Blog Posts by The Editors of EatingWell Magazine

We have a lot of young mothers on staff at EatingWell and their kids range in age from 5 months to 5 years. At lunchtime the conversation often turns to how challenging it is to pack a healthy kids lunch. Between dealing with finicky eaters and no-peanut rules, it seems like it's really hard to pull a meal together!

Here are a few tips and recipes we've come up with in the test kitchen to help you pack a lunch your kids will be excited about.

• Tip 1: Cut fruit into fun shapes with cookie cutters. Melon works very well.
• Tip 2: Buy yogurt in quart containers and dispense it into your own small containers each day-to save waste and money. Add your own frozen berries to jazz up vanilla yogurt and make it more colorful and fun to eat.
• Tip 3: Wraps and pita breads are easy ways to add variety to an otherwise ordinary sandwich, and are easy to cut into smaller portions that are good for kids.
• Tip 4: Be sure to pack the four delicious lunch options

Grilled Eggplant PaniniFor years I've toyed with the idea of going vegetarian-to better both my health and the environment. Right now my refrigerator is full of amazing summer produce, so my fiancé, Andy, and I eat meat-free meals a few days a week. But I've never gone completely meatless, even though I'd like to try. So you can imagine how thrilled I was when EatingWell launched this vegetarian meal plan-28 days of delicious meat-free meals, no planning necessary. It's easy to use: just pick your calorie level and voilà!- breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack planned for nearly a month.

(If a month's worth of easy, delicious meals isn't enough of a reason to try eating vegetarian, here are 6 reasons to eat less meat.)

Below are three of my favorite vegetarian recipes to get you started. Plus, get an additional 20 vegetarian recipes here »

Grilled Eggplant Panini (see recipe below) - Grilled eggplant is one of life's simpler pleasures: creamy and rich. This end-of-summer treat will be even

A good melon can be downright magical. This week I bought a cantaloupe and I'm greeted with its heady fragrance each time I open the fridge. My husband and I love melons so much we've been known to devour an entire, perfectly ripe cantaloupe in one sitting. At farmers' markets I'm discovering other melon varieties, too, like canary and galia. Here are tips about five of my favorite melon varieties and recipes to enjoy them in. Get more recipes for melons and other fresh summer produce from EatingWell.

• Cantaloupes have bright orange, firm, sweet flesh. These round melons have tan netting over yellow/green background. Try it in: Thai-Style Melon & Beef Salad
• Cut into watermelon's thick, variegated rind and enjoy its soft, red/pink or yellow/orange flesh. To see if one's ripe, look at the side where it rested on the ground while growing; the skin there should be yellow, not white. Try it in: Chilled Melon Soup (recipe below)
• Oval-shaped canary melons have bright yellow,

When I was a teenager I wouldn't be caught dead eating a salad. Salad was just a pile of lettuce, maybe a cucumber, and some croutons-boring! Apparently I didn't know how great a salad could really be. In college I started paying more attention to my health and began eating more salads. I moved beyond cucumber and added lots of different healthy low-cal vegetables, I whisked up delicious dressings and added a little lean protein to keep me satisfied. Boring salads were a thing of the past.

Working in the EatingWell Test Kitchen, I've helped develop some salad recipes that are anything but ordinary, including our 7 Simple Summer Salad Recipes.

Here are four of my favorite salads. These delicious salad recipes from EatingWell combine the ingredients I love best to make a salad that will fill you up and are definitely not boring!

1. EatingWell Power Salad (see recipe below) - Here's our take on a traditional chef's salad that is anything but light fare when it's heaped

When I planned my first garden a few years ago, I asked my friend Jessica for advice on how much of each vegetable I should plant. She said very matter-of-factly, "Only plant two summer squash seeds. If both grow into plants, you rip one out." I thought she was crazy. One plant? I had so many delicious summer squash recipes that I wanted to try.

I ignored her advice and planted six. All six survived-and produced prolifically. I was completely overwhelmed with fresh squash, as were my friends, who by the end of the summer politely declined my continuous offers of free squash.

This year, I followed my friend's advice so my crop is more manageable. But if you have any extra check out the cooking tips below or send them my way and I'll try them in these 4 yummy new summer squash recipes.

Squash Cooking Tips

• At the market: Smaller summer squash (under 8 inches) are sweeter and have fewer seeds.
• Storage: Refrigerate in a plastic bag for 4 to 5 days.

One of my first food memories is going out to our garden with my dad to pluck sun-ripened tomatoes off the vines. My dad's tomato recipes were ultra-simple-he'd barely dress the tomatoes with red-wine vinegar, olive oil, salt and pepper and let them sit for about 30 minutes until the juices from the tomatoes released into the dressing. Then we'd dig in, sopping up the liquid with warm bread. It was so simple, and so utterly delicious.

That's the great thing about tomatoes-it takes very little embellishment to make them shine when they're freshly picked and in season. The following recipes highlight their amazing flavor without a lot of fanfare.

(Get other great ideas for more summer-fresh produce, such as basil, corn and zucchini, in our summer produce recipe collection.)

Skillet-Seared Tomatoes with Melted Gruyere (see recipe below) - Serve these as a savory side dish to chicken or steak, to complement a meatless meal or as a sandwich on toasted whole-grain bread. A

In July and August, I never seem to have enough time in the evenings after work to do everything I want to do-swim, bike, pick berries and cherries, garden and go out on my boat. But around 8 p.m. the mosquitoes finally get me inside to make dinner and at that point I'm HUNGRY. So dinner recipes that are ready in 20 minutes or less are my go-to.

Since I try to make dinners using the vegetables I pick in my backyard-tomatoes, zucchini, dark leafy greens, lettuce and lots of fresh herbs-I tend to make a lot of Italian-inspired recipes. Here are a few of my favorite speedy summer recipes that can be prepped in 20 minutes.

Gnocchi with Zucchini Ribbons & Parsley Brown Butter (see recipe below) - This recipe is so pretty, I have even served it to guests…no matter that it only takes 20 minutes to prepare. The trick is to cut the zucchini as thinly as possible. If you have a mandoline, use it. Otherwise you can use a vegetable peeler to make thin, lengthwise slices of the

A few weeks ago I blogged about how to add exercise to your day in unexpected ways to stay in tip-top shape. Well, that's only one-half of the equation. "Calories in"-or what you eat-is equally important. Keep your body looking its best-inside and out-with these five foods.

By Brierley Wright, M.S., R.D.

Brierley's interest in nutrition and food come together in her position as an associate editor at EatingWell. Brierley holds a master's degree in Nutrition Communication from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University. A Registered Dietitian, she completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Vermont.

Related Links from EatingWell:

• Get food news, healthy recipes, health tips and more at EatingWell.com.
• Find more than 100 delicious seasonally-inspired recipes in our newest book, EatingWell in Season: The Farmers' Market Cookbook.
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