Health Tips Line

There are certain foods that feel undeniably American: a burger sizzling on the grill, a tray of mac and cheese at a family gathering, an apple pie cooling on the windowsill. You grow up seeing them at cookouts, diners, school cafeterias and holiday get-togethers, so you kind of assume they’ve always been here, right? Spoiler alert: They haven’t! As it turns out, many of these so-called American foods didn’t start out in America. Instead, they born elsewhere—sometimes centuries or even millennia earlier—before crossing oceans, changing with new ingredients and eventually evolving into the dishes we know today. In many cases, what we think of as American food is really the story of immigrants, adaptation and reinvention. That’s fitting, because America’s food history mirrors America’s history . “We’re a country of immigrants, and the foods are immigrants,” says culinary historian Michael Krondl. “[People] adapt and ...

Bacon has a way of taking over a kitchen before it even hits the plate. There’s nothing quite like the smell of it when it’s cooking: smoky, salty, a little sweet and powerful enough to pull you in from another room, as if the skillet personally summoned you. One whiff and suddenly your attention is fully rendered. It’s the kind of aroma that builds anticipation slice by slice, strip by strip, until you’re practically drooling for that first perfect, crackly bite. And in your mind, it’s already plated perfectly: stacked beside fluffy pancakes for a lazy weekend breakfast , or layered into a BLT with juicy tomatoes, crisp lettuce and toasted bread. Bacon isn’t just part of the meal—it’s often the star of the show. But as simple as it seems, bacon can be surprisingly tricky to get right. One minute, it’s perfectly golden and gorgeous; the next, it’s curled, chewy, greasy, or burnt around the edges. That narrow margin between perf...

Tia Williams has never shied away from stories that blend romance, humor and emotional honesty. The New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Find , Seven Days in June and A Love Song for Ricki Wilde has spent decades building a career as both a novelist and longtime fashion editor, all while creating love stories that feel equal parts escapist and deeply relatable. Her latest novel, The Missed Connection , begins with every romantic’s dream—and nightmare. A casting director named Sasha Cruz finds herself seated next to a handsome stranger on a flight to Paris. “She falls desperately in love with him,” Williams tells us. He’s “dashing, [with an] Italian accent—a secret billionaire,” but the pair never exchange contact information. Determined to find him, Cruz hires a detective from her past to help and, as Williams teases, “antics ensue.” The contemporary romance combines funny mishaps with emotional depth, and since...

I’ve had multiple run-ins with raccoons over the years, most recently just last week. A very fat fellow, who stops by frequently, clawed his way up to the top of our fence and perched, arms wide, like Leonardo DiCaprio yelling, “I’m the king of the world!” Last year, I looked outside (prompted by my dogs’ insane barking) to find a masked bandit happily splashing around in the shallows of my pool. I’ve rescued a trash panda that was stuck in an actual trash can (I dropped a ladder in, and he climbed right out as I was still running away), and my friend who feeds and traps feral cats routinely gets a family of raccoon “porch porkies” who stop by to help themselves to the buffet line. And who can forget the raccoon who captured the world’s attention as she eluded rescuers and scaled a 20-story office building in downtown St. Paul? All of this is to say that raccoons are everywhere, and they don’t mind living (mostly) harmoniousl...