How demanding is your palate?

If the answer is “pretty demanding,” move on to the next questions.

Do you enjoy mixed drinks? Are the mixers big-brand sodas?

Well, we all know what’s in those sodas: artificial flavors, high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients that should not be shaking hands with top-shelf spirits.

The solution: Q Drinks, top-shelf mixers.

The first in the series, Q Tonic Water, is a revelation if you’re used to the HFCS/artificial quinine variety. All of the mixers—including Grapefruit, Ginger, Kola, Lemon, Orange—are made with organic agave sweetener.

All can be enjoyed as soft drinks as well: lightly sweet and elegant.

Read the full review.

As a bonus, it includes the history of carbonated beverages—an accidental scientific observation that now generates billions of dollars of sales worldwide.

FIND MORE OF OUR FAVORITE COCKTAIL MIXERS.

Here are some tips from Birds & Blooms, America’s leading bird and garden magazine, to help make your visit easy, stress-free and, dare we say it, fruitful!

Pillsbury’s new line of refrigerated Gluten Free Doughs aims to give back the freedom to bake, to those with gluten or wheat sensitivities. It includes:

 
The products are available at major retailers nationwide. Look in the refrigerator case; then, indulge your baking whims as often as you like, wherever you like.

The dough might be a tad sweet for some savory options, but it has a great crispiness and a satisfyingly rich texture—almost like a shortbread—that makes me excited to sample it in an apple hand pie or in a peach cobbler. Pillsbury suggests multiple other uses for the dough, including mini-quiches, pot pies, tarts and tartlets.

I was also pleased to notice that there was no bean-y or bitter aftertaste to the crust, an affliction that hobbles other gluten free flours that shall go un-named.

The dough is completely pre-prepared and comes in a 15.8-ounce tub, which makes two 9” pie crusts. The suggested retail price, $4.99, is comparable to other gluten free pie crusts and mixes.

While the product is gluten free, it is not calorie free: The dough contains 250 calories per serving. Ingredients include soybean oil, rice flour, whole sorghum flour and fructose. Additional corn and potato starches make the dough easy to handle and shape, with the help of a little wax paper.

Ultra-convenient and easily available, we love that it has restored our freedom to bake on impulse.

—Georgi Page

Graham crackers, pound cake and loaf cake, phyllo or wontonscan be used as the base, filled with bananas, berries, chocolate chips and other favorites.

Here’s all you have to do:

1. DECIDE on your base. You can bake your own shortbread or sugar cookies in an oblong shape (think of double graham crackers, before you break them at the perforation); or bake rectangles of pie or tart crust.

2. CHOOSE your filling: custard, pudding, sweetened ricotta and whipped cream are delicious, but yogurt does just fine. Check out the Méditérranée line from Liberté yogurt in wonderful fruit flavors. It tastes like cannoli filling to us. You can also mix preserves into plain or vanilla yogurt.

3. SELECT one or more fruits: berries, sliced bananas, kiwi, mandarin segments, etc. You can sauté the bananas in unsalted butter and brown sugar, for a Bananas Foster effect. Keep aside a berry or other piece of fruit to garnish the top.

4. PICK an optional second ingredient, like chocolate chips or coconut flakes, to add to the layers.

5. ASSEMBLE three layers of base and two layers of filling—right before serving, so the base doesn’t get soggy. You can serve orderly layers, like a Napoleon, or make them askew, as in the photo above. Garnish with an optional dusting of confectioners sugar and a piece of fruit. Option: sprinkle with confectioners sugar.

Ingredients

 
Preparation

1. PREHEAT oven to 350°F. Line a large baking sheet with foil; lightly coat with cooking spray.

2. LAY wontons on the baking sheet; lightly coat with additional cooking spray.

3. SPRINKLE lightly with sugar. Bake for 6 to 8 minutes or until golden brown and crisp. Remove from oven; cool.

FOOD 101: THINGS FOOD LOVERS SHOULD KNOW

Lasagne Vs. Lasagna

The correct spelling is lasagne, the plural of the word. There are multiple lasagne (sheets of noodles) in the dish. Lasagna refers to a single sheet of noodles. In another American misuse of Italian, salame is the singular form; salami is plural.
 
Mille-Feuille/Millefoglie Vs. Napoleon

Pronounced meal-FWEE in French and MEE-lay FOAL-yay in Italian, meaning “a thousand leaves,” this pastry is made as three rectangular sheets of puff pastry (pâte feuilletée) spread with Bavarian cream, pastry cream, whipped cream, custard, jam or fruit purée, often dusted with confectioners sugar and cut into individual rectangular portions. When filled with custard and iced with chocolate, the pastry is called a Napoleon.

The Napoleon was not named after France’s famous general and emperor, however. It is believed to be a corruption of the word “napolitain,” referring to a pastry made in the tradition of Naples, Italy (napolitano).
 
FIND MORE OF OUR FAVORITE COOKIE, CAKE & PASTRY RECIPES.

Some people are purists; but when we enjoy a chocolate bar, we have a better time when it’s combined with another flavor. Ghirardelli has an armload of options in dark, milk and white chocolate: plump melt-in-your-mouth squares variously filled with caramel, mint, orange, raspberry and other favorites.

The company recently added two new flavors to the line: Mint Cookie and Toffee Crunch.

As a lover of all things mint, our favorite has got to be Mint Cookie. Milk chocolate with crunchy mint cookie filling, this chocolate bar is a major improvement on the iconic Girl Scout Thin Mint Cookie, with so much more (and better) chocolate.

You can reward yourself with a small piece or two each day: The bars are scored for portion control. If you don’t trust yourself to break off just a piece, several of the flavors are available in bags of pre-wrapped squares.

The 3.45-ounce bars have a suggested retail price of $2.79, and are available at retailers nationwide. If you buy them at Ghirardelli’s online store, you get five bars for the price of four.