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Every year at this time the swarm descends upon my kitchen and bathrooms, even my office where a lot of my colleagues and I eat lunch at our desks. Gnats, fruit flies, call them what you will -- my colleague Mark prefers "flavor fairies" -- flit within my line of vision seeking something sour: drying towels, anyone? Last fall my friend Diane Hooie, a bright, well-traveled and adventurous cook, told me how to trap 'em. This really works: Pour a half inch of apple cider vinegar in a small glass and add two drops of dishwashing liquid. Mix well, sit it out and the flies will be drawn to the cup and gone forever. I misremembered her instructions and added water to the glass. It doesn't seem to affect the potion's desirability as dozens of gnats have perished in a watery grave.

It's cooler now in north-central West Virginia than this time last week when record-setting heat made my clothes feel like they were plastic shrink-wrapped to my body. This summer we discovered some low-calorie fruit slushes I make to keep cool. It's also a good and easy way to get in an extra serving of fruit. I'll be honest -- I use real sugar, cane sugar specifically, instead of Splenda. A little bit of natural sugar beats anything artificial, modified or engineered any day. Our favorites are the cherry limeade, peach and watermelon lemonade. I love that they're all made with frozen fruits so I don't have to buy and keep fresh fruit onhand worrying if it's going to spoil before we use it up. The most labor-intensive part is de-seeding the watermelon -- don't be fooled, there ARE seeds in seedless watermelon. But one watermelon, once de-seeded and chunked, has lasted me all summer in the freezer. Whipping up the drinks is so easy I can even let 4-year-old

A longhaul trucker named Melvin gave us his recipe for a refreshing lemonade drink. I dubbed it Melvinade, which left a bad taste in my husband's mouth. But the drink itself is pretty tasty -- an orange offsets the tart lemon and it's sweet but not syrupy. It quenches thirst and finishes light and clean -- no "drag" on the on the palate from too much acid or sugar ... at least the way we made it. We didn't follow Melvin's formula to the letter. All props to truckers 'cause they move America and my uncle [and Melvin's girlfriend's father in fact,] rest his soul, was a trucker -- but we think Melvin's ratios are a little out of whack. He said he puts the juice of three lemons and one orange and 1 1/2 cups of sugar in a two-quart pitcher and fills it with water. When we made it, to the citrus juice we added 3/4 cup of sugar and could probably have used even less. I measured the water exactly the first time we made it; the second time, my husband j