[1] Serve a beautiful pickled vegetable tray or use the veggies as plate garnishes (photo © The National | NYC).

[2] You can make quick pickles in an hour (photo © Typhoon Housewares).

[3] Pickled apples: sweet and tangy (photo © Best Apples).

[4] Pickled radishes: zingy and tangy. Here’s the recipe (photo © Simply Delicious Food).

Have you ever made pickled vegetables? This tip isn’t about “putting up” vegetables for winter in sterilized jars.

Just a few days of aging in the fridge will give you delicious snacks and and garnishes to use on sandwiches, main dishes and cocktails.

You can even start enjoying them in about two hours’ time.
 
 
START PICKLING!

Paul Corsentino, Executive Chef at The National in New York City, is a huge fan of pickling. Here are his tips on how to pickle vegetables.

 
 
BE CREATIVE WITH THE BRINE

Chef Corsentino also chooses a different brining liquid depending on the vegetable. For example:

 
Look at your spices for inspiration: allspice, bay leaf, crushed red peppers, dill seed, juniper berries, mace, mustard seed, and peppercorns are all contenders. Pickled vegetables never met a spice they didn’t like.

Since these pickled vegetables aren’t sterilized in a water bath, they need to go right into the fridge to age. Eat them within two weeks (more likely, they’ll be gone in two days).
 
 
CHECK OUT RECIPES

There are plenty of pickle recipes online.

But if you’re excited about pickling, pick up a book on the topic. The Joy Of Pickling, first published in 1999, is now in its second edition.

You may find yourself making classic bread-and-butter and dill pickles, pickled beets and kimchi.
 
 
> THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF PICKLES

The cognac-based orange liqueur, beloved around the world, has just gotten more loveable. If you can afford the price of this love, it’s a beautiful experience.

Marnier-Lapostolle Inc. has announced a new limited edition expression, Grand Marnier Quintessence. The name means “fifth essence,” from the Latin quinta essentia. It’s the company’s fifth expression, or version.

Quintessence is the first new Grand Marnier expression offered in the U.S. since Cent-Cinquantenaire, which was launched in 1977 to mark the company’s 150th anniversary. It will please those with the most discriminating palates—and the deepest pockets.

Quintessence is a rare blend of exceptionally old vintage cognacs. It includes cognacs that are from 25 to 100 years old. Part of the magic includes the 1906 Grande Champagne and the 1955 Grande Champagne bottlings.

Another part of the magic is the exacting and time-consuming double distillation of the bitter oranges after maceration. This extra step in the process creates a more velvety and concentrated orange perfume.

And what a fragrance! The nose is an exquisite, fresh and rich orange perfume, with no alcohol.* Thanks to all of the aged cognacs in the bottle, it is mellow and round on the palate, with much less heat than the signature expression and a long and complex finish.

If Quintessence is not in your cards, consider the flagship bottle of Grand Marnier ($38), the Cuvée du Centenaire ($155) or the Cuvée du Cent Cinquantenaire ($240).

Try these Grand Marnier recipes with the flagship bottle:

 
And of course, a fresh fruit salad marinated in Grand Marnier, or a drizzle of liqueur over sorbet, are treats that require no cooking whatsoever.

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*We’re very experienced with the aroma of Grand Marnier. In grad school, studying late every night, we’d pour ourselves a snifter and inhale it for hours as we studied. We couldn’t drink it, given the work load.

In the U.S., distilled white vinegar is typically made from corn. Photo courtesy H. J. Heinz.

Vinegar is more than a condiment or a recipe ingredient: It’s a health and wellness aid and a versatile household cleanser as well.

There are hundreds of uses for vinegar. Today we’re focusing on just two: vinegar as a cooking helper and as a kitchen cleaner.

Great-grandma and her ancestors relied on distilled white vinegar, for making perfect meringues and cleaning the ice box.

Here are 26 kitchen uses for distilled white vinegar—which is what you should call it to differentiate it from white wine vinegar and white balsamic vinegar.

Read the full article about distilled white vinegar.

You’ve no doubt heard about invasive species of fish and other water creatures that have been brought into the country, to the peril of the native populations of lakes, rivers and oceans.

The invasive species either arrive accidentally (attached to sea vessels or escaped from fish farms) or are intentionally introduced to fix another problem (for example, to eat marine plants that are clogging up a waterway). These unwelcome fish, crab, eels and other water dwellers create problems by taking over other species’ food sources and habitats—or eating the native fish themselves! Even the popular tilapia, escaped from fish farms into waterways, is on the invasive fish list.

Invasive species are often hard to remove because they do not have natural predators in the regions where they’ve been introduced. But soon, hopefully, we’ll have a partial strategy: Eat them!

Food & Water Watch, a not-for-profit organization that works to ensure that the food, water and fish we consume is safe, accessible and sustainably produced, suggests adding invasive species as a menu item to help reduce these populations to less destructive levels.

The Asian carp that are clogging the Mississippi River and the Great Lakes, the European green crabs that have proliferated along both coasts, the lionfish that is devastating reef fish populations along the Florida coast and the Caribbean, Asian swamp eels and rusty crawfish could all be bound for the fish market soon.

Do your part by purchasing them and ordering them when you see them on restaurant menus. They may be invasive, but they’re also delicious.

But what about ice cream?

Unless they’ve already discovered Clemmy’s, those with lactose intolerance have had to stick with sorbet for a frozen treat.

Clemmy’s hits the trifecta: lactose-free, sugar-free and gluten-free. It’s a real find, with nine popular flavors in pints plus ice cream novelties (shown in the photo).

Clemmy’s is also the only sugar-free ice cream on the market. There are plenty of No Sugar Added ice creams, but they still contain small amounts of sugar that exists naturally in the milk and other ingredients. Clemmy’s removes every last bit.