Food news antipasto

If you loved Monica, Ross, Rachel, Chandler, Joey, and Phoebe, then I have good news for you: an official ‘Friends’ cookbook is coming out this fall. There will be over 70 recipes inspired by the popular show featuring everything from appetizers to desserts. Some of the recipes include ones from specific episodes, such as Ross’s gravy-soaked “Moist Maker” sandwich and Chandler’s “Milk You Can Chew.”

Everyone has a kitchen disaster story to tell: burnt cookies, overflowing cake batter, split sauces, underdone meat accidentally served to a guest, you name it. These days we are even more likely to have a cooking catastrophe since we are a) cooking more at home, and b) our nerves are already on edge. Adam Liaw of The Sydney Morning Herald understands how these discouraging experiences unfold, and explains the five stages of a kitchen disaster.

Alton Brown fans have been enjoying the Quarantine Quitchen videos he makes with his wife (and sometimes his dog), as well as the second season of Good Eats: Reloaded. Brown recently sat down with Salon’s Ashlie Stevens to discuss what it’s like working with himself (in Good Eats: Reloaded he often talks to his younger, Good Eats self), what he thinks the future of restaurant dining looks like, and his desire to have a new version of Feasting on Asphalt.

If you live in an area that is opening up restaurants for outdoor or limited seating, have you been brave enough to venture out for a dine-in experience? Grace Dent recently popped out for some chips and realized that even though she was initially grumpy about the loss of freedom, staying home has now become comforting and she is hesitant to go out. Dent notes that while more places are being allowed to reopen, the government “has possibly not bargained on how lukewarm many of us still are about even leaving the house.”

On the other side of the restaurant reopening coin, Eater takes a look at the difficulties eateries have had in finding employees once they are allowed to reopen. People are reluctant to return to jobs that may be unsafe, and many are also hesitant to go back to work when their unemployment plus the bonus federal benefits are as much as – or in some cases, more than – what they were making before the pandemic hit.

Jenny recently posted about subscription boxes that were bringing her joy. In a similar fashion restaurants across the US have pivoted to quasi-grocery delivery services with their own unique food boxes. Some are similar to Hello Fresh and other food delivery services that provide the contents for one meal while others are more like CSA boxes with a variety of vegetables, fruits, eggs, bread, and meat. Grub Street has a list of 8 pasta kits that you can buy from restaurants in NYC, and Eater discusses how some of the fine dining boxes are like “CSAs for the 1 percent”.