Pies are really great, like, really great. Personally I am a huge fan of a dessert apple pie with custard and vanilla ice cream during the holidays, or anytime for that matter. With Christmas coming up why not learn how to make a great apple pie that will blow your relatives away?

I don't know about you, dear reader, but I am still recovering from eating roughly five racks of ribs covered in delicious blueberry barbecue sauce after last week. But you can't just spend your summer eating meat, so this week I'm turning my focus to one of summer's most prominent vegetables: the ubiquitous, deliciously sweet ear of corn.

Throughout the culinary kingdom, there are many foods that pair famously well, salt and pepper being perhaps the most iconic. These two grace almost every dish, every recipe, every table, and every condiment bar that you've ever been to. But why?

Don't get me wrong, black pepper has its place - I love a fillet au poivre, black pepper vodka, and of course crunchy black pepper potato chips - but there are other, less frequently used peppercorns, and you should know about them. There's a whole world of chromatically diverse flavour out there, and you should be tasting that peppery rainbow.

There are plenty of traditional holiday meals to think about as we near the end of the month. Rib roasts, even more turkey, a sporadic ham or wellington. But I'm a bigger fan of lamb - and not just frenched racks, but whole legs. And with the weather warming up, I think it's high time we talk about smoking.

As a person who writes a column dedicated to lazy meals, I see a lot of recipes and videos for "simple" and "easy" dishes.. Most are shot from an overhead angle and include too much grade F cheese and ranch dressing for even my liking, but I came across something in my normal course of late-night Imgur browsing.