Blog Posts by Sarah McColl, Shine staff

I dream of the day when I have a window in my kitchen with herbs on the sill. Until then, my reality is a cramped, dark space cut out from a hallway. It's not pretty. So I've got my eye on bright, whimsical prints that add personality and color to those neglected kitchen walls. Who doesn't want to stare at something lovely while they're stirring risotto? --Sarah McColl, Shine staff

Is that Labor Day on the horizon? We hadn't even noticed. We're way too occupied with our list of late summer delights (ripe tomatoes! East Coast oceans that are finally not freezing!). Determined to make the most of summer's last gasp, we thought we'd remind you of all the worthy ways you can still soak up the season. Ignore the back to school sales just a little longer, and keep this cheat sheet handy. Followed closely, it guarantees one more month of relaxed, delicious summer fun. --Sarah McColl, Shine staff

You know when it's so hot you just want to eat an ice cream cone in a walk-in freezer? Welcome to August. Days like that, I'd rather fry an egg on the sidewalk than turn on the oven. That's why this month we're asking you to share your favorite No-Cook Dinners.

To Join Us:
1. Write a blog post, on Shine or elsewhere, telling us about your best cookout secret. Be sure to include a photo and a recipe.
2. Mention and link to the Shine Supper Club in your post: http://shine.yahoo.com/supper-club/
3. Tweet @yahooshine with a link to your post and include the hashtag #shinesupperclub. Aren't on Twitter? Email the link to shine_sarahmccoll@yahoo.com

My fix for lazy, hot summer days is a Kitchen Sink Salad. I see what's in the fridge and cabinets: a head of red cabbage, shallots, leftover grilled asparagus, tomatoes, a hard-cooked egg, feta, cooked grains, rotisserie chicken, romaine hearts, Finn-Crisps (my favorite crouton substitute), sunflower seeds, canned salmon. Then I try to put

Sarah Lipoff's winning grilled pizzaSarah Lipoff has gamely contributed to the Supper Club since its first month. When we dared you to cook your scariest dish, she fried up a whole chicken. When we asked how to spring clean your supper, she slashed the fat and calories of a beloved Chinese dish. In May, she shared her mother's easy recipe for monkey bread, and in June whet our appetities with the makings for her light and lovely first bite of summer. We were not surprised then to see that her best cookout secret was an inventive and irresistible grilled pizza, or that you chose it for the winner of July's Supper Club Grill Giveaway. Sarah says it best in her post:

"Summer entertaining shouldn't be about spending hours in the kitchen tossing together elaborate meals when guests come over to play. Nope. Dinner should be effortless, preferably served on paper plates, and cooked on the grill creating hardly any cleanup...my cheap pizza-grilling secret - throw-away aluminum pizza pie tins from the grocery store...This is

$1,000 burning a hole in your pocket? Just buy a bagel! This list of the most expensive dishes in the world taught us that the humblest foods (think scrambled eggs and pizza) can be made criminally expensive with the addition of white truffles and edible gold leaf. Welcome to the menu of the one percent.

What do you do with a bumper crop of summer veggies?When it comes to impulse shopping, I don't have a problem with shoes, candy bars at the checkout counter, or Sephora's travel sizes that snake alongside a long line (Oh! The $10 version of that $60 scrub!). But I cannot, for the life of me, pass up a ripe summer vegetable.

This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself. But here's the thing: there are only two people in my household, and at some point in the summer, cooking becomes a race against rot. I buy these fruits and vegetables at their perkiest, but once on the counter or stowed in the crisper (a misnomer if there ever was one!), what was once fresh and fragrant ages like a time-lapse video in the summer air.

Shine reader Amanda left a comment recently suggesting we stash all the veggie scraps (cores, peels, onion skins, veggie ends) inside a ziploc bag in the freezer. When the bag is full, use it to make a vegetable stock, or throw it in the pot with a chicken carcass. Brilliant!

This is the kind of tidbit that can

Dinner doesn't have to be perfect to be great.Let me see a show of hands: who, like me, has stood in grocery store aisles after work, completely overwhelmed, wishing a grocery list would land in your hand, lead you through the store, and deposit you back in the kitchen to cook up something healthy, quick, and cheap? The question of how to make the nightly meal happen--and how to keep it up day-in, day-out--is a doozy. So when a study of nearly three dozen middle-class families by UCLA's Center for Everyday Family Lives found that only 17% percent of of dinners were eaten together as a family, though all of them shared it as a goal, I totally got it.

[Related: Study Finds Clutter Dominates Average American Home]

But dinner together is also a worthy endeavor. Researchers at Rutgers reviewed 68 studies and found that kids who eat meals together with their families tend to eat more fruits, vegetables and fiber and less junk food, and were more likely to have a lower body mass index. Compared to their peers who ate at home less

Amelie eats!"French women don't fuss," says Wini Moranville, author of The Bonne Femme Cookbook: Simple, Splendid Food that French Women Cook Every Day--happy news indeed for anyone who has ever admired the French flair for cooking as much as their easy way with scarves and stripes. "Bonne femme" means "good wife," but it's also an expression used to describe the fresh, simple, economical food cooked every day in French homes by men and women alike. After more than 20 years of extended stays in France in every part of the country from Paris to coastal towns in the South, Moranville has gleaned cooking lessons of economy, simplicity and ease that are every bit as applicable stateside as in a French kitchen. (As for scarves and stripes, we'll let you know when we decode that sexy-gamine Amelie thing.)

[Related: How to deal with a picky eater, French-style]

Embrace the Best Shortcuts
"You don't have to cook everything from scratch," says Moranville. French women rely on convenience foods just like