Video food demos hosted by Sonya McDaniel.

Fish soup appears in every city, town and village that grows up by the sea. It is a natural outgrowth of thrift.

Halloween may be over, but for many the candy lingers: bowls of bite-size candy bars, pumpkin-face suckers, chocolate eyeballs and gummy candies remain, along with bags of candy that were never even opened.

Garlic’s reputation has promoted more than 2,500 health studies, but most are for marketing, not medical science.

Illinois produces close to 90 percent of all pumpkins, followed by Ohio, Pennsylvania and California. However, most of these pumpkins are used for pumpkin pie filling. Most people wouldn’t recognize a processing pumpkin if it splattered at their feet. (They might say, “Hey, that looks like splattered pumpkin pie filling.”)

As the trees slowly give away their leaves, coating the ground with a vibrant palette of reds, yellows and oranges, tastes shift from summer’s corn and tomatoes to fall’s bounty of squashes and root veggies.

Cheesecake: Have it topped with berries, a dollop of whipped cream or just as is. It’s comforting, delicious and it just seems to be the perfect creamy treat.

When it comes to autumn recipes, those with pumpkins and apples jump to mind.

Today, they might be nothing more than breakfast cereals. But those who dined on them each morning a century ago were told the cereals brought them good health.

Boston Beer Company has just released its Samuel Adams Barrel Room Collection, a series of three new beers brewed and bottled exclusively at the Jamaica Plain brewery.

Lucky for us already, it’s kosher to eat latkes year-round -- not just for Hanukkah. They are so simple, so delicious, but so complex in meaning and history.

All pot roast starts the same with cheap cuts of tough meat, browned and then braised in a little liquid. It becomes Yankee when you add carrots, potatoes and onions the last hour.

Not many folks keep buttermilk handy. It’s perishable and not an ingredient we often use. When you encounter a call for some in a recipe, don’t drop everything and head to the store. You can make your own buttermilk in a few seconds.

An improvement on the old-fashioned pastry bench scraper promises relief. The bench shovel is a 6-inch-wide stainless blade with a handle and edges.

Weekly food rail, with a review of Edwards Singles Hot Fudge Brownie with Creamy Ice Cream, an easy recipe for Potatoes O'Brien, tips on picking out beef, and more.

When World War II came along, food rationing followed. Homemakers left the kitchen for the factory. Quick to prepare and with the main ingredient conveniently on the shelf, tomato soup spice cake provided a dessert or snack without eggs or butter, and with a minimal measure of sugar.

When you’re buying pumpkins this year, you might leave the jack-o’-lantern job to the big guys and choose a smaller variety, the sugar pumpkin, which is cultivated for cooking. It makes a beautiful casserole. And it works well in pumpkin juice, the beverage of choice for Harry Potter and the other young wizards at Hogwarts.

How fun would it be to stroll a marketplace for handcrafted foods the likes of rosemary shortbread, cheddar cheese hand-rubbed with sea salt and honey, or chocolate caramels studded with sea salt, pretzels and ale?

Food lovers notice the apple of their eye has become a film genre. These culinary flicks are hot and surefire: Even if the plot sucks, and it often does, well, we’re there for the food.

Halloween is a great time to have fun with food. But many cooks prefer to forgo the gory treats, such as bloody eyeball truffles and toxic waste punch complete with floating “amputated” gummy fingers. We understand. So if you’re looking for more mild-mannered edibles, look no further. These cupcakes and pizzas are scrumptious, without being scary.