Mile High Organics works like this: Clients go online and order a reusable 'bin' of food, which at its least expensive costs $22 and holds eight of the 63 fresh organic items available. Each 'item' could be several items, though. For instance, this week, three Braeburn apples make up one item.

Zone Denver, a diet delivery service that came to Colorado in 2008 and operates a kitchen in Boulder, offers one solution to the great debate of fast food and fatty versus homemade and healthy, delivering freshly made food to doorsteps all along the Front Range, including Boulder County.

The American menu today is crowded with many cuisines: Italian, Chinese, French, Japanese, German, Ethiopian, Irish, Vietnamese. With so many kinds of cooking, it can be easy to forget what is the most important cuisine of them all, that of American Indians.

Over the last 26 years and through a major book update in 2004 McGee has become the go-to guy for the whys and hows of cooking. His fat, red tome graces the bookshelves of most serious foodies, ready to serve up definitive technical and historical answers on all things food and cooking.

What's cool about a strata is that you can use it to transform many of those odds and ends lurking in the refrigerator into the festive star of a brunch or luncheon. No one will accuse you of loving them less for serving leftovers when you present this deliciously custardy and cheesy bread pudding.

Restaurant-quality nibbles, not standard chips and salsa, are feasible and affordable even for the do-it-yourselfer. Vazquez advises starting with inexpensive, versatile and hearty ingredients such as polenta, chorizo and pasta. A sauce adds instant zing, and most can be made the day before, then heated in the microwave the day of.

"I've known Stan personally for quite a few years," Baris says. "He stands out as a very exceptional mixologist. I asked him if he wouldn't mind making us a cocktail list, and he was pleased to do so."

There are two ways to gift shop for a cook. You can drop a wad on a spectacular piece of equipment that will get used three or four times a year and sit in the pantry the rest of the time. Or you can convert a relatively small amount of money into a potful of tools that will get used on a daily basis.

"Like a lot of brewers today, its Charlie's fault," Turner says. Charlie, in this case, refers to Charlie Papazian, the man who founded the American Home Brewers Association in 1978 and in 1984 wrote the 'home brewer's bible,' The Complete Joy of Home Brewing.

A fun variation on winter and holiday cuisine is cooking with wine, liquor or liqueur. Each alcohol can add a distinctive flavor or enhance other ingredients from your favorite recipes. Whether youre cooking or baking something savory or sweet, alcohol can give your culinary dishes a festive element and taste.