Kim Severson New York Times

Cakes are meaningful, so it is no surprise that people sometimes bring them along to a restaurant as a celebratory coda to a special meal.

Black-eyed peas, simmered with cured pork and served with soupy greens or folded into rice for some hoppin John, promise a year of luck and money.

In the urban technology centers that have become the nations new factory towns, the kitchen gold standard glorified in design magazines.

For the first time, state officials ordered residents of every city and town to conserve water or face consequences.

There are several recipes for frozen fudge pops floating around, some of which use corn syrup or cornstarch to control body and texture, and others that rely on what seemed to me to be an outrageous amount of cream.

Kitchen-counter chocolatier, are people like Louis and Kathy Cahill, an Atlanta couple who recently nursed a few pounds of cacao beans for three days and ended up with nine chocolate bars.

Good cooks know their strengths, which is why I thought Julia Moskin would understand she had no business making Christmas cookies. Christmas cookies are the pop-culture expression of the biggest Christian holiday in America. A good cookie plate is built...

NATCHEZ, Miss. - Regina Charboneau, who is much more organized than you are, will host 145 people at her house this Thanksgiving. She is related to nearly all of them. Her family tree has been growing in this tiny charm of a town on the shores of the...

When I'm with a chef, I always ask for the secret to good cooking. Once we get past the long speeches about the importance of passion, I usually hear a version of what Adam Evans, the chef at the Optimist in Atlanta, told me recently. "Cooking is thermodynamics,"...

Okra has been like the awkward girl no one but her family thought had any talent. But just look at okra now. Riding a wave of globalism and Southern culture's star turn, okra has found new audiences beyond those who appreciate its slime as thickener for...

If there were such a thing as a national shrimp intervention, this may be a perfect moment for it. We are a popcorn shrimp nation, enthralled by endless shrimp platters and bulging all-you-can-eat seafood buffets. We are lovers of overstuffed po'boys,...

Proclaiming his innocence, Troy Davis was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday night, his life -- and the hopes of supporters worldwide -- prolonged by several hours while the Supreme Court reviewed but then declined to act on a petition from his lawyers to stay the execution. Mr. Davis, 42, who was convicted of murdering a Savannah police...

As Tropical Storm Irene drenched New York and New England on Sunday, the states where the hurricane first made landfall faced a sun-drenched - yet often powerless - day to assess loss of life, property damage and widespread inconvenience that, while significant, fell short of the worst forecasts of catastrophe.

A counterfeiter at a Georgia state prison ticks off the remaining days of his three-year sentence on his Facebook page. He has 91 digital "friends." Like many of his fellow inmates, he plays the online games FarmVille and Street Wars.He does it all on a Samsung smartphone, which he says he bought from a guard. And he used the same phone to help org...

As if the Thanksgiving murder were not enough to ruin things in this subdivision that Disney designed. Now, tanks and SWAT teams? Here in a community built 14 years ago by the Walt Disney Company as the happiest subdivision on earth -- and which, to be fair, has been largely free from urban strife -- two major crimes in the span of less than a week...

Cakes are meaningful, so it is no surprise that people sometimes bring them along to a restaurant as a celebratory coda to a special meal.

Black-eyed peas, simmered with cured pork and served with soupy greens or folded into rice for some hoppin John, promise a year of luck and money.

In the urban technology centers that have become the nations new factory towns, the kitchen gold standard glorified in design magazines.

For the first time, state officials ordered residents of every city and town to conserve water or face consequences.

There are several recipes for frozen fudge pops floating around, some of which use corn syrup or cornstarch to control body and texture, and others that rely on what seemed to me to be an outrageous amount of cream.

Kitchen-counter chocolatier, are people like Louis and Kathy Cahill, an Atlanta couple who recently nursed a few pounds of cacao beans for three days and ended up with nine chocolate bars.

Good cooks know their strengths, which is why I thought Julia Moskin would understand she had no business making Christmas cookies. Christmas cookies are the pop-culture expression of the biggest Christian holiday in America. A good cookie plate is built...

NATCHEZ, Miss. - Regina Charboneau, who is much more organized than you are, will host 145 people at her house this Thanksgiving. She is related to nearly all of them. Her family tree has been growing in this tiny charm of a town on the shores of the...

When I'm with a chef, I always ask for the secret to good cooking. Once we get past the long speeches about the importance of passion, I usually hear a version of what Adam Evans, the chef at the Optimist in Atlanta, told me recently. "Cooking is thermodynamics,"...

Okra has been like the awkward girl no one but her family thought had any talent. But just look at okra now. Riding a wave of globalism and Southern culture's star turn, okra has found new audiences beyond those who appreciate its slime as thickener for...

If there were such a thing as a national shrimp intervention, this may be a perfect moment for it. We are a popcorn shrimp nation, enthralled by endless shrimp platters and bulging all-you-can-eat seafood buffets. We are lovers of overstuffed po'boys,...

Proclaiming his innocence, Troy Davis was put to death by lethal injection on Wednesday night, his life -- and the hopes of supporters worldwide -- prolonged by several hours while the Supreme Court reviewed but then declined to act on a petition from his lawyers to stay the execution. Mr. Davis, 42, who was convicted of murdering a Savannah police...

As Tropical Storm Irene drenched New York and New England on Sunday, the states where the hurricane first made landfall faced a sun-drenched - yet often powerless - day to assess loss of life, property damage and widespread inconvenience that, while significant, fell short of the worst forecasts of catastrophe.

A counterfeiter at a Georgia state prison ticks off the remaining days of his three-year sentence on his Facebook page. He has 91 digital "friends." Like many of his fellow inmates, he plays the online games FarmVille and Street Wars.He does it all on a Samsung smartphone, which he says he bought from a guard. And he used the same phone to help org...

As if the Thanksgiving murder were not enough to ruin things in this subdivision that Disney designed. Now, tanks and SWAT teams? Here in a community built 14 years ago by the Walt Disney Company as the happiest subdivision on earth -- and which, to be fair, has been largely free from urban strife -- two major crimes in the span of less than a week...