Food news antipasto

September 24, 2023 by
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Gordon Ramsay plans to open 14 restaurants in Thailand after signing a deal with Tanachira Group, the lifestyle company behind jewelry brand Pandora. It is part of an international expansion push for the chef’s group, which runs 37 UK restaurants and 35 additional eateries worldwide. Granola for fellow "granolas" from Food52 If you describe someone as being very "granola", most people… read more

Inside the Le Creuset Factory to Table sale

September 23, 2023 by
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As promised, I am reporting on the Le Creuset Factory to Table (FTT) sale held in Minneapolis this weekend. The event sold out so fast that I was unable to get the coveted VIP tickets for Thursday evening that included an opportunity to buy a 'mystery box' of items for $50. I was relegated to a regular admittance ticket that… read more

Olive oil prices surge to all time highs amid drought

September 20, 2023 by
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Prepare yourself for sticker shock when buying your next bottle of extra virgin olive oil. Due to drastically reduced yields, olive oil supplies are rapidly being depleted, leading to dramatic price hikes. Spain, the world's largest olive oil producer, saw record high temperatures (the third hottest summer on record) coupled with an intense drought. In turn, this diminished the olive… read more

Food news antipasto

September 17, 2023 by
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Food critic Jay Rayner had the honor of interviewing Madhur Jaffrey for the September issues of Observer Food Monthly. On the eve of the 40th anniversary edition of her book Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery, the 90-year-old author talks about how she became "an accidental cook" due to acute homesickness when she was in London studying drama. An acclaimed actress, Jaffrey started… read more

Tracing a recipe’s path

September 14, 2023 by
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In the small North Dakota farming community where I grew up, most residents belong to a group known as "Germans from Russia" (GFR), which describes a "a unique group of Germans who lived in Russia after the 1760s and began their immigration onto the Great Plains in the 1870s" according to The Encyclopedia of the Great Plains. My ancestors fit this description,… read more

Sometimes you have to stray to remember how good you have it

September 12, 2023 by
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Because I was having issues with my internet service today I needed to test response times and decided to use some recipe search engines to gauge how well the ISP's fix was working (yes, I know I could do an Oookla speed test but where's the fun in that?). After navigating several websites, I was reminded of just how good… read more

Food news antipasto

September 11, 2023 by
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Even though I love to cook and bake, sometimes nothing will satisfy a craving like junk food: cheese puffs with an orange coating that resembles no real cheese but is so good I'll lick it off my fingers , a too-sweet cake with a best-by date that is months into the future, or cookies with an ingredient list of things… read more

Le Creuset supercollectors – and Gen Z loves LC too

September 9, 2023 by
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Jenny and I have written about our fondness for Le Creuset and its ever expanding range of gorgeous colors, designs, and shapes. Both of us have collected many pieces over the years, and while Jenny's collection puts mine to shame, both of us look like rank amateurs when compared to the Le Creuset "supercollectors" profiled in a recent article in… read more

TikTok food trends can have real economic impact

September 7, 2023 by
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Whether you love or hate trending TikTok food videos, they are more than just something entertaining to watch. In the aggregate, they can actually drive food producers to change their production, says Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes. This is especially true of "center of the plate" proteins (which usually means meat), but it can affect other products as well. But with every… read more

GBBO gets the message

September 5, 2023 by
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After a few years of poorly conceived country-based theme weeks, the producers of the Great British Bake Off have finally seen the light. They have eliminated these types of themes and are returning to the basics that made the program an international success. The show's producer, Kieran Smith, acknowledged the missteps in an interview with The Guardian. “We didn’t want… read more

Food news antipasto

September 4, 2023 by
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First up this week is a delightful interview with Jürgen Krauss, a semifinalist in the 2021 Great British Bake Off. Krauss discusses how his childhood in Germany's Black Forest region influences his baking, and why he doesn't hold a grudge against GBBO for his shocking exit from the program, which spurred over 100 to make complaints to the UK's communications regulator.… read more

Raw milk is back in the spotlight

September 2, 2023 by
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Raw milk is getting a lot of attention again due to a plethora of TikTok videos and endorsements by celebrities touting the alleged health benefits of drinking the unpasteurized dairy product. Tom Parker-Bowles recently wrote that raw milk has endured “no pasteurisation, homogenisation or standardisation, meaning it still contains the full complement of vitamins, minerals and natural digestive enzymes, as… read more

It’s pumpkin spice season, but it doesn’t feel like it

August 30, 2023 by
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Starbucks released its seasonal drinks, including the famed Pumpkin Spice Latte (PSL), on August 24. While the flavors scream autumn, the weather does not in most people living in the US. Part of this discrepancy stems from the fact that Starbucks has pushed up the release date since the PSL debuted 20 years ago in October, 2003. As the years… read more

Food news antipasto

August 27, 2023 by
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First up this week is a fun little quiz to test your knowledge of pantry staples. It starts off pretty easy by asking what are the ingredients in pesto, but it gets more difficult after that. There were some foods I hadn't encountered, although because it's multiple choice most answers become clear even if you don't have a jar of… read more

In the bag: how packaged salad took over the supermarket

August 26, 2023 by
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If you time-traveled back to the 1970s and told the average supermarket shopper that 50 years hence there would be entire supermarket aisles devoted to bagged salad greens and kits, and that twenty percent of all vegetable sales would be spent on salads, you would probably be met with skepticism. At that time you would have been hard pressed to… read more

The celebrity endorsement

August 25, 2023 by
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As I was scrolling through Twitter today, an advertisement featuring chef Gordon Ramsay appeared in my feed. Ramsey was extolling the virtues of Triscuit crackers, something the chef has been doing since February, according to AdWeek. The advertising campaign "features Ramsay as his authentic and unfiltered self and celebrates the wholesome but crunchy things in life that are full of… read more

The rise of the orange yolk

August 22, 2023 by
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When I was growing up I had the luxury of eating only farm fresh eggs because my grandmother raised chickens. Of course, when you're a child you do not recognize the luxuries you have; I wanted to get the pure white eggs from the supermarket that didn't have pieces of straw and dirt (and worse) on them. Now I would… read more

Food news antipasto

August 20, 2023 by
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As if people in the US didn't have enough to worry about with oppressive heat in multiple locations, hurricanes AND an earthquake in California, and tornados in the South and Midwest, now we have to be careful about foamy, exploding watermelons. What's next, locusts?! If you are the kind of person who will take a chance on a foamy watermelon,… read more

Putting a lid on it

August 18, 2023 by
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Kitchen storage is a source of endless fascination and often frustration for people who love to cook. Most of us are not blessed with enormous kitchens that have bespoke cabinets to house anything and everything imaginable, nor do we have picture-perfect cookware or bakeware sets where all the pieces conveniently stack or fit together like Russian nesting dolls. The vast… read more

All about induction

August 16, 2023 by
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My first exposure to induction cooking occurred way back in 1995. The company I worked for at the time had previously ventured into selling appliances but rather quickly decided it was not a good fit for its business model. A few odds and ends remained on a clearance rack in one of the company's retail stores, and among those was… read more

Echoes of kitchens past

August 16, 2023 by
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The Roma tomatoes in my garden are going gangbusters right now, despite highly variable weather this summer. The bounty led to an early canning session that resulted in six pints of whole tomatoes. As I prepared the tomatoes by coring, scalding, and peeling, my mind's eye flashed back several decades to the times when I "helped" my grandmother with her… read more

Food news antipasto

August 13, 2023 by
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How old is too old to bake? Minnesota's Marjorie Johnson believes there is no upper age limit, because the spry 104-year-old is busy baking up a storm. She will be entering baked goods into the Minnesota State Fair later this month, something she has been doing since the 1970s. She has racked up scores of blue ribbons and hopes to… read more

Do you make the ‘orphan recipes’ in cookbooks?

August 11, 2023 by
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A white book opened to see the blank inside pages, on a white background
Food writer Bee Wilson recently posed a question to readers on her blog, asking if they were more or less likely to make a recipe in a cookbook where some recipes have photos and others do not. She called these 'orphan recipes' and feels that they are overlooked by most people because they lack an accompanying image. Wilson thinks she… read more

Food news antipasto

August 6, 2023 by
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Peeking inside celebrities' kitchens and pantries is a source of fascination for people. It may be so popular because it's a way to relate to the celebrities (they're just like me because they have [insert your favorite item] in their fridge!) or perhaps because it offers a glimpse into a lifestyle few of us can afford (think Kim Kardashian's enormous… read more

Increase your cooking intelligence with RecipeIQ

August 4, 2023 by
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One of the things I miss about the recipe app that I once used (now defunct) is that it quickly calculated nutritional information based on the ingredient list. While there are a handful of websites that offer such calculations, they are tedious to use and have all manner of annoying pop-up advertisements. However, I've recently learned about a new app… read more
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