Almonds, salmon, blueberries and 17 more foods that will make you more alert, energetic and ready to take on the world.

It’s three in the afternoon, your energy is flagging and all you want to do is take a nap, but instead you have to sit through a boring meeting. While you could just have a second – or seventh – cup of coffee, you could also have some pumpkin seeds, an apple, a few red bell pepper slices with hummus or a piece of dark chocolate. These 20 foods can help relieve fatigue, sharpen your focus and give you the jolt of energy that you need to avoid falling asleep at your desk.

EcoSalon’s favorite quotes about the simple pleasures of cooking and eating.

If we’re not willing to settle for junk living, we certainly shouldn’t settle for junk food. -Sally Edwards

Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. -Voltaire

ColumnWhy cardamom is your new best friend.

High end ramen, breakfast for dinner, sparkling water: We spend a lot of time discovering and discussing food trends on Foodie Underground. It’s a dichotomous pursuit. There are the evenings spent complaining to friends about how fed up with the foodie world I am (bone luging, really? yet another cupcake store, must we?). Naturally, in the next sentence, I’m going on about my sea salt and olive oil polenta cake in the oven.

Mackerel swims to the lead when it comes to being the “right” fish to eat and we’ve got a recipe to back up the claim.

Lately, I haven’t cooked or eaten fish. There is no good excuse for this other than I have been confused about which fish is “correct” and safe to eat. Many of you probably already know that we should be careful which salmon, shrimps and tuna we choose to eat, that we should really start to cook and …

Do we really want to see what McDonald’s is made of?

As the world’s largest hamburger fast food chain by sales, McDonald’s serves around 68 million customers per day in 119 countries. Founded in 1955 by Dick and Mac McDonald, and later run by legendary businessman Ray Kroc, McDonald’s is the best known franchise in the world, with golden arches spotted from Lebanon to the Louvre.

Everything you need to eat and cook consciously in the new year.

Our exclusive EcoSalon shopping must-have, the curated eco product assortment known as The Box, is back. We’re offering $500 worth of holiday eco-goodies for just $99 and these won’t last. That’s a guarantee.

It’s one month into 2012; how are those healthy resolutions going? Hopefully well, but if you need an extra boost of support in eating better this year, look no further than our Conscious Food Box. It’s packed with goodies that are good for you and the …

ColumnWhen simple just doesn’t suffice.

“Why is bone luging a thing?”

It was 3:30 on a Monday afternoon and this had to be the oddest text of the day.

“I did not know if this was a new foodie thing to do,” my friend followed up by way of explanation.

When you write a column on food, your friends and colleagues often take it upon themselves to one-up you on knowing what the latest and hippest thing in the food world is. And they’re often pretty successful.

Delicious brunch recipes from some of our favorite food blogs.

For the past two months we’ve been running our Sunday Brunch series. We’re wrapping it up this weekend to leave room for a new series – keep an eye out for it next weekend – but we wanted to celebrate by recapping all of the great recipes and food blogs that we have featured over the last eight weeks. We’re pretty sure that if you made all eight of them this weekend you would be hosting the best brunch party ever.