Monthly Archives: June 2020

Takes the Cake

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Costco has stopped selling half-sheet cakes—the latest in a series of COVID-19-related disruptions—and is encouraging shoppers to buy 10-inch round cakes instead.

“‘To help limit personal contact and create more space for social distancing, Costco has reduced service in some departments,’ the company explained to outraged customers on its Facebook account. In a statement to the New York Times, Costco said it has no plans to immediately bring back the half-sheet cakes and said the round cakes are ‘resonating with our members.'”

Not Just for St. Patrick’s Day

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Cabbage has become more popular with the coronavirus, reports Naomi Tomky:

“Packed with fiber and nutrients, cabbage climbed to the top of lockdown cooking popularity for the most utterly mundane reason: practicality. Cabbage lasts basically forever in the fridge, costs almost nothing and works just as well as a star centerpiece of a main dish or shredded and cooked down to near invisibility.”

Burnin’

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Epicurious’s Joe Sevier explains the appeal of charred food:

“Burning foods on purpose is nothing new. In classic French cuisine, stocks are often started by cutting an onion in half and then searing the exposed flesh until the surface is totally black. The blackened onion then goes into the pot with roasted animal bones and other aromatics to simmer away. When I was in culinary school, we learned that this was a key component of a certain type of dark stock: the blackened onion not only adds flavor, imparting a subtle bitterness that offsets the sweet taste of carrots, tomato paste, and whatever else might be in the stock. It also lends a rich color, which makes the stock look more appealing.”

New Heights

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Epicurious’s Kendra Vaculin explains how she uses old cookbooks to prop up her desk computer:

“Building a cookbook standing desk (or laptop lift, if I’m feeling sedentary) has done wonders for my productivity during this new WFH era. After weeks of wondering why I couldn’t focus while curled on the couch in a position called The Chiropractor’s Nightmare, balancing my computer on a little pile of culinary inspiration was enough to set me straight.”

Skin Deep

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Want glowing skin? Try using superfoods, writes Laura Pitcher:

“You might think your skincare routine starts with a simple cleanser, but many nutritionists would argue that it starts with what you eat. ‘What you put in your body literally becomes your skin,’ says holistic nutritionist Afya Ibomu. As a result, kitchen ingredients are gradually becoming beauty staples, with a rising interest in superfoods in particular.”

Pigging Out

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Julie Kendrick recent bought half a pig from a local organic farm. There were challenges beyond the budget hit:

“When I pick up my three 12-by-18-inch boxes of processed meat, I’ll need to cram them all into the basement freezer and hope I still have some space for my autumn garden harvest (not to mention ice cubes). Then, over the long winter, I’ll need to stay up-to-date on my inventory and cook it all wisely and well. According to the farm, a typical half-pig purchase includes 8 to 10 pounds of pork chops, three roasts, two quarter hams, 10 to 14 pounds of bacon, three pounds of ribs and 15 pounds of ground meat.”

Junk-Food Jump

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Sales of processed food have shot up since the COVID-19 crisis hit, writes Katie Way:

“It’s easy, though, to chalk spiking processed food sales up to slovenly millennials pigging out, mere hypocrites who nagged their parents about the benefits of clean eating and buying organic only to crawl back into the arms of boxed mac and cheese when the going gets tough. It’s much less amusing to consider that maybe the prospect of being jobless and hopelessly in debt for the foreseeable future influenced people’s decisions to grab canned soup instead of fresh produce.”

Trade-Off?

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Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador is encouraging citizens to adopt a healthy diet, writes Jude Webber—even as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement goes into effect, making Mexico a prime market for processed food.

“The president’s crusade against junk food has been given a new urgency because of Covid-19, which is particularly dangerous for the nearly three-quarters of Mexicans who are overweight or obese and 16 per cent who are diabetic. But it has also intensified pressure on processed food manufacturers who are major investors in Mexico and are upset at the plans to slap warning labels screaming ‘too much salt,’ ‘too high in calories’ or ‘too much fat’ on snacks and sodas later this year.”