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

The humble ramekin is a kitchen workhorse

November 30, 2023 by
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In a world brimming with an endless variety of kitchen gadgets baking pans, one of the items I turn to the most is a small ramekin. It performs many different tasks and it's a rare day when I don't use one at some point in my cooking or baking. I'm not alone in my love for these useful ceramic cups… read more

Food bucket lists

November 29, 2023 by
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People often make "bucket lists" of things they really want to do before they die. For some it's a vacation destination they want to visit, for others it's a personal challenge like running a marathon. While I don't have a bucket list, if I did it would probably revolve around food, and by extension, cookbooks. For example, I recently read… read more

Exquisite holiday creations

November 29, 2023 by
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Nearly every year for the past decade, I've made a bûche de Noël for a holiday dinner. I try to vary the design - some years it's been a white chocolate paper birch log, other years a more traditional dark chocolate. Meringue mushrooms, pistachio crumb moss, cake crumb sawdust, and other trompe l’oeil items have made an appearance. This year I think… read more

Food news antipasto

November 26, 2023 by
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Living in the northern United States makes one keenly aware of the changing of the seasons. Today was cold and blustery and sunset came way too early. Observer Food understands this, because today they posted about the best food and drink to have when it's dark outside: think hot chocolate, mulled wine, and soul-warming soup. Rainbow rippled meringues from BBC… read more

The Great British Bake Off/Baking Show – Week 9 – Patisserie – Semi-Finals Recap

November 25, 2023 by
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It is the semi-finals and the theme is patisserie. Signature: 2 different batches of 12 financiers A financier is a small French almond cake, flavored with beurre noisette, usually baked in a small mold. Light and moist with a crisp, eggshell-like exterior, the traditional financier also contains egg whites, flour, and powdered sugar. The molds are usually small rectangular loaves… read more

When the feast is over

November 23, 2023 by
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The feast is over and our bellies are full, and perhaps we ate a little too much but oh it was so tasty. However, in a couple of days we’ll be as weary of Thanksgiving food as our non-US members are of hearing about our feast day. Very soon we’ll be standing and staring into the refrigerator wondering what to… read more
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