La Luna, a little family owned eatery with live music and highly recommended mole sauces. We don't have a good noodle house in our area, so in downtown Austin we were delighted to discover Noodle-ism. The tex-mex just got better, when up the street from the first place we found Guero's Taco Bar. Their vegetable-seasoned chicken made their enchiladas special and their guacamole was very fresh-tasting.

To keep things interesting, we often add avocado (I wish we had a Haas avocado tree), some grilled chicken, boiled eggs, or anything leftover in the refrigerator. My wife has even been known to collect young dandelion leaves and put them in the salad. A unique addition to our summer salads is nasturtium leaves and flowers. This edible plant adds a peppery bite (not unlike arugula, and its showy flowers look as good as they taste.

Summer salads are a staple for us. Relatively quick to prepare, they make us feel like we are doing a great thing for ourselves by eating a healthy meal of food we've largely grown ourselves.

His true passion was his vegetable garden. It started out modestly enough, but expanded every year as he experimented beyond tomatoes and peppers. By the time I was in high school, the entire side yard (which was quite expansive) had been usurped in pursuit of vegetables.

Along with the outward expansion of the garden came an upward expansion consisting of pea vines, bean poles and corn stalks. Every evening after work, my father would disappear behind these layered curtains of foliage and it was my job to hunt him down for dinner. The day I caught him grazing freely in among the beans and peas, I realized why we never had a decent enough harvest of these to accompany our meat and potatoes.

Today, I have a better appreciation for the green tranquility of his creation. Nothing replaces the satisfaction of fresh produce grown in my own garden. It reinforces my belief that consuming the freshest food possible not only supports our health but feeds the soul and buoys the spirit.

One of our favorite summer dishes is what my wife calls "Fresh Tomato Toss." This fresh and easy entrée consists of a simple combination of plum tomatoes, chopped green onion (scallions), a clove or two of garlic, olive oil, crushed red pepper flakes, fresh chopped basil, and your favorite pasta. Feel free to vary the ingredients and their quantity in the dish to your own specifications. Parmesano Reggiano is the usual garnish at our house.

My wife prefers to sauté the garlic in the olive oil, then add her tomatoes, cooking them down a bit before adding the pasta, red pepper flakes, basil, and green onion.

My preference is to add all the fresh ingredients to the cooked pasta in a big bowl, letting the pasta cook the rawness out of the garlic. Either way, the dish is delicious, and a wonderful way to reap the benefits of our garden.

I used to love cilantro, there could never be too much of this herb in my food. I would go out of my way to order cilantro-spiced dishes at restaurants and always kept a couple of fresh sprigs ready in my refrigerator.

Then my wife killed my love for cilantro. Her weapon of choice: this cilantro pesto recipe (click "MORE" for the recipe). The pesto was a cilantro bomb in my mouth, and ever since, I can only tolerate cilantro as a background flavoring in limited quantities. I still love my wife, but cilantro is no longer my mistress.

2 tablespoon canola oil
2 cup cilantro leaves, lightly packed
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, or to taste
2 clove garlic, crushed
2 tablespoon plain nonfat yogurt
1/4 teaspoon salt, or to taste
2 tablespoon slivered almonds

Shortly after I became fixated on lemonade, the price of lemons went up. Limes were 10 for a dollar in our local grocery, so the market decided that I would try limeade instead. David says the limeade has a more rounded citrus flavor than the lemon. Not only that, but when the citrus prices at the supermarket jumped, I found our local Hispanic markets still had reasonable prices on their limes.

To squeeze and enjoy this simple pleasure of summer, click "more."

8 limes
1/4 C sugar
4 C water

Juice limes and combine with sugar in pitcher. Add water and stir until all the sugar is dissolved. Adjust sweetness for taste. Serve over ice.