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You’d have to have been living under a rock for the past several years not to have heard all the hoopla about chocolate.

Yes it can lower blood pressure, yes it can decrease inflammation, yes it does make your blood less sticky which in turn can diminish the likelihood of having a heart attack, yes it tastes amazing, and yes it does make your behind bigger if you eat too much of it.

Just because there are some health benefits associated with eating chocolate, doesn’t mean you can eat a huge honking milk chocolate bar for lunch and call it a good nutrition day.

Read more: Not all chocolate is created equal: Cutting to the chase about chocolate

Will everyone who’s ever eaten artichokes for the first time and mistakenly shoved the whole fibrous, impossible-to-chew leaf in their mouth, and then tried to figure out how to get rid of it without gagging, please raise your hands? Or am I alone in this Lucy-like episode of Famous Food Faux Pas? Why, all those years ago, didn’t I have Tyler Florence to show me the way with his delicate roasted baby artichokes?

Yes, folks, artichoke season has come around again. Blogger Pabo76 (who also provides great takes on Korean food) layers the choke with sun-dried tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and some roasted red peppers on crusty bread (for another hoagie combo see our recipe). Or you can get back to artichoke basics (and give your kids a lesson in the ultimate slow food, leaf by leaf) with this recipe for the spiky green veg.

Read more: Artichoke Sandwich – Feast Your Eyes

Ever since – as the story goes – a goatherd brought coffee beans down from the Ethiopian highlands, humans have been held in the thrall of coffee. Espresso is a “pressed” and concentrated form of coffee, and when you add a dollop or a dose of steamed, frothy milk to it you get – respectively – a cappuccino or a latte. Once an acquired taste of more metropolitan coffee consumers, espresso is now a major part of many North American’s coffee routine.

And where once you would just order a regular old cup of Joe (or a double-double), now you have many options for dressing up your “coffee drink.” Too many, if you listen in on an order at most coffee shops these days: flavoured syrups, toppings galore, whipped cream, various levels of dry or wet foam. But what’s the cost of all of this coffee extravagance – to our health as well as to our savings accounts?

Read more: Wake up and smell the costs of coffee

Honey cranberries:

2 tbsp (30 mL) butter

2 cups (500 mL) fresh or frozen

cranberries

1/3 cup (75 mL) honey

5 eggs

1/4 cup (60 mL) sugar

2/3 cup (150 mL) milk

1 tsp (5 mL) vanilla

8 slices whole-grain bread

Butter for cooking

1/3 lb (160 g) Canadian Brie, sliced

Here’s the recipe: Honey Cranberry French Toast with Brie

Attention ladies of a certain age: a cup (or three) of java may do more than to help you wake up – it just might protect your memory.

A recent French study found that women aged 65+ who drank more than three cups of coffee per day – or the equivalent amount of caffeine found in tea – were 30 per cent less likely to have memory decline than women who drank one cup or less of coffee daily.

The findings, published in the August 7, 2007, issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, also showed that the benefits of caffeine appear to increase with age. Women over the age of 80 were 70 per cent less likely to have a failing memory.

Read more: Coffee perks up memory