Getcha fresh, hot Mark Bittman news and his wonderful recipe for Italian-Style vegetable pancakes - fast and easy and filling and HEALTHY!

Who knew that making apple pie could be so easy. This recipe is a cinch.

In the mood for Mexican tonight? Here are three easy recipes that you can use in your crockpot to take care of your Mexican cravings!Recipe #1 - CROCKPOT CHICKEN STEW MEXICAN STYLE

Whoopie pies are Amish in origin, they are a popular treat in New England, but believe me, you can be from absolutely anywhere to enjoy them. Two soft, chocolately cookies with a creamy peanut butter buttercream filling make this a sandwich unlike any other than you have ever had. This is a great, easy recipe to make with children.

If you want to bake banana bread at home, try this easy banana bread recipe.

Sponge cake is a cake based on flour (usually wheat flour), sugar, and eggs, sometimes leavened with baking powder. The sponge cake is thought to be one of the first of the non-yeasted cakes, and though it does not appear in Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery in the late 18th century, it is found in Lydia Maria Child's The American Frugal Housewife, indicating that sponge cakes had been established in at least some Anglophone countries by the early 19th century.Variations on the theme of a cake lifted, partially or wholly, by trapped air in the batter exist in most places where European patisserie has spread, including the French Génoise, the Anglo-Jewish "plava" and the possibly-ancestral Italian/Sephardic Jewish pan di Spagna ("Spanish bread" , from the Ladino pan d'Espanya). Derivatives of the basic sponge cake idea include the American chiffon cake and the Latin American Tres leches cake.