It is the best of times, it is the worst of times

January 17, 2024 by
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Reading the headlines about restaurant openings and closings these days can give you whiplash. One moment we are lamenting all of the closures that happened over the past year, and the next we are cheering the opening of dozens of new eateries. Despite the multitude of stories about the challenges restaurants face, from soaring energy and food costs to ongoing… read more

Is bread and butter the ultimate comfort food?

January 16, 2024 by
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Writing for Salon, Mary Elizabeth Williams makes a bold statement, saying there is no better comfort food than bread and butter. After describing a perfect French breakfast of a crusty baguette, still warm from the oven paired with luxurious butter from Brittany. "What is it about bread and butter that hits the spot like nothing else in the world?" Williams… read more

Food news antipasto

January 14, 2024 by
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While those of us in northern latitudes can only dream of luscious, ripe tomatoes, those in Australia, New Zealand, and other Southern Hemisphere countries are entering peak tomato season. SBS Food will help those lucky ducks take advantage of the bounty with a roundup of great recipes that make the most of tomato season. Homemade Samoa-inspired cookies from Food52 We… read more

Beating the cold in the kitchen

January 13, 2024 by
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After a warm start, winter is bearing down on us with full force. A large swath of the northern U.S. is bracing for a winter storm that will bring frigid temperatures and bone-chilling winds. I know this not only because of the weather report, but because the store shelves were nearly empty when I went grocery shopping earlier today. In… read more

Weird advice from vintage entertaining guides

January 9, 2024 by
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empty wineglasses on a tray
When I was a young cook putting together my first small dinner party for friends, I wasn't sure where to begin. The internet was not sufficiently advanced to offer a lot of advice, so I turned to books about entertaining. Although the names of the tomes have been lost in the dusty corners of my mind, I'm reasonably certain that… read more

Food news antipasto

January 7, 2024 by
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Boston-area chef and restaurateur Barbara Lynch, who came under fire last year after workers accused her of abuse, has closed several of her restaurants and is selling others to former employees, according to WBUR. Gone are Menton, Sportello and Drink in Fort Point, and two locations on the South End, The Butcher Shop and Stir, are in contracts to be… read more

Store-bought is fine

January 6, 2024 by
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Ina Garten's famous saying of "store-bought is fine" when offering alternatives to an ingredient she is using in a recipe has reassured many a home cook, including yours truly. Knowing that you can successfully use a shortcut ingredient if you do not have the time or ability to make something from scratch takes some of the stress out of cooking,… read more

“Grubgate” hits south Texas

January 4, 2024 by
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Food is often political, but usually not in the way that this story illustrates. In south Texas, a former U.S. Congresswoman, who is trying to win back the seat she lost after redistricting changed the district's demographics, has become embroiled in a scandal being called "Grubgate" regarding food photos she posted on her social media accounts. Former Rep. Mayra Flores… read more

The best meals of 2023

January 3, 2024 by
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Scrolling through my favorite food sites this week I encountered many posts about the best meals the writers ate last year, or some variation on that theme. Restaurant critic Jay Rayner gathered his notes from the sundry meals he ate as part of his job and put out a list of culinary highs and lows from 2023. The entire GoodFood… read more

Making the most of holiday cooking gifts

January 2, 2024 by
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I'm sure many of us received food, cooking, and/or cookbook related gifts for the holidays. It's pretty easy to know what to do with food gifts (yum!), but sometimes kitchen tools or equipment require us to seek out some assistance. If you received an air fryer as one of your gifts, you can head over to The Guardian for a… read more

New Year’s food intentions

January 1, 2024 by
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I have written about New Year's food resolutions before, but I am not a fan of the term "resolution" because it sets a person up for failure if they don't meet the resolution exactly. Instead, I prefer the term "intention" because it more accurately reflects how I approach the situation: this is what I would like to try in the… read more

Counting down the top recipes of the year

December 30, 2023 by
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With the end of the year comes retrospection, and food websites are no exception. Every other post in my feeds is a countdown of the most popular or most saved recipes from different websites. I am sharing some of these lists because it's always interesting to see what others are cooking - sometimes inspiration will strike. We'll start off with… read more

The surprising history of gingerbread

December 24, 2023 by
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Since food news has been thin this week, I am skipping the usual antipasto and instead featuring a holiday classic: gingerbread, a hallmark of the holiday season. While gingerbread in cookie or cake form traces its ancestry back hundreds of years, decorated gingerbread houses are much more modern, according to a deep dive into the history of gingerbread by Anne… read more

Kitchen product trends for 2024

December 23, 2023 by
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Now that we know the food trends (or lack thereof) for 2024, let's turn our sights to the kitchen product trends. In the past few years we have moved from Instant Pots to air fryers to home composting machines, so what is the next big product on the horizon? Food and Wine makes their predictions on which items are going… read more

2024 food trends: anything, everything, and SPAM

December 21, 2023 by
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After perusing several articles proclaiming to know what the food trends for 2024 will be, I found it amusing that despite millions (perhaps billions) of dollars spent on consumer surveys, AI development, and statistical analysis, the predictions seem to hold as much weight as a restaurant fortune cookie. A prediction of "personalized tastes, global cuisines, as well as nostalgia and… read more

Keep that fancy wine out of the fridge, say experts

December 20, 2023 by
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Because most of us don't have the space or money to install a dedicated wine cellar, we resort to storing at least some of the wine we buy in a refrigerator. If the fridge is one meant to store wine that's okay, but if you just popping the bottles into your regular refrigerator, you could be harming the wine, says… read more

Food news antipasto

December 17, 2023 by
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Fans of Mark Bittman probably already know this, but he has moved The Bittman Project from Substack to a new website. The site houses a new, recipe archive that offers searching and notes features (although far from as robust as what we have on EYB). Bittman promises that "what's now a database of almost 400 recipes will soon be thousands." We… read more

How important is the tablescape to your holiday dinner?

December 15, 2023 by
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Holiday meals when I was a child included a cacophony of conversation, crowded tables, mismatched chairs and silverware, and a gluttonous amount of food set amidst a halo of cigarette smoke. If the table contained decorations, none of them were memorable enough to recall, although I doubt there was room for anything among the bowls piled high with goose, ham,… read more

Sizing up ingredients

December 14, 2023 by
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A thread on the EYB Member Forum about differences between metric and Imperial measures got me thinking about how recipe writers (along with editors and publishers) treat the measurement of ingredients. I do a lot of baking and have appreciated the trend to include weights in recipes because it leads to more consistent results. I understand, however, that some editors… read more

Savoring every bite

December 12, 2023 by
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You would expect someone who has hundreds of cookbooks and writes about food nearly every day to linger over meals, relishing each and every bite of food, reveling in the joys of wonderful kitchen aromas, and generally enjoying food to the max. I fit the first part of the description but not the last. Many times dinner is a bowl… read more

Food news antipasto

December 10, 2023 by
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'Tis the season to make lists. Vice brings us its list of the best cookbooks of 2023, The Guardian's Rachel Roddy chimes in with her picks for the top five food books of the year, and food writer and chef Kathy Gunst weighs in on her choices for the three best cookbooks released in 2023 (with recipes from each). The… read more

Which came first, the chicken or the recipe?

December 8, 2023 by
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There are two types of people in this world: those who go grocery shopping armed with a meticulously developed list because they have all their meals for the next week perfectly planned, and those who shop based on sales, whims, and random thoughts, who have no idea what they are making for their next meal, let alone the rest of… read more

What’s in that supermarket sourdough?

December 6, 2023 by
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When you purchase a loaf of sourdough bread at the grocery store, are you sure that is actually what you are getting? It might be labeled as sourdough, but apparently that may be a misnomer, at least according to the folks at the Real Bread Campaign. They have been campaigning to get major retailers such as Lidl to rename their… read more

Celebrating National Cookie Day

December 4, 2023 by
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Yesterday I prepared four different kinds of cookies, all in anticipation of National Cookie Day. Okay, okay, it was just part of my holiday baking, but it's an occasion I'm happy to celebrate (and what a coincidence that this falls around the time that everyone is baking their holiday treats). I wish I could say I hit all of the… read more

Food news antipasto

December 4, 2023 by
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I picked up a copy of Jane Grigson's English Food at a thrift store several months ago. It has remained in my "to read" stack of books since then, but after reading Aimee Levitt's fascinating article about Grigson, it is getting moved to the top of the pile. Levitt provides a detailed account of Grigson's intriguing backstory, providing the reasons… read more
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