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We've teamed up with DonorsChoose.org and other top blogs during the month of October. We're asking you to help us buy much needed classroom supplies for public schools in need. Check out our Giving Page and help us provide students with tools to promote physical activity: Fit Kids are Learning Kids! ($272 needed)

The end of summer doesn't need to mean the end of fruity cocktails — we just need to use preserved fruits and emphasize some subtler, year-round flavors.

Art, paint and pattern: three spirit-raising tools that I use in every project. They exist in the kitchen as part of the fabric of the design. Can you have a happy or home environment without them? Color is their chief medium, albeit with texture and shape delivering their full presence.

So, we are ending this series on color in the kitchen by looking to the future and thinking about color, and how you can use it as part of your kitchen design over time. Do you have a crystal ball? I didn't think so. I don't either. But, hopefully, by virtue of my hindsight, insight and a bit of foresight, plus not having thought about much else over (cough) years (note to self, feed the kids) I hope I can provide a helpful perspective on a few ways to look at color over the long term.

The modern kitchen is not so easy to define these days. I can think of a variety of kitchen themes which could have the word or concept "modern" attached to it: the new traditional, modern/rustic, eco-modern, vintage modern, minimalism, even mainstream modern.

Modern cannot be pigeon-holed into one particular aesthetic. Not like it used to be. Not now.

For me, there can be a never-ending discussion on the virtues and properties of the white kitchen. We call a white kitchen classic. White IS a classic in kitchen design, for decades, and at this moment, a white kitchen is only getting more popular with homeowners. What's not to like — white is crisp, clean, classic, light reflective, and it seems to lift up the spirits, doesn't it?

You look at the kitchen and you immediately get groggy, with a big fly-catching yawn, and before you get totally cranky, you know something has to change. If change doesn't come, no court will convict you for your actions which follow as a direct result of a colorless existence. Here, just in time, pre-indictment, is color on the cheap! Yes you can!

We're celebrating color on the table and in the kitchen this month! We asked Susan Serra of the great site The Kitchen Designer to inspire us this week with some colorful kitchen spaces, and with some good ideas for bringing color into our own kitchens. Welcome, Susan!

Hi everyone! Long time reader/first time writer, I'm a serious fan of The Kitchn. Being a Certified Kitchen Designer (CKD) by profession, and always open to fresh ideas, with some great ones I've discovered from readers of The Kitchn, I humbly trust that I can give back a few nuggets of insight and information from my perspective, which I hope to be of value to you in the days ahead. Let's talk color!

Q: I have been told that its fine to use sterilized jars and put HOT soup in them — then turn them upside down and let them seal themselves.

Is this a good method for low risk foods?

— Question asked by Tara

Q: How do you can something when you didn't make it specifically from a canning recipe? I make all kinds of soups I would love to can but they're not from a canning recipe book.

— Question asked by Graciela

It's something akin to a culinary lunar eclipse that at the moment we're all immersed in the celebration of Julia Child, Sheila Lukins of Silver Palate fame died of brain cancer. Julia's gift to the kitchens of America was to introduce us to French cooking. And thanks to the movie bearing her name, we are greedily rediscovering the pleasures of choux and beurre blanc. But it was Sheila Lukins who, 18 years later, did as much to shape the way Americans cook as anyone else who came before or after.

City: Baltimore
Population: 2.7 million, metro area
Local specialties: Crabs, pit beef, lake trout, tiramisu (allegedly invented in Baltimore!)

Markets, artisans, farms, and groceries: Where do you shop in Baltimore? Where are the best spots for cooks and food-lovers? Rachel Monroe of Urban Discoveries Baltimore put together an absolutely fabulous guide to the best eating in Baltimore; read on to discover Baltimore and to add your own suggestions!

Can you love a waffle so much that it becomes essentially impossible to do justice to its magnificence? The first time I tried Gaufres de Liege I was in Amsterdam, where the waffles must have migrated and settled. The vendor was located on the museumplein near the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and the Van Gogh museum. Served with a modest dusting of powdered sugar, the waffles were golden and crispy on the surface, with a chewy yet tender crumb within.

The yeasty sweetness of the dough inside was complex, like that of a baguette, yet it was so much richer and more indulgent. It was ineffably, incomparably delicious, and while the Van Goghs and Vermeers had taken my breath away, these waffles were works of art in their own right. Upon second bite, I swore that I would reproduce them once I returned home.

Using tofu in a dessert may seem a little awkward; at least, that's what I thought about the idea. But there's nothing but to give it a try! The verdict: fantastic! Nobody can guess there's tofu in it. Delicious and light, perfect to eat without guilt.