Mussels are one of those sexy, evocative dishes that seems best executed by a fancy-pants chef at a corner bistro, but a big bowl of the bivalves is one of the most weeknight-friendly meals you can make. If you've ever been wary of cooking shellfish at home, mussels are a great place to start.

A big bowl of hot pasta, each strand perfectly coated in a creamy sauce, is perhaps the perfect comfort food. If you're not so hot on dairy - or it's not so hot on you - this meal may seem sadly out of your reach. Fortunately, there is a very easy way to make a rich and luscious, pasta-coating sauce without using a single drop of cream or a single pat of butter.

Eating bone marrow is an experience best described as "viscerally decadent". Once roasted, the luscious meat butter inside the bones can be scraped out and spread on toast, mixed with rice and vegetables, or eaten on top of more meat for a crazy carnivorous experience.

If you've happened to visit Pinterest in the last five years or so, you have no doubt seen a recipe or 10 for some iteration of three-ingredient, no-knead bread. These recipes are popular for good reason. Not only are these loaves extremely impressive for the amount of work they demand, they are excellent vehicles for any odds and ends you wish to rid your fridge of, from a handful of cheese to lonely fruits and vegetables.

A good sandwich doesn't need more than meat, cheese and bread, but adding some tomato, onion or other vegetable can make it truly great through the addition of fresh flavour and texture. Instead of slicing and dicing each of these components individually, you can save time by piling on the salsa.

Whether made with cheese or chocolate, fondue has a kind of cheesy, finicky reputation. But in spite of its kitsch, dipping bits of food in gooey, melted fromage or dark, liquid chocolate makes for a fun, flirty, surprisingly low-effort meal.

Look, omelettes are wonderful little egg dishes - particularly when they involve cheese and other fillings - but there's no denying they require a bit of babying. If you want a cheesy, vegetable-studded egg dish that is much more forgiving of your dismal attention span, you need to start making frittatas.

Some people prefer sweet foods, others savoury. Sweet potato is equipped to handle both. Not only are these babies the perfect base for all sorts of fillings, they provide a bit more flavour (and nutrients) than their paler counterparts, and can be enjoyed morning, noon, and night. Here are three delicious options for breakfast, lunch and tea.

I am an equal opportunity macaroni eater. I like it baked. I like it made with a roux. I even like it out of the blue box. You may think the convenience of Kraft can't be beat, but you'd be wrong. This homemade recipe comes together in about 15 minutes, with only one pot (which you don't have to drain) and no roux.

Snappy, treat-studded chocolate bark is a holiday treat that is always met with much enthusiasm. (Williams Sonoma is able to charge $42 for 454g of their peppermint iteration, making it more expensive than organic rib eye.) There is, however, no reason to spend a bunch on bark, as it can be made in your kitchen with very little effort.

There are sweet makers, and there are sweet eaters, and I am firmly in the latter camp. Though I don't mind a cathartic cooking sesh, my main goal - during the holidays especially - is to churn out the treats. This is why this fudge, which takes less than five minutes of your active time, gets made every single Christmas.

Cheeseballs really live up to their name. Not only are they a literal ball of cheese, but there's something kind of charmingly corny about them. Like a tacky Christmas sweater, they're more class clown than class act - lovable, goofy and charmingly unpretentious. They're also infinitely adaptable, and insanely easy to make.

If there was ever an ever-present Christmas confection during my youth, it was the haystack. Neither lolly nor cookie, this unassuming, almost too easy treat simply has no business being as addictive as it is.

Last week, when all of the writers came together for a glorious meeting in New York, I found myself in a bodega with Beth and Patrick, looking for bottles of water and nourishing snacks. I grabbed a Lunchable and later, while shoving stacks of too-round turkey slices and processed cheese in my mouth, I thought "why don't I eat these more often?"

Do you ever have those moments when you just need a warm chocolate chip cookie, but don't feel like making several dozen? I know I do, which is why I am happy to have found this 2-minute cookie recipe from Epicurious.

When our very own US editor-in-chief sent me a recipe for ceviche, I was excited, because ceviche combines two of my favourite activities: Eating seafood and not cooking. When I read the recipe, however, I was a little appalled, for it suggested that beautiful pieces of fresh sea bass be left in an acidic marinade for two freaking hours.

I recently asked some Lifehacker readers for their favourite ways to jazz up the infinitely riffable instant noodles and, my friends, they did not disappoint.

I'm not a huge fan of overly Instagrammable foods -- I tend to prefer aggressively beige fare -- but even I have to admit that there's something extremely enticing about those colourful acai smoothie bowls that seem to be so popular with the clean-eating set.

If you hosted a Passover Seder last night, you may have found yourself with a few sheets of leftover matzo this morning. Though the unleavened bread is a bit bland, that lack of prominent flavour is exactly what makes it the perfect foundation on which to build a snack-y masterpiece.