Our favorite foods often make us think of “home,” especially near the holidays. Catarah Coleman and Shoneji Robison both grew up in Florida. After moving to L.A., Coleman founded Southern Girl Desserts, headquartered in Baldwin Hills, and was soon joined by Coleman. The two brought their childhood with them. In their homes, “Thanksgiving is a smorgasbord of desserts,” Coleman says. This means overflowing tables of cakes, trifle, banana pudding, ambrosia – and sweet potato pie.

For some people, pie is all about the filling. For others, it’s about the crust. For Roxana Jullapat, baker and co-owner of Friends & Family in East Hollywood, the crust is about the right flour. She uses Sonora wheat flour milled at Grist & Toll in Pasadena. “It lends itself to that beautiful flakiness,” she says.

The home-cook-friendly recipe Chef David Slay shares here offers the chance to gather some fall apples and features something chefs almost always focus on, but home cooks rarely do: two tastes on one plate. “The crab and apple blend so much together and it’s a dish that we do often and that people really appreciate,” Slay says. “I like to bring flavors together, whether it’s the crab and the apple or a scallop and corn. Imagine someone taking a bite of something. I want them to taste two different things that are one.”

Andrew Gruel wants you and your family to eat more seafood – and not just because he’s the founder of Slapfish, a chain of fast-casual seafood shacks with locations in 10 states, including SoCal restaurants in Huntington Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Brea, San Clemente, Tustin and LAX. “Environmentally, it’s a good choice and from a health perspective, children especially should eat a lot more seafood,” says the father of three.

The key to this recipe, which is definitely a hit with the team, is its use of chicken thighs. “Chicken thighs are very forgiving,” Performance Chef Tyrone Hall says. “You can walk away from chicken thighs for a few minutes and even if you forget about them, more likely than not they’re still good. Chicken breasts, if you forget about them for one minute, you end up with cardboard.” That being said, you can use chicken breasts in the recipe if you’re careful not to overcook them.

When she’d used the last of the homemade lasagna and ravioli from her freezer, Leah Ferrazzani faced a dilemma. The busy food writer had been making her own pasta once or twice a week. Now, she was also a new mom. “All of a sudden, that time was gone,” Ferrazzani says. She wanted her family’s food to be organic and locally made whenever possible, but wasn’t finding options in the pasta aisle at the grocery store. When she researched why most top-shelf pastas are imported from Italy, she discovered that it wasn’t because of the flour. “We export about half the durum wheat we grow in the U.S. to Italy for them to make into pasta and send back to us,” says Ferrazzani.

Chef Tim Hollingsworth's kids love this dish, which everyone at the table can dress with the ingredients they like best. “They love yogurt and labneh,” says Hollingsworth, and they like to get hands-on. “Traditionally, you don’t use a spoon or utensil. You just use your hands and bread. They love that aspect of it.”

The best way for me to introduce Elisa Callow’s delightful book, “The Urban Forager: Culinary Exploring & Cooking on L.A.’s Eastside,” is to share my own experience with one of the recipes: the Twenty- One-Hour Boule. Following the book’s suggestion, I headed to Pasadena flour mill Grist & Toll and was met with a friendly “Do you have questions?” While the man at the counter was offering advice (their whole-grain flour would make the dough rise twice as quickly as the recipe says), a woman came in to pick up an order. That woman was Roxana Jullapat, head baker and co-owner of Friends & Family in east Hollywood. While her order was loaded into her truck, she advised me on which flour to use, suggested I double the salt and offered encouragement.

Does cute get kids to eat their vegetables? Maybe, since studies show it takes up to 10 tries for a child to decide they like a food. “If we can provide one of those times in a really positive, playful way that speaks their language, we feel like we’ve succeeded,” says Shannon Payette Seip, co-founder of the Bean Sprouts chain. Her kids are now 13 and 15. She offers the case of a friend’s son, who likes avocados but doesn’t like olives. “He got the Crocamole, tried an olive and still decided he hated it, but he tried it,” she says.

Faced with a toddler who was a picky eater, Glenda Galvan-Garcia resorted to something that has worked for many parents: sneaking vegetables into his food by disguising them among the other ingredients. It worked for a while, until Isaac was about 3. Taking a bite of the macaroni and cheese into which Galvan-Garcia had mixed pureed garbanzo beans, he turned to her and said, “Mom, you made sneaky mac and cheese!”

Jon Sloan, culinary director of The Crack Shack (which opened its newest location in Pasadena in November), is of Jewish descent and hails from the East Coast. That’s why this mashup of comfort foods, one from Jewish and one from Mexican tradition, felt like something he’d want to try. It didn’t hurt that The Crack Shack already features tasty posole broth for its California Dip sandwich, that there always seems to be leftover chicken around or that Executive Chef Mike Gil claimed to have an amazing matzo ball recipe.

A house specialty at Panini Kabob Grill, which has several SoCal locations, is the hummus trio. It includes traditional chickpea hummus, black bean hummus and this edamame hummus. “Parents love this for their kids because it’s healthy,” owner Ali Kazemi explains. “Kids like it because it’s easy to eat.” The spices are mild and the dish is creamy – and fun to dip with crackers, cut veggies or pita triangles. This recipe doesn’t include tahini, which Kazemi says makes hummus heavy and leaves you thirsty. He prefers sea salt to table salt, which contains chemicals.

Jeremy Cantwell grew up in San Diego eating his mom’s and grandmother’s Japanese- and Hawaiian-inspired cooking. He’s also classically trained in French cuisine, which gives him a special appreciation for the Cajun-style food at the House of Blues in Anaheim, where he is executive chef. “There’s a lot of tradition that comes with the Cajun [and] Creole food,” says Cantwell. At home, he has a tradition of baking with his daughter, making cupcakes and cookies – especially during the holidays. “She has a sweet tooth like me,” he says. This sweet potato bread pudding – Cantwell’s personal recipe – can be made sweet or savory. To sweeten it up, serve it for dessert with caramel sauce or sweetened whipped cream. Or leave it as-is and serve it as a side dish with pork chops or your favorite holiday dishes.

Zoe Nathan likes doing good. And the co-owner of the Rustic Canyon family of restaurants, author of the cookbook “Huckleberry” and mom of three does a lot of good baking. Her latest adventure, Gather For Good, began with a series of bake sales featuring Nathan and her celebrity baker pals. At Bake & Gather events, the public is invited to mingle and purchase sweet treats to benefit causes such as the ACLU, ProPublica, Community Healing Gardens and Planned Parenthood.

Maurizio Mazzon started cooking in restaurants at age 15, but he was working in the kitchen long before that. Born in the Veneto region of Italy, he grew up in a home with a garden full of vegetables, where the pasta was always hand made. “In Italy, you start from the day you’re born,” says Mazzon. “I was the guy selected to turn the handle of the pasta maker to make the pasta.” He is now executive chef of Il Fornaio restaurants, with local locations in Beverly Hills, Manhattan Beach, Pasadena and Woodland Hills.

Ricotta cheese is an unusual addition to pancakes, but it is similar to the farmers’ cheese Kristina Mikyste used growing up in Lithuania – in a family of chefs. Needless to say, the family did a lot of cooking. “Especially Sunday,” says Mikyste, “because it’s a family day, so we always cooked. It’s fun.” These tasty little pancakes (and they will be little) are a fit for any family breakfast. At Doma Kitchen, they come topped with homemade berry syrup (and maybe some bananas and berries). And while the recipe below calls for berries and whipped cream, Mikyste says they are also great topped with caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, maple syrup or Nutella.