Food news antipasto

World Central Kitchen and José Andrés just announced that the organization is releasing a cookbook this September. According to an email, the WCK team has “gathered recipes from and inspired by many of the places our Relief Team has cooked following disasters and other crises worldwide, as well as sharing powerful narratives from the people and communities we’ve met along the way.” You can preorder the book now.

When it comes to baking, the sky’s the limit on the number of gadgets you can find that assure you of a better, faster, or easier way to complete a baking task. Devices that claim to help you perfectly portion and serve a pie come in many shapes and sizes, but how well do they work? To find out, head over to The Kitchn, where they tested various tools for slicing pie. It turns out that simplest is best for this particular job.

Buying foods from a supermarket is an exercise in trust. Long gone are the days when most people purchased food directly from a farm or from a small store where you could easily verify things like where each product originated. Today, labels are our keys to tell us things like whether something is organic, which country or region it came from, if there are any potential allergens, or for processed foods, what ingredients are in it. Usually these labels are accurate, but occasionally fraud is afoot. Recently Booths supermarket, which claims it’s the “Waitrose of the North”, confirmed that it was linked to food fraud for selling mislabeled beef. The beef was purportedly produced in the UK but it actually originated in Europe or South America. The UK’s National Food Crime Unit announced the investigation into this fraudulent labeling back in December, but didn’t name the retailer responsible.

As an avid gardener, I have occasionally called working in my gardens my “therapy” because of how it lifts my mood and allows me to reset. Now I and others who swear that gardening is therapeutic have a little science to back up our claims. A new study published in Lancet Planetary Health shows that gardening helped participants eat better, increase their exercise levels, and decrease their anxiety.

If you are among those faced with increasing food and energy costs, you might be contemplating how to reduce your monthly cooking bills. One of the easiest ways to cut back on the grocery budget is by taking advantage of pantry staples that you can stock up on when they are on sale. Then follow the advice of several top UK chefs on how to make the most of things like tinned goods, dried beans, and rice. Or turn to Jamie Oliver’s recent column on energy saving, frugal recipes.

In case you missed it: Movie-themed ideas for your Oscars party and GBBO making changes for 2023.