In view of the holiday season heading toward us at lightening speed – I present Casual Kitchen’s Seven Ways to Get Faster at Cooking and Apartment Therapy’s sequel Seven More Ways to Cook Faster.

Of course, the fastest way to cook is to have someone else do it – which is my method at this time of year – but I know that you culinary overachievers don’t see it that way. I salute you.

CBS has a very interesting article on spice as the foundation of the global economy. Oh not now (in the age of McCormicks) but “way back when”

Over at Serious Eats, I saw that Rouxbe is starting up an online cooking school. I’m not sure that makes a lot of sense to me. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I love watching cooking happen. I live to spend a rainy afternoon watching Nigella potter around her mysteriously always clean kitchen. But cooking school? That implies taking part. I don’t know if you can “take part” if you are running from kitchen to TV or even watching the TV while slicing onions just so.

Finally, it’s American Diabetes Month and we can all learn something from the recipes Epilog has gathered together to mark the occasion. I never would have thought of cocoa and pork but now that they mention it, it sounds yummy. The fact that it can be good for one as well – an extra bonus.