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Step 1: Choose Your Cheese A great grilled cheese sandwich starts with the cheese. Choose one or two cheeses (or more!) that’s good for melting. Our favorites include American, brie, cheddar, Gouda, Havarti, Monterey Jack, mozzarella, Muenster, provolone, smoked cheddar, Swiss, and white cheddar. Step 2: Choose Your Bread White, wheat, rye, pumpernickel—sliced bread is your base for making grilled cheese sandwiches. If you’re slicing your bread, make it about ½-inch thick....

Make Small Servings Our apple butter-glazed ham recipe serves 4 and is a delicious alternative to the 10-pound ham you might be used to making. Can’t find ham? Substitute with a new take on pork (our herb-rubbed pork is insanely good) or dress up a plain chicken by making lemon thyme rotisserie chicken in the air fryer. Put Leftovers to Good Use Eliminating food waste is at the top of our list this holiday....

Our Favorite Alternative to Toothpicks If you’re in the middle of making, say, your best-ever chocolate cake and you don’t have a toothpick to check cake doneness, a thin, sharp knife is our Test Kitchen’s favorite workaround. Look at your knife set and find the one with the thinnest blade. Then insert the blade into the center of the cake. If the knife comes out clean, the cake is done. If batter or crumbs stick to the blade, let your cake bake a few minutes more and retest with a clean knife....

¾ cup sifted powdered sugar 1 tablespoon pineapple juice

Easy Cake Mix Upgrade I used a French vanilla cake mix to make cupcakes, but you can use any flavor and size you want. I assume gluten-free mixes would work well here, too if you have allergy restrictions. Basically you’ll follow the directions on the box replacing the 1 cup of water with milk, adding two extra eggs, and swapping the ⅓ cup oil for double the amount of melted butter....

Viridiflora Hybrid Tulip Care Like all tulip bulbs, Viridiflora hybrid tulips, require well-drained soil and at least 6 hours of bright sunlight per day. Tulips do best in soil that is stays relatively dry in summer and well-drained in winter. (Wet, boggy soil in winter quickly leads to bulb rot.) The best time to plant tulips bulbs is midfall or when the nighttime temperatures consistently hover around 40°F. Prepare the planting bed by breaking up any clods as you dig a 6- to 8-inch-deep trench....

¾ cup softened butter ½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder 2 cup powdered sugar ½ cup milk 2 teaspoon vanilla 6 cup powdered sugar Milk Creamy White Frosting 1 cup shortening 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla ½ teaspoon almond extract 4 cup powdered sugar 3 tablespoon milk Pumpkin Cupcakes 1 2-layer-size package yellow cake mix ¾ cup water ⅓ cup oil 1 cup canned pumpkin ½ cup sour cream 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice

Whether you choose real or artificial flowers, they’re sure to make a splash on your tree this year. Check out our favorite DIY floral Christmas tree designs. Paper Petals This insanely pretty tree from Rifle Paper Co. is what Christmas dreams are made of. We’re seriously crushing on the gorgeous blooms—all made out of paper and inspired by gorgeous floral gift wrap ($11, Rifle Paper. Co.). We love how the paper blooms pop on the otherwise bare tree....

2 pound small red-skinned potatoes, sliced 2 tablespoon olive oil 1 tablespoon snipped fresh rosemary ¼ salt ¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Weeping Willow Care Weeping willow grows well in full sun or part shade and a variety of soil conditions. The trees acclimate to many soil conditions: wet and boggy, well-drained, or even a little dry. It grows especially well near ponds and streams where the soil is often too moist for other tree species. Weeping willow grows fast—as much as 24 inches a year—so take its mature size into consideration. Plant a weeping willow transplant or bare-root plant in spring and water it regularly during the first growing season to encourage a strong root system....

What Is Ube? Pronounced ooh-beh, ube is is a starchy purple tuber (formally known as Dioscorea alata). Ube is native to Southeast Asia, with the Philippines being the country really known for cooking and baking with it. Nutrition-wise, ube is similar to a plain sweet potato, logging in at 120 calories, 27 g carbs, 4 g fiber, and 1 g protein. What Does Ube Taste Like? If you were to blind taste-tested a regular sweet potato or yam with ube, it might be hard to determine which you’re eating....

What is Vermicomposting? Vermi is Latin for worm, so vermicomposting is simply the decomposition of plant materials by worms. Worms consume the kitchen scraps that you feed them, and release castings (worm droppings), also called vermicompost. This is recycling at its best, transforming waste into a valuable resource for your garden. Vermicompost not only feeds plants, but it improves your soil’s texture, and may provide some protection against certain pests. It’s superior to traditional compost in several ways....

What is an annual? All plants have a life cycle, spanning from when a seed sprouts to when the plant dies. When a plant is described as an annual, that means that it grows from seed, flowers, makes more seeds, and dies all within a single year. You can save seeds to replant later. The baby plants may not look exactly like the parent plant, but that’s part of the fun....

At least when it comes to lumber prices, it seems the answer is not entirely promising. A variety of experts, including those whose businesses have ties to the lumber industry or rely on lumber supplies to operate, predict that high prices will remain for the foreseeable future. “Lumber prices are expected to rise in the next year and if this fluctuation of high prices continues the price will have tripled by 2025,” says Richard Fung, a custom home builder with Forever Homes....