"Admit it," my cousin Kim said several days before my 21st birthday. "You're more excited about buying wine to cook with than you are about being able to legally drink." 

Maybe that made me a traitor to my fellow twenty-year-old peers, but Kim was right. And if you were forced to use cheap, made-for-cooking wine in your recipes, you would be excited too. I love cooking with wine. I love the way the scent can fill up the entire kitchen, how it can make everything in the house smell sweet and delicious. A splash of it can turn an ordinary meal staple like chicken into something exotic, and work miracles on an otherwise plain dish. 

Turning 21 meant that I wouldn't have wait to cook the chicken marsala until an of-age friend is back from the grocery store. Nor would I have to endure the skepticism of store clerks, the way I did last year when my friend Amy and I decided to make Godiva's Grand Marnier Brownies.  

"Oh sure," the clerk said, giving me a big wink when Amy, already 22, mentioned our baking plans. "You're going to use it to make brownies, huh?"

The truth is that until you're twenty-one, people tend to assume that you're trying to get your hands on that bottle of somethin' somethin' for one reason and one reason only.  Now that I'm of age, I can cook as much and as often as I want with wine and alcohol, all to my heart's content.  Here are some recipes that I recommend:  

1. Chicken and Asparagus in White Wine Sauce 

2. Seared Halibut with Haricots Verts, Scallions, and White Wine Sauce

3. Poached Pears with Dulce de Leche Sauce- I haven't made this myself yet, but it looks darn good. 

4.     Beef Meatballs in a Creamy Red Wine Sauce

5. Red Wine Cake 

We've all been there. You're walking down a store aisle, minding your own business, when suddenly it leaps out from the shelf and grabs you by the throat: kitchen junk. A chameleon in the world of crap-you-don't-need, kitchen junk comes in all kinds of seductive guises, from banana holders to bread machines to egg crackers. Here are a few of the worst offenders:

1. Electric can opener. Since when did opening a can become such an arduous task that it requires a fancy $49.95 machine?

2. Bread machine. When you're studying the back of the box in the store, a bread machine seems like a brilliant idea. The reality check doesn't come until six months later, when it's collecting dust on the kitchen counter because -- let's face it -- it's fifty times easier to grab a freshly baked loaf from the grocery store.

3. Apple slicer.  If you own a knife, you can achieve the exact. same. results.

4. Banana guard. This is an example of how, with the right business strategy, you can create a market for a product that's next to useless. Chances are that your lone banana will do just fine without its own special protective case.

5. Egg cracker, better known as the mother-of-all-kitchen-junk. I know 10 different kids who would not only be thrilled to crack your eggs for free, but would also fight each other for the privilege. In all likelihood, it will take longer to rummage through your cabinet and find the egg cracker than it will to just do it yourself.  

6. Juicer. If you have visions of yourself serving freshly squeezed juice on a hot summer day, suppress them; it's the heat talking. The truth is that you'll probably use your juicer twice before abandoning it to languish on your counter, right next to the neglected bread machine.

The list goes on and on. But sometimes kitchen junk redeems itself and becomes ... dare I say the word ... useful. Similarily, one cook's piece of junk can be another cook's treasure. If you're a juice fanatic, the juicer could very well be a wise investment; if you're cooking a dish that requires truffles, a truffle slicer may feel like a necessity.

But an egg cracker? Well, some appliances are beyond redemption.