You know you should be eating more fruit, but oftentimes, eating enough fruits and veggies is more hassle than it's worth. With these quick and easy hacks, you'll no longer have any excuse for eating fruit snacks in place of the real thing, and there will be no more underripe melons or hard-to-peel mangoes in your future.

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1. Judge Ripeness by Weight

Good things often come in heavy packages, at least where fruit is concerned. When choosing fruits that get juicy – think oranges, melons and pineapples – compare pieces by weight. If you're holding two oranges of similar size, choose the one that feels heavier. It's probably riper and juicier.

2. Master the Thump Test

Finding the perfect watermelon feels like a crapshoot sometimes. Use the thump test to determine whether a melon is truly ripe. Tap or flick the fruit with one finger. If it's ripe, you should hear a hollow sound; an underripe or overripe watermelon will make more of a thudding sound.

3. Pit Cherries With Chopsticks

If not for the pesky pits, cherries would be the perfect fruit. You don't need to buy a special tool to make pitting cherries fast and easy. Find a clean glass bottle with a small opening through which a cherry won't fit. Place a cherry on the opening and push a chopstick through the fruit to push the pit into the bottle opening.

4. Speed Ripening in a Paper Bag

You can't hurry nature, but you can help it along a little. Force fruit to ripen quicker by placing it in a folded paper bag. Closing the bag traps the ethylene gas that the fruit produces as it ripens, speeding the process. This works with any fruit that continues to ripen after it is picked, like bananas and avocados.

5. Try Rice to Force Ripening

No paper bag? No problem. Uncooked rice can also be used to artificially speed the ripening process. Submerge unripened fruit in a container of white or brown rice and the fruit should be softer after a day or two.

6. Blanch Stone Fruit Before Peeling

Peeling peaches and nectarines is a notoriously frustrating job. The skin is thin and slippery; making a peach pie just isn't worth the trouble. Here's a trick to make life so much simpler. Carve an X shape (about 1 inch in size) into the fruit's peel. Plunge the fruit into boiling water for about 30 seconds and then immediately transfer it into an ice bath to cool. The peel should slip off easily.

7. Whack Seeds Out of Pomegranates

Pomegranates are one of those delicious fruits that people tend to avoid because they're so labor intensive. Don't deny yourself the sweet, tart juiciness of pomegranate seeds. First, roll the fruit around the counter under your palms to loosen the seeds. Cut the pomegranate in half and hold it upside down over a bowl. Use a wooden spoon to firmly and repeatedly whack the fruit; this should cause it to release its seeds.

8. Soften Grapefruit Sourness With Salt

It sounds counterintuitive, but you're just going to have to trust us: Grapefruit and salt really are a match made in heaven. Sprinkling a section of grapefruit with just a little table salt should cut the bitterness and actually make the fruit taste sweeter.

9. Use a Rubber Band on Sliced Apple

If you cut an apple for the kids' lunch in the morning, they may reject the browned fruit at noon. Cut apple starts to turn brown when it's exposed to air. Counteract that effect by cutting a whole apple into slices or wedges and then reassembling it and wrapping a rubber band around the whole thing. When you slide off the band hours later, the fruit should still be crisp and white.

10. Peel Mango on Drinking Glasses

A sweet and tangy bite of ripe mango is worth any effort it takes to remove the fruit from its peel and central pit. One easy way to do this is to slice down the middle of the fruit, cutting two large sections of mango off either side of the pit. Grasp one half in your hand with the peel side against your palm and slide the fruit down the edge of a drinking glass. The glass should easily separate the flesh from the peel.

There's a lot to like about summer, from the outdoor fun to the long, warm evenings. One of the very best things is the arrival of fresh, seasonal produce, whether it's from your own backyard garden or the farmers' market up the road. Sweet corn is one of those seasonal summer favorites, and for a lot of us, it just doesn't feel like summer until we bite into a cob of fresh corn slathered with butter. Here are 10 of our favorite ways to maximize the eating and minimize the prep.

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1. Corn for One? Use Your Microwave

The most common way to prepare corn on the cob is by boiling it, but that's a lot of fuss when you just want to cook a single cob for yourself. When those moments roll around, turn to your microwave instead of pulling out a pot. Place the whole cob inside your microwave shuck and all and cook it on high for four minutes or longer if you have a low-powered microwave. Once it's done, use an oven mitt to remove it. Chop off the stem end of the cob with a sturdy knife and then squeeze the corn from its husk. It will come away cleanly, leaving the husk (and the troublesome silk) behind.

A microwaved cob will slide neatly out of its husk. Image Credit: Poh Kim Yeoh / EyeEm/EyeEm/GettyImages

2. Brush Away That Silk

Corn isn't hard to cook, but it does require some work. First, you need to shuck the husks and perhaps trim the stem so it will fit into your pot, and then there's the silk. The silk may be the most time-consuming part of the whole process, clinging to the tip of each ear with stubborn persistence. If you keep a small brush on hand for cleaning vegetables before they're cooked, that's the easy answer to silk removal. Just hold the ear under running water and brush between the rows of kernels to dislodge the silk. The flowing water will wash away the strands, leaving a neatly cleaned ear.

The same brush you use to clean your fresh veggies will strip the silk from your corn. Image Credit: Catherine McQueen/Moment/GettyImages

3. Use Your Slow Cooker

If you find that the midsummer weather already skews too much toward heat and humidity, having a big pot boiling away on your stove top might not sound appealing. Standing over that pot while it boils probably sounds even worse. If you have a slow cooker, it's a great hands-off alternative to heating up your kitchen. Just load up the cooker with your corn – a standard 6-quart model will hold six to eight ears – add 1/4 cup of water and cook it on high for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Once it's done, you can use the cooker to keep it warm or apply butter and serve it right away.

Slow cookers provide an easy, hands-off prep method. Image Credit: Rafael Ben-Ari/Photodisc/GettyImages

4. Use Your Pressure Cooker

A faster alternative to the traditional pot of boiling water is your pressure cooker. Put the trivet (wire rack) into the bottom of your cooker and stack the ears at right angles like firewood: two on the bottom and two crosswise on top in a small model or three and three in a larger pot. Pour a cup of water into the cooker and lock the lid in place. Set it to high if you're using an electronic model or bring it up to pressure if you're using a stove top pressure cooker. Cook under pressure for two minutes and then use the quick-release valve to rapidly depressurize and stop cooking.

Your pressure cooker provides a fast, convenient way to cook corn. Image Credit: Rithwik photography/Moment/GettyImages

5. Keep Corn Hot in a Cooler

Picnic coolers are wonderfully versatile. Their normal use (as the name suggests) is for keeping things cool, but they're just as adept at keeping things hot. That's good to know if you're going to prepare corn for a crowd. Instead of steaming out the house while guests are there or dragging your pot to someone else's house, use your cooler to keep the corn warm until it's needed. Cook the corn using your favorite method, wrap each ear in foil and drop them into the cooler. Top them with microwaveable heating packs – the kind you use for sore muscles – and a blanket if necessary to take up the remaining space. They'll stay hot for a surprisingly long time.

Whether you\’re tailgating or having a backyard celebration, coolers are paradoxically great for keeping corn hot. Image Credit: Douglas Sacha/Moment/GettyImages

6. Cook Corn in a Picnic Cooler

If you have a large family or an active social life, there's a strong possibility that one day, you'll find yourself cooking corn for way too many people. There are a few ways to approach this – buy a bigger pot, bake them in the oven, grill them endlessly – but none of those is a really appealing option. The best hack for cooking corn in volume uses a picnic cooler. The technique is pretty simple: Shuck and clean the ears, load up your cooler and pour in enough boiling water to cover the corn. Close the lid, wait a half hour and you're ready to serve!

When you need to cook corn in bulk, a picnic cooler can be your best friend. Image Credit: Mohd Azri Suratmin / EyeEm/EyeEm/GettyImages

7. Buttering Corn for a Crowd

One of the best things about fresh, tasty corn is how well it goes with butter. Managing the butter supply is easy when you're only cooking for one or two, but the logistics get complicated when you're cooking lots of corn. Sure, you can set out butter dishes or put a pat of butter with each plate, but that's time-consuming. A better option is to simply melt a few sticks of butter into your pot or your picnic cooler if you're using that method. The melted butter floats on top of the water, so as you pull out each ear, it butters itself easily and thoroughly.

Buttering corn can be a logistical challenge when you\’re cooking a lot. Image Credit: FotografiaBasica/E+/GettyImages

8. Spice Things Up

Corn is perfectly delicious with just a smear of butter and a generous pinch of salt and pepper, but that doesn't mean you should stop there. Its fresh sweetness goes with lots of other flavors, so give your guests some options. Knead fresh garden herbs or ground spices into plain butter and then melt the seasoned butter on your corn. It tastes great, and it's a fine way to preserve herbs from your garden for later use. You can also make up dips with varying flavor profiles – Thai, for example, or Mexican ​elote​ style – to spread or squirt on your ears to broaden the available options. The possibilities are endless!

Plain butter is good, but flavored butters and spicy dips take corn to a different level. Image Credit: Eugene Mymrin/Moment/GettyImages

9. Freeze Your Leftovers for Later

Although it may seem endless while it's happening, especially if you were overzealous when you planted your garden, corn's peak season doesn't last all that long. If you've bought too much, it makes sense to cook it and freeze any excess so you can enjoy a taste of summer later in the year. Cook the corn as you normally would or perhaps a bit less to allow for reheating. Once it's cool enough to handle, cut the kernels from the cob and spread them in a single layer on a sheet pan. Freeze the corn and then bag it once frozen so the kernels won't make a solid lump. When you want some, open the bag, pour out a meal's worth and reseal the bag.

Cook lots of corn while it\’s fresh and then freeze it to enjoy months later. Image Credit: Rapeepong Puttakumwong/Moment/GettyImages

10. Use the Bundt Pan Trick

Cutting away the kernels for freezing or for "corn off the cob" is usually a messy and clumsy process. You can simplify that task if you have a Bundt pan or angel food cake pan. When you have corn to cut, stand up your ear with its tip resting in the tube in the middle of the pan. The tube holds the ear in place, and the round pan itself captures the kernels as they fall (and wherever they fall). If you don't have a Bundt pan, you can improvise a substitute by turning a small mixing bowl or ramekin upside down inside a larger mixing bowl.

Your favorite Bundt pan is a great corn-cutting tool. Image Credit: apomares/E+/GettyImages

Linguica and andouille are both spicy pork sausages. Image Credit: Hemera Technologies/AbleStock.com/Getty Images

Recipes that call for spicy sausage often give the cook a choice between linguica or andouille. Both sausages are made from pork and a pungent mix of spices, so they share a similar flavor profile. Even so, there are important distinctions in the origin, ingredients and techniques for each sausage.

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Origins

Despite sharing some similar characteristics, linguica and andouille have very different histories. Linguica is a Portuguese specialty that is closely related to Spanish-style chorizo or Portuguese chouriҫo. It's also a prominent ingredient in Brazilian cuisine, reflecting influences from early Portuguese colonists in Brazil. Andouille sausage, on the other hand, has roots in Medieval France. French Acadians later brought the idea to the American South, where it developed into the smoky, Cajun-style sausage that is most common today.

Ingredients

Both linguica and andouille are spicy pork sausages, but they contain marginally different blends of ingredients. Andouille traditionally includes chitterlings and tripe – pig intestines and stomach – though modern producers sometimes skip the offal. Linguica, by contrast, is a more standard mix of pork meat and chunks of pork fat. Linguica also features a heavy dose of garlic and spicy paprika, while andouille typically contains a mix of classic Cajun spices, including cayenne, sweet paprika and thyme.

Techniques

Linguica is a dry-cured sausage, which means that it is salted and hung to dry and harden before it comes to market. This process gives it a slightly firmer texture than andouille sausage, which is usually smoked rather than dry-cured. Some producers lightly smoke linguica after curing it, but andouille is more well-known for its smoky flavor. Linguica also has a rather slim width, compared to the more standard-sized andouille sausage.

Uses

Andouille and linguica are both sold ready to eat, without further cooking. Simply slice them into bite-size pieces for a spicy hors d'oeuvre. Both sausages are also essential to a variety of classic cooked dishes, such as Cajun gumbo with andouille and Portuguese caldo verde with linguica. If you need to substitute for one or the other, Spanish-style chorizo is a good choice, especially for linguica. They can also serve as comparable substitutes for each other.