Food news antipasto

This is the last antipasto for 2024, and we start out by celebrating one of my favorite foods: the humble potato. Wired brings us a glow up of the ever-so-versatile spud, naming it the ‘most perfect vegetable‘ – and telling us why we are eating it wrong. The TL;DR is that we should eat fewer French fries, but the article dives deep into potato lore with fascinating tidbits such as the fact that about 25% of the population growth of the Old World from 1700 to 1900 can be traced to potatoes.

Hot chocolate is a popular cold weather beverage, but if you get tired of drinking it, you might want to try hot vanilla instead. This is a creamy, milky hot beverage that gets its flavor from – you guessed it – vanilla, but can also be zhushed up with malted milk powder and cinnamon. There are currently no online recipes for hot vanilla drinks in the EYB Library (!)* and only three in indexed cookbooks. Maybe this drink will hit its stride in 2025. (While not hot vanilla, there are 158 online recipes for white hot chocolate“.)

Have you ever felt so full after eating a large meal that there is no way you can take another bite, only to suddenly find yourself ogling dessert and saying “yeah, I can totally eat that”? Some people refer to this as a ‘second stomach’, but the real reason we can seemingly always find room for dessert is because our brain really wants it and convinces our digestive system that we can indeed eat a little more.

The final two items are for those planning a New Year’s Eve celebration. First, Eater provides us with excellent champagne buying advice for almost any price range (let’s face it, good champagne is not cheap). The article also focuses only on true champagne with no discussion of lesser-priced alternatives like crémant or cava. For those, head over to Luxe Beat Magazine, which covers these and other sparkling wine substitutes that will satisfy without breaking the bank.

With the bubbly sorted, hop over to Southern Living, which serves up its editors’ favorite New Year’s Eve recipes from cheese straws to stuffed mushrooms. If nothing on this list whets your appetite, remember that the EYB Library contains hundreds of New Year’s recipes, from party favorites like the Classic gougères by Melissa Clark pictured above along with traditional ‘lucky’ foods to start the new year, like whole steamed fish and Hoppin’ John.

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3 Comments

  • rmpostonmfandt  on  December 30, 2024

    Hot vanilla milk with dark brown sugar… so good!

  • pokarekare  on  January 1, 2025

    Well, I adored my childhood comfort food of bread and milk which always appeared when I was cross, out of sorts or feeling poorly, so why oh why has it never occurred to me to try it without the bread!!!!

  • pokarekare  on  January 1, 2025

    And as for potatoes – nothing can beat serving boiled baby new potatoes with butter and lots of chopped fresh herbs over them when cooking for a crowd – or anytime, really. So simple and goes with just about everything. Makes entertaining easy!
    And don’t forget a great home-made potato salad if you want to go to a little more trouble.

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