Cornell University has clarified that its dorm kitchens are for cooking food — not butchering bears.

The upstate New York university has now banned students from processing wild animals in shared residential kitchens after two students brought a legally hunted black bear into a dorm last fall and skinned it in a communal cooking space.

The incident occurred in September 2025, when students living in Ganędagǫ Hall reported seeing two classmates processing a black bear in the residence hall’s communal kitchen. Photos circulated among students and eventually reached Cornell University Police.

The students at the Ivy league university had legally hunted the bear off campus and brought it back to the dorm to process the meat, according to the Cornell Daily Sun. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation investigated but determined that no hunting laws had been violated, and no charges were filed.

The legality of the hunt, however, wasn’t the only issue.

Cornell temporarily closed the kitchen following the incident and had the space professionally cleaned before allowing students to use it again. Handling wild game can pose food-safety risks: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns that raw or undercooked wild game, including bear meat, can carry trichinella parasites, which cause trichinellosis.

Nearly a year later, Cornell has made its position considerably clearer.

Under updated housing rules, students are prohibited from “skinning, butchering, or otherwise processing wild game animals” inside residential buildings. However, the policy still allows students to store and cook legally obtained game meat.

---

Start your day with essential news from Salon.
Sign up for our free morning newsletter, Crash Course.

---

The bear incident became something of campus legend in the months afterward. The Cornell Daily Sun even published a satirical guide in April titled “How To Skin a Bear in Your Dorm’s Kitchen” and an sardonic commentary how people have “spotted the ghost of a bear” haunting campus.

There is one final bit of irony: Cornell’s longtime unofficial mascot is Touchdown the Big Red Bear, a tradition dating to 1915, when the football team once adopted a live black bear. Its current incarnation is a student in a big red bear costume performing at sporting games.

More than a century later, Cornell apparently still has bears turning up on campus — though university officials would now prefer students not butcher them in the dorm kitchen.

Cornell’s new dorm policy means students hoping to recreate the episode will now have to take their bear elsewhere. For everyone else sharing the kitchen, that’s probably one less thing to worry about when making dinner.

The post Cornell has a new dorm rule: Don’t butcher bears appeared first on Salon.com.

When Netflix announced the first-ever Chef’s Table Food Festival, bringing 70 internationally acclaimed chefs to Park City for four days of dinners, demonstrations and excursions, I felt something between excitement and apprehension.

The series changed the way I understood food. I wasn’t yet sure whether a festival built around it could preserve the reason why.

If you asked me to name the greatest piece of modern food media, I would hesitate. Without missing a beat, I would say Season 1 Episode 1 of “Chef’s Table.” 

And that answer has been the same for a decade. 

It’s not because I think Massimo Bottura is the greatest chef alive. It wasn’t only the breathtaking cinematography or the immediate fantasy of booking a flight to Modena and a table at Osteria Francescana. 

I’ve returned to it so many times because it permanently changed the way I think about food.

Yes, food media should make you hungry. But the very best examples also make you care about something greater than what’s on the plate. 

I was initially drawn in by Italy. Like so many Italian Americans, I grew up seeing pieces of my family’s history reflected in its food and had an insatiable desire to learn as much as I could about the country my grandparents grew up in. Watching Bottura reinterpret the flavors of Emilia-Romagna felt familiar, even comforting, but that’s not why the episode stayed with me. 

I still think about it and watch it over and over again because it beautifully articulates something I’ve always believed but struggle to find the words to explain.

“Chef’s Table” showed me that food could be a lens through which to understand culture, grief, resilience, identity, and community. It showed me that restaurants weren’t simply places to eat. They were living institutions capable of preserving history, supporting entire local communities, and bringing people together in moments of crisis.

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.

---

Looking back now, I can trace so much of my own career back to that realization.

For years, I’ve found myself gravitating towards stories about neighborhood restaurants, family businesses, local farmers, and food traditions — not because they’re quaint or nostalgic, but because they’re windows into something larger. These people have tangible passion and intoxicating energy for what they do. “Chef’s Table” helped open my eyes to the fact that that’s the story. Not the rare ingredients or celebrity guests, the pure, genuine joy for cooking and sharing that with others. 

One moment from Bottura’s episode has lingered most. 

After earthquakes struck Emilia-Romagna in 2012, warehouses collapsed around hundreds of thousands of wheels of Parmigiano Reggiano, threatening the livelihoods of the cheesemakers who depended on them. Bottura responded by creating a recipe for riso cacio e pepe and inviting people around the world to cook it with him. Nearly 40,000 participated, and all 360,000 damaged wheels were sold.

In Bottura’s hands, Parmigiano was never merely an ingredient. It represented years of labor, centuries of knowledge and an entire community’s economic survival.

One of Bottura’s most famous dishes from his three-star Michelin restaurant is the Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano, featuring the PDO product at five distinct aging points (24, 30, 36, 40, and 50 months). He manipulates the physical form of the ingredient to showcase different temperatures and textures: souffle, cream, biscuit, foam, and air. 

The dish isn’t about the cheese. It’s about tradition and craftsmanship and protecting your community. 

As Bottura says in the episode, “Cooking is an act of love.” 

It’s not a love expressed through expensive ingredients or elaborate techniques just for the sake of it. It’s expressed through responsibility — to your producers, neighbors, and the place you call home. 

Years after I first watched Bottura’s episode, I read Ruth Reichl’s “Why Food Writing Matters” and felt the shock of recognition. Food writing has been dismissed as frivolous or shallow — as if writing about restaurants somehow exists outside the realm of “real” journalism. Reichl had found the language for something I had understood only emotionally: food journalism belonged in the larger conversation about labor, politics, culture and power. Every person needs to eat, which means every person has a relationship with food that extends beyond the plate.

“Food touches everything we do. And that it is definitely a political issue,” she says, “Every election analyst has pointed to rising food costs as a major concern for voters. Yet despite the evolution of food writing over the last thirty years, consumers still have very little understanding of the forces that drive those costs.”

For the first time, I felt as though I had discovered the tradition I wanted to join.

A cohort of people who pursued and brought light to all genres of food stories. That feeling has become harder to find these days. 

In today’s media, there is simply so much food content competing for our attention. Social media has democratized food storytelling in remarkable ways, but it has also created an endless stream of restaurant rankings, viral menu hacks and “must-try” lists that reward speed over substance. 

Thankfully, there are still creators proving that audiences are hungry for something deeper. Nicholas Nuvan reminds me that thoughtful food storytelling hasn’t disappeared—it has simply adapted. His videos don’t stop at recommending where to eat. They introduce viewers to the people, histories and communities behind a dish, proving what the best food journalists have always known: people don’t just fall in love with dishes, they fall in love with stories.

When Reichl first took over the food section at the LA Times, she got a lot of pushback for covering international restaurants and including recipes for things like goat soup, sea slugs, and eel. She received dozens of letters lamenting the “good old days” of “American” recipes like cola-soaked pork chops, but she didn’t listen.

And isn’t that really what it’s all about? Reichl had the courage to dig deeper and show people a different side of food writing in a time when most people only read the food section for the ads. Not only were readers interested in what she had to say, she helped show people and restaurants of all cultures and styles that their food and their story matters just as much as any Michelin restaurant.  

That’s why I felt a genuine sense of cautious optimism when Netflix announced the Chef’s Table Food Festival. On paper, it’s easy to dismiss it as another celebrity chef event, many of which have become exercises in exclusivity — expensive tickets, buzzy names and Instagrammable bites. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but it isn’t what made “Chef’s Table” resonate in the first place.

The series never asked us to admire chefs simply because they were famous. It asked us to understand them. To understand why they cooked, where they came from and what they were trying to preserve. Fame was a byproduct of that curiosity, not the goal.

“I see [the festival] as a celebration of why we come together to eat, why we go to restaurants,” “Chef’s Table” creator David Gelb told Bon Appetit, “That’s paramount and one of the most important things that makes us human. We come together around a hearth, we tell stories, and we eat.”

It wasn’t Bottura’s technical brilliance that changed me. It was his belief that food could be an act of service. That a restaurant could strengthen a community. That a wheel of Parmigiano could represent thousands of livelihoods. And that writing about those things wasn’t frivolous at all.

“Chef’s Table” didn’t convince me to become a food writer, but it convinced me that food could be the vehicle through which I wrote about everything else. 

If the festival can capture even a fraction of that spirit — if it asks us to understand not only famous chefs, but the farmers, artisans, workers and communities behind them — it will be more than another stop on the culinary calendar. It will be a reminder of what food media can offer when it chooses to nourish more than our appetites.

 

 

The post Why “Chef’s Table” still matters appeared first on Salon.com.

This spicy sun-dried tomato pasta salad recipe is our new go-to for summer BBQs, potlucks, picnics, and easy summer lunches. It is incredibly simple to make, with just 7 basic ingredients. Somehow though, it is crazy addictive!  Inspired by a Local Deli We have this deli here in North Jersey that makes awesome sandwiches, but […]

At the end of the debut episode of “The Real Food Show,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spears a single bite of salmon cake and brings it to his lips. “Amazing,” he says, giving chef Andrew Gruel a slack thumbs-up. The salad on the plate — arugula, white beans and sliced apple — remains untouched. Kennedy does not go back for another bite.

“Thank you,” Gruel replies. “First time I’ve cooked for a dignitary.” Kennedy pats him quickly on the back, then turns to the camera. “We’re here today to teach Americans how to eat real food, high-quality food at affordable prices,” he says, “and we’ll see you next time.” 

The bite, it turns out, was less a culmination than an exit cue.

This is the central uncanniness of “The Real Food Show,” which contains all the familiar furniture of a cooking program — the studio kitchen, the chef, the recipe, the price graphics, the ceremonial final bite — but almost none of the curiosity or pleasure that ordinarily gives the form life.

Food is everywhere, but appetite is nowhere.

Officially, “The Real Food Show” is a new HHS cooking series intended to bring the Dietary Guidelines for Americans to life through affordable recipes, easy techniques, practical nutrition advice and special guests preparing their “healthy signature dishes” alongside Kennedy.

(Kennedy is not, apparently, the only member of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet to have recently heard the siren call of the web series. In May, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced “The Great American Road Trip,” a family travelogue starring Duffy, his wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their nine children. It was supposed to premiere in June; as The Bulwark’s Will Sommer noted this week, August arrived without a single episode. Kennedy may, for now, be the only Cabinet host who has actually managed to get his show on the air.)

The premiere opens with Kennedy standing inside a low-budget digital cornucopia. A red cartoon hunk of steak, a bronzed turkey, a few shrimp, a tub of unsweetened yogurt, an apple and a bag of frozen peas cascade alongside him. The show keeps insisting on “real food” while representing it through some of the fakest, cheapest-looking imagery available.

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.

---

Thanks to President Trump, Kennedy announces, “we’ve flipped the food pyramid and put real food back where it belongs, at the center of the American plate.” He plans to travel across the country showing families how to cook delicious, nutritious meals with real ingredients at affordable prices. At the word “affordable,” a blizzard of dollar bills begins to fall behind him.

The digital collage gives way to a more familiar cooking-show fantasy. Kennedy joins Gruel — a chef, restaurateur and prominent opponent of COVID-19 restrictions in 2020 — in a bright white studio kitchen. They wear matching “The Real Food Show” aprons. Behind them, cookbooks line the shelves, fruit has been arranged decoratively across the counters and every surface gleams with aspirational domestic ease. The set, at least, knows exactly what a cooking show is supposed to look like.

Gruel begins with an entirely reasonable proposition. The ingredients will be familiar to home cooks, he says, but he will introduce a few “cheffy tricks” along the way. 

Before much cooking can occur, however, Gruel explains that many Americans are addicted to processed foods because those foods have been chemically engineered to be addictive. With a few whole ingredients, he says, they can make something just as delicious. This, too, is familiar enough advice. What is strange is the air of grim discovery around it, as though the pleasures of cooking with recognizable ingredients had only recently been recovered from a hostile laboratory.

Gruel selects seafood, one of what he calls the country’s “bounty items,” and announces that they will make salmon cakes. The recipe calls for a pound and a half of frozen salmon; an on-screen graphic prices it at $8.99, without naming a retailer or indicating that the fish is on sale. When I checked my local Mariano’s in Chicago, the same amount, even at its sale price, came to about $12. The difference is not ruinous, but it is the first indication that the show may be playing loosely with its promise of meals costing less than $5 per serving.

Gruel notes that home cooks can use another kind of fish, even canned fish — useful, flexible advice that is also so broad as to become generic. Rather than explain how a leaner fish or one packed in oil might change the cake, the recipe simply expands to encompass nearly anything.

There is a brief detour about frozen salmon. Gruel explains that freezing fish kills parasites. Kennedy listens attentively. Given the secretary’s own much-discussed brain-worm story, the moment lands like a joke no one on set appears to notice.

The salmon goes onto a sheet pan. In the kitchen, Gruel recommends rubbing it with avocado oil, salt and fresh herbs. The accompanying graphic quietly offers two additional fats: olive oil and beef tallow, the latter a favorite within the administration’s anti-seed-oil discourse. Viewers are then instructed to roast the fish at 400 degrees for eight minutes. There is no meaningful guidance about the thickness of the fillets, the temperature they should reach or how to tell when they are done.

Yet, the salmon reappears cooked and cooled. Before the hosts can begin flaking it, however, the show pauses to consider why Americans eat so little fish compared with people in Japan.

Kennedy suspects the difference is cultural: In the United States, he says, people tend to think of meat when they think of protein.

It is a curious diagnosis from an administration whose senior officials have lately been swapping notes on a regimen nicknamed the “sauerkraut diet.” Kennedy and several other Cabinet members have reportedly embraced versions of the plan, which emphasizes grass-fed meat and fermented foods while eliminating alcohol and sugary foods. The physician behind it advertises direct consultations costing as much as $18,000. The show, meanwhile, suggests that ordinary Americans priced out of meat try fish — any fish, even canned.

The advice is useful. The asymmetry is difficult to miss.

Then, at last, they cook together. Kennedy flakes the cooled salmon into a metal bowl while Gruel adds an egg, panko, Dijon mustard, chopped red onion, chives, nutritional yeast and avocado-oil mayonnaise. Small price graphics pop up beside the ingredients as they go: 25 cents for the egg, another modest sum for the breadcrumbs. Gruel talks Kennedy through the mixture, offering the kind of loose, adaptable instruction home cooks have received from television chefs for decades.

The recipe proceeds in the key of perfectly fine. The ingredients are accessible, the substitutions sensible, the salmon cakes plausible weeknight fare. The show’s strangeness does not arise from strange cooking advice, but from the ideological burden placed upon it: An ordinary fish cake becomes evidence that Americans might eat their way toward a healthier, more fiscally disciplined nation.

It’s time for a side. 

First, however, Kennedy pauses to relitigate the federal government’s recent nutrition policy. The Biden administration’s dietary guidelines ran 453 pages, he says, with the number offered as self-evident proof of their absurdity. His department threw that work “in the trash,” assembled a new group of nutritionists and, he jokes, locked them in a room for 11 months to produce recommendations actually grounded in science. For decades, Kennedy says, the government has lied to Americans about saturated fat.

When the cooking resumes, several salmon cakes have already been shaped and set aside. Gruel explains that resting allows the panko to absorb moisture, though he does not say how long that takes. The finished cakes are browned and appealing.

 

The side dish is a salad of apples, white beans and greens with a simple vinaigrette. Gruel recalls growing up in what he calls the “microwave generation,” in a house stocked with cereal, pasta, refined carbohydrates and premade salad dressings. He describes himself as having been “addicted” to them. Making your own dressing, he says, is one of the easiest ways to improve your cooking.

He is right. Homemade vinaigrette is quick, inexpensive and generally much better than the bottled kind. But “The Real Food Show” cannot recommend a salad dressing without first convening a tribunal. Pleasure is never quite sufficient justification for cooking something yourself; the viewer must also understand that the old version was artificial, addictive or imposed upon them by a corrupt system. Even the vinaigrette arrives as evidence in a case.

That moral framing has consequences beyond the kitchen. “The Real Food Show” never explicitly argues that a salmon cake can replace a social safety net. Some viewers, however, appear ready to complete the thought. “Exactly the type of videos a HHS secretary should be posting,” one commenter wrote. “Good food = Good health = Drastically reducing healthcare budgets.”

It is only one comment, not an official statement of policy. But it articulates the logic hovering around the episode: If Americans can be taught to eat correctly, perhaps they will require less care — and perhaps the government can spend less providing it. That implication is particularly grim after Trump and congressional Republicans enacted legislation projected to reduce federal Medicaid spending by nearly $1 trillion over a decade and leave over 10 million more people uninsured in 2034. The same law is expected to cut federal SNAP spending by roughly $187 billion through expanded work requirements, narrower eligibility and new costs for states.

None of this makes the show’s basic proposition false. Nourishing food can support good health, and learning to cook can make daily life cheaper, easier and more pleasurable. But nutrition instruction cannot substitute for the money, time, access and medical care required to follow it. The kitchen can do many things. It cannot absorb the obligations of the state.

Back in the studio, the final stretch is the show at its most conventionally useful. Gruel demonstrates a knife-sharpening technique, assembles the salad and plates the salmon cakes. Even with Kennedy looming over the counter more than sous-cheffing beside it, “The Real Food Show” briefly becomes the cooking program it has been dressed to imitate.

Then comes the first and final bite. Kennedy takes a stab at the salmon cake, brings one bite to his mouth and calls it “amazing.” He offers Gruel a lazy thumbs-up, accepts the chef’s joke about cooking for a dignitary and immediately turns to the camera to recite the show’s mission statement.

After an episode filled with warnings about addiction, government deception, processed food and discredited fats, the meal itself receives one adjective and one bite. Kennedy does not remark on its flavor or texture. He does not try the salad. He does not return to the plate.

The food has already performed its function. Nobody has to want a second bite.

The post RFK Jr.’s cooking show has no appetite appeared first on Salon.com.

British writer Henry Oliver had his first slice of pecan pie in a Bethesda, Maryland diner, and came away amazed that Americans eat this well every day. In The Common Reader, he calls the pie part of "the ordinary sublime of American life," and says it "knocks English apple crumble into a cocked hat." — Read the rest

The post An Englishman ate his first pecan pie and fell for American diners appeared first on Boing Boing.

The post I was a farmers market failure appeared first on Salon.com.

The mind keeps a strange little pantry of its own.

It shelves a photograph you paused over, a dish you ate three summers ago, a flavor combination you praised enthusiastically in public and then apparently continued discussing with yourself in private. Later, it sends an idea forward as though it has arrived whole.

Mine was miso-butter tomato toast.

A friend had recently posted photographs from Barcelona, including several enviable angles of pan con tomate. In one, it sat on a tiny plate beside a chilled vermouth cocktail garnished with a pearl onion on a spear. In another, it occupied an outdoor café table next to an exceptionally good pair of cat-eye sunglasses. I wanted the toast, the cocktail, the sunglasses and, presumably, whatever version of myself knew how to arrange all three so casually.

I had also recently waxed poetic about compound butter during a live discussion on summer entertaining. And after several weeks of 90-degree days, I had become devoted to grating tomatoes, an activity especially suited to weather in which chewing can seem like an unreasonable demand.

The name arrived before the instructions did. I knew it would involve sourdough. I knew the bread would be toasted in the oven, where its entire surface could become evenly crisp rather than merely acquire a few handsome skillet stripes. I knew I wanted unsalted butter and mild white miso. And I knew the finished thing would require some crunch.

It had, in other words, the certainty of a craving and the vagueness of a dream.

Toast is forgiving of this kind of thinking. It is the food of pantry rummagers and refrigerator foragers, and it exists on a curious emotional spectrum. One person says, with defeat, “All I managed today was beans on toast.” Another announces, with delight, “I made these incredible marinated white beans and put them on toast.” I am firmly in the latter camp. Toast is what happens when three unrelated things in the refrigerator agree to become lunch.

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.

---

This particular toast only looked improvised. Beneath its casual, slightly rumpled appearance was a specific bit of flavor logic: salt, fat, sweetness, acidity, glutamates upon glutamates.

There is a quiet kitchen principle I return to often: What wants to hold hands?

Spend enough time cooking — or leafing through cookbooks in bed — and you notice certain ingredients keep reaching for one another. Tomato already knows butter from ghee-rich curries, grilled cheese dipped in tomato soup and Marcella Hazan’s famously spare sauce. Miso and butter are just as comfortable together, whether in mashed potatoes or chocolate-chip cookies. The combination needed little persuasion. I only had to decide what shape it would take.

I considered whipping the miso into cold butter, making a compound butter to scrape over oven-hot sourdough before adding tomato slices and crystalline hunks of salt. But I wanted the miso butter to seep into the bread, not merely sit on top of it. I considered basting the tomatoes in butter and stewing them down with miso until soft and glossy. That version sounds wonderful, but it belongs to the first day the temperature slips below 70 degrees.

This was summer. The tomato needed to remain itself.

I melted the butter and miso together until fragrant and faintly nutty, then brushed it over sourdough and baked the slices until deeply golden. I grated a ripe tomato into a bowl, an operation I find disproportionately satisfying. When the skin has collapsed into your palm like a deflated balloon, you lift the box grater and discover an almost implausible amount of ruby pulp underneath it. Apparently, when it comes to shreds and zest, I possess the object permanence of a baby. Every time, the reveal delights me.

I seasoned the tomato with salt and a little garlic powder, which supplied savory warmth without the acridity fresh garlic can bring. I spooned it over the hot toast and finished it with scallions, sesame seeds, black pepper and olive oil.

I had my notebook open beside me, ready to catalogue the toast’s faults. Recipe development has trained me to distrust a dish that works on the first try; it is like meeting someone wonderful on a first date and spending the evening scanning for red flags. I have to be missing something, right?

Perhaps it needed acid. White balsamic, maybe, or a splash of the regular kind. Then I tasted it.

I took another bite before picking up my pen.

“This is a good toast,” I wrote.

Another bite.

“I’m glad I didn’t add vinegar.”

 

 

The post The better way to make tomato toast appeared first on Salon.com.

It’s a $16 disappointment every time.

These days, the airport sandwich tends to emerge from a fluorescent-lit vending machine with a name like Farmer On-the-Go or Nutrition Inc. The machine is usually white, decorated with soothing green or blue iconography meant, I suppose, to conjure grass and sea in one of the least pastoral spaces on earth. Through its glass door, you can survey the foods generally understood to be “healthy,” at least compared with the Panda Express and Cinnabon farther down the concourse: yogurt parfaits with thin geological strata of berries; Caesar and chef salads in plastic clamshells; a few juices and smoothies; wraps, usually Caesar; and sandwiches, almost invariably ham or turkey.

The last time I bought one, I was flying from Louisville to Chicago. It was early, and I was travel-day queasy enough that whatever Smashburger considered a breakfast sandwich seemed unwise. A turkey sandwich and a pack of mint gum appeared to be the more prudent option.

I accepted the disappointment the moment I tapped my debit card: this was not a $16 sandwich.

It came in a rigid plastic triangle sealed with peel-and-stick film—a transparent reliquary for something nobody revered. Condensation had gathered beneath the lid, suggesting freshness, or at least recent contact with the natural world, but when I peeled it back there was a suspicious lack of smell.

The bread was stale. One piece of lettuce was limp; another was somehow entirely lettuce rib. The turkey was fine, and the cheese was technically cheese, though the sandwich had achieved the improbable condition of being simultaneously refrigerator-cold and slightly melted. There were packets of Hellmann’s mayonnaise and mustard at the counter, which helped, but only so much.

This felt particularly insulting because I really, really love sandwiches—not merely as lunch, but as a form. Watching “Scooby-Doo” as a child, I came away with two clear ambitions for adulthood: a side gig solving mysteries and a refrigerator always full of sandwich ingredients. The towering versions assembled by Shaggy and Scooby embodied abundance, customization and the exhilarating possibility that nearly anything could be made better by placing it between two pieces of bread.

The airport sandwich represents the betrayal of that promise. It has presumably been engineered by a team, calibrated for refrigeration and focus-grouped into broad acceptability, yet it feels made by no one. Its chief ambition is endurance: it must survive transit, uncertain demand and an unknowable stretch between gates. Endurance is the full extent of its imagination. 

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.

---

Its true opposite is not the restaurant sandwich, constructed by a chef and eaten promptly under ideal conditions. 

It is the beach sandwich: made by everyday people with a zest for life and brine, then carried some distance before being eaten with an appetite sharpened by sun, swimming and the lugging of chairs across hot sand.

Building one brings out the latent chef in nearly everyone. Italian-American shore moms know this. So do dads carrying old-school Igloo coolers, each of whom, I suspect, has strongly held beliefs about bread density, condiment placement and whether tomatoes are worth the risk. These people may never use the phrase “moisture barrier,” but they know where the cheese belongs.

A good beach sandwich is designed not merely to survive the wait but to improve during it. The bread grows slightly more tender. The cheese softens. The sauces settle into the meat and greens. It becomes a little compressed, a little messier and somehow more itself.

Though the Scooby-Doo towers would never make it across the dunes, there are better ways to build a sandwich for adventure. Let me show you.

The beach sandwich blueprint 

Bread is the first and last defense against sogginess, which is why sturdy loaves — focaccia, baguettes, bâtards, Italian bread — shine in beach-sandwich applications. They can take a generous smear of sauce, withstand several hours of compression and still emerge recognizably bread-shaped.

For this sandwich, I wanted ciabatta because it is perhaps the most pillowy of the sturdy breads. It has enough backbone for the journey without requiring the determined chewing that makes lunch feel like a mandibular endurance event. Its open crumb absorbs just enough sauce to become more flavorful as it sits, while the soft crust remains easy to eat on a towel without showering your lap in shards.

Next come the condiments. I am an avowed condiment hound, especially when two sauces are doing different jobs. Double sauce is not necessary, but I like a little indulgence underscoring the practicality of a packable meal.

On one side goes lemon mayonnaise, our acid-fat lever: rich enough to keep the turkey lush, sharp enough to wake it up. On the other goes a coarse, olive-bar-inspired romesco made with jarred roasted peppers, sun-dried tomatoes, salted roasted almonds and smoked paprika. It brings vegetal sweetness, salt, smoke and nubby creaminess without requiring anyone to roast and peel peppers before packing the cooler. Marcona almonds are lovely if you want an amusing high-low dialogue with the potato chips that appear later, though any salted roasted almond will do.

I initially considered Manchego. Its saltiness and nuttiness made perfect sense with the romesco, but I realized I wanted foldiness rather than crystalline hunks. Muenster is less assertive but more accommodating: its mild butteriness stands beside the sauce without competing, and it softens agreeably in summer warmth without becoming stringy or oily. The best beach-sandwich ingredients have promising future states.

Then there is the turkey.

Like all good beach sandwiches, some of this comes down to pure personal desire. I could eat a turkey sandwich every day of my life. I maintain a running ranking of the best ones in Chicago, from the version at my local bánh mì counter—resplendent with pickled daikon and carrots, Vietnamese mayonnaise and soy sauce—to the one at my neighborhood café, served on crackly oat bread and actually worth its fifteen-dollar price tag.

I considered prosciutto, roast beef, cured meats and even a pickle-heavy chickpea salad. All would have worked. But good sandwich architecture is not the same thing as bloodless optimization. At some point, desire gets veto power.

Turkey, baby.

For greens, I turn to arugula. Crisp-head lettuces have their place — I love them on summer sandwiches destined to be eaten immediately — but given enough time, crunch becomes limpness.

Arugula knows how to wilt gracefully. Its peppery bite survives the wait, while the leaves soften into the sauces rather than collapsing into wet ribbons. It also lends the sandwich the air of something procured from a real cute deli, perhaps one with handwritten menu boards and expensive sparkling water.

Finally, the salt-and-vinegar chips go inside.

This is partly whimsy, but also practicality. Their crunch interrupts the softness of the turkey, cheese and sauces; their salt seasons the sandwich; and their pucker sharpens the lemon mayo and smoky-sweet romesco. Tucked against the arugula, they function almost like an extremely unserious vinaigrette.

They will soften somewhat as the sandwich waits, but not entirely. That slightly crushed, partially melded state is the point. A good beach sandwich should not remain frozen in the moment of assembly. It should settle into itself.

How you wrap it matters, too. I prefer parchment paper for the first layer, which allows the bread to breathe and avoids recreating the clammy condensation routine of the airport sandwich. Wrap it snugly enough to hold everything together and encourage a little beneficial compression.

If it is headed into a cooler, place the parchment-wrapped sandwich inside a resealable bag or hard-sided container. The inner layer remains breathable; the outer one protects it from the ice pack and the inevitable little lake at the bottom of the cooler. You are not trying to preserve the sandwich in suspended animation. You are creating the conditions under which it can improve without becoming waterlogged.

And improve it does.

It is delicious fresh. It is better after the walk to the lake and an hour in the water, when the ciabatta has grown slightly more tender, the Muenster has relaxed, the romesco has settled into the turkey and the crushed chips have become one with the peppery greens.

By then, the sandwich has changed, but so have you. Your appetite has been sharpened by sun, distance and swimming, and what you unwrap tastes less like something that survived the journey than something that has been quietly getting ready for you.

That is the true art of the beach sandwich: building something not merely to endure the wait, but to meet you at the other end of it.

 

 

The post The art of the beach sandwich appeared first on Salon.com.

Organic chicken costs on average more than twice as much as conventional chicken, and people buy it in part because they believe that the animals are given a much better life. 

If you’re one of those people, maybe you envision a small farm where flocks of healthy birds split their time between green pastures and spacious barns. When a chicken gets sick or injured, you might picture a veterinarian tending to them, and if they can’t be saved, they’re humanely euthanized. While the chickens aren’t pets, you’d assume that they’re at least not abused.

These are reasonable expectations, given how organic farming is marketed. And organic chicken certification does, on paper, legally require better animal welfare than conventional rearing: more space, fresh air, outdoor access, and other improvements.  

But a new undercover investigation reveals that these expectations may often be far from reality.

Earlier this year, an investigator with the nonprofit Mercy for Animals worked at an organic North Carolina farm that raises chickens for Pilgrim’s Pride, a major supplier of conventional and organic chicken. Pilgrim’s Pride then slaughters the chickens and sells them to Costco and other brands. The farm is also certified as humane by the nonprofit American Humane Society. (Disclosure: I worked at Mercy for Animals prior to joining Vox in 2020.) 

During his roughly 2.5-month stint at the farm, the investigator documented unsanitary living conditions, along with severe neglect — like birds with twisted necks and open wounds — and disturbing cases of outright abuse, including the farm manager leaving birds to die slowly in deadpiles, and euthanizing birds by bludgeoning them with PVC pipes and rakes.

“It was every day that the manager would be bludgeoning chickens to death or burying them alive,” the investigator, who goes by the pseudonym Sam due to the covert nature of his work, told me. 

But many of those in the industry don’t seem to want to talk about it. The farm could not be reached for comment. Hiland Global Certifications, a certifier of organic foods that audits the farm, declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to detailed questions. Costco didn’t respond to an interview request and detailed questions. Pilgrim’s Pride declined an interview request and didn’t answer specific questions. 

In a statement, a spokesperson for Pilgrim’s Pride said that it is “deeply disturbed by the conduct” at the farm, that it has dropped it as a supplier, and that it will initiate additional third-party audits at its supplier farms. 

However, when chicken companies — or supermarkets, for that matter — drop farms as suppliers, they shouldn’t expect that whatever farm they supply from instead will be extraordinarily different; such cruelty has been found over and over and over again in the US poultry industry, including numerous past investigations of farms that supply Pilgrim’s Pride.

What’s notable about this new investigation is that it exposes problems within two beloved, and supposedly more ethical, institutions in American life: Costco — with its higher employee wages and stated commitments to progressive causes — and organic farming, which has long been perceived as a more moral sector of the food industry. 

The investigation also reveals the immense shortcomings of governmental oversight, corporate animal welfare guidelines, and third-party inspectors, because at each step of the supply chain — from the farm, to the chicken supplier, to the organic certifiers and American Humane Society auditors, and finally, to Costco and other corporate buyers — severe animal cruelty appeared to slip through the cracks. 

Organic may not mean what you think (for animals)

The USDA launched its organic certification program in the early 2000s, a time when consumers were increasingly hungry for alternatives to America’s highly industrialized food system. 

When it comes to crops, organic farms can’t grow genetically modified plants or spray their crops with synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Organic livestock operations must give their animals organic feed and are also required to give them outdoor access, more barn space, cleaner air, and other higher welfare standards than conventionally raised animals. Euthanasia must also be humane.

The investigated farm at the center of this latest Mercy for Animals investigation has about 100,000 or so live chickens on its premises at any given time, and it does give the birds more room in their barns than a conventional farm.  

Among the main welfare requirements in the USDA organic program, though, this was the only one it appeared to follow. Mercy for Animals alleges that it uncovered numerous organic standard violations at the farm, including:

• Outdoor access: While the farm did have outdoor space for the birds, Sam said he never saw them have access to it. (He said the manager told him Pilgrim’s Pride had a temporary exemption on this rule for farms in the area due to inclement weather that winter and spring, though “there were no major weather events during my employment,” Sam told me.) 
• Safe ammonia levels: Chicken waste emits a lot of ammonia, which at high enough levels can cause respiratory issues and even blindness for the birds. Levels must remain below 25 parts per million, but Sam recorded it reaching up to at least 100 ppm in one barn, which was the highest his reader went.
• Darkness: Organically raised chickens must be given a minimum of eight hours of continuous darkness per day so they can sleep. However, the manager said she only gives them three to four hours (she also told Sam she planned to increase it to eight hours on the day an employee from Pilgrim’s Pride was scheduled to arrive). Chicken producers restrict darkness in order to increase profits, as more light makes the birds eat more and grow faster.

Sam said he documented more than 70 incidences of improper euthanasia, with the farm manager regularly euthanizing sick and injured chickens by bludgeoning them with PVC pipes and rakes. In one instance, the farm manager crushed a bird with a bucket, and in another, slammed a chicken against a wall.

Sam also recorded instances of chickens kicked and thrown. Many birds suffered from severe injuries, like torticollis (twisted neck), leg deformities, and lesions on their bodies and feet, while others were too weak and sick to even stand and walk. 

The investigation illustrates that organic and even basic welfare standards are only as good as their enforcement. The USDA requires organic farms to be inspected yearly, which means that for the vast majority of a given year, farms that flout the rules likely won’t have any meaningful repercussions.  

A spokesperson with the USDA said it is unable to comment on investigations. “Upholding organic integrity and protecting organic producers and consumers is a core mission of NOP [the National Organic Program],” a spokesperson wrote in a statement to Vox. “Part of that mission includes providing due process under the law and allowing certified organic farms to come into compliance when problems occur.” 

Investigations into other organic-certified animal farms have also found organic standard violations and animal neglect and abuse.

The farm is also certified as humane by the nonprofit American Humane Society, which is known to have relatively low standards that are similar to the industry’s own general guidelines. The American Humane Society declined an interview request for this story and didn’t respond to detailed questions. “We have zero tolerance for animal cruelty and abuse,” a spokesperson wrote in a statement to Vox. “We are aware of the video and have launched an independent investigation.”

How to make organic chicken better

Mercy for Animals alleges that the farm in question violated several USDA organic standards. But it’s also important to look at what organic standards don’t include in the first place, like more humane slaughter methods and better breeding. 

Breeding may sound dull and unimportant, but it’s by far the most pressing welfare issue in chicken farming, including on organic farms. The modern chicken has been bred to have abnormally large breasts, which consumers most prize. That makes it hard for their tiny legs to support their top-heavy bodies, and as a result, many have trouble walking and standing, as Sam documented. 

They also grow incredibly fast, which causes some chickens to die prematurely on the farm from painful lung and heart conditions; some die from dehydration or starvation because they can’t stand and walk to reach food and water. Even the president of the World’s Poultry Science Association has acknowledged that chickens’ “existence is painful.”

So many chickens die prematurely on farms that collecting and disposing of them is a primary responsibility for chicken farmhands. “My main job duty was mostly collecting the dead,” Sam told me.

In the wake of these investigations, it’s not uncommon for companies to condemn the cruelty and drop the farm as a supplier. Similarly, many consumers vow to boycott the companies affiliated with an investigated farm.

These instincts are understandable, but they ultimately won’t result in much change for animals. That’s because 80 percent of all chickens in the US are factory-farmed by just 10 companies, they all generally use the same fast-growing chicken breeds and management practices, and most have been investigated only to find cruel treatment and abysmal living conditions. 

To reinforce that point, Sam said that what he witnessed wasn’t exclusive to this one farm or meat company but is rather emblematic of the overall industry’s culture: “Every time we go into a [farm], we find the same things; it’s always animal abuse, animal cruelty.”

In a formal complaint, supported by an affidavit with photo and video evidence, Mercy for Animals is demanding the sheriff’s department in Lee County, North Carolina, to investigate and pursue criminal charges against the farm’s manager for animal cruelty and false advertising based on the many documented organic violations. But the organization’s bigger goal is to push large companies like Costco and its competitors to adopt higher animal welfare standards — and make sure they stick to them.

“This isn’t really about one investigation. … It’s about whether companies with enormous influence are willing to take responsibility for the systems that they create,” Arash Yomtobian, president and CEO of Mercy for Animals, told me. “Costco has the power to reduce suffering for more than [an estimated] 250 million chickens annually through proven reforms, like slower-growing breeds and improved living conditions, yet the company continues to choose profit over accountability.” 

In 2021, Mercy for Animals released an investigation into Costco’s conventional chicken line that found many of the same welfare problems as the latest investigation. Months later, Costco said it gives its birds a little more space than the industry standard and that it was experimenting in giving birds environmental enrichment. The company didn’t follow the group’s urging to use slower-growing breeds that have less painful existences by way of fewer leg deformities and fractures, and lower rates of metabolic disorders. 

Several European countries are moving away from fast-growing chicken breeds, though the US poultry and grocery sectors have largely resisted activist pressure.

Costco says animal welfare is a “moral and ethical obligation.” Pilgrim’s Pride says providing safe and high-quality chicken housing is a priority. The American Humane Society says its standards ensure humane treatment. The USDA says its organic standards strive to align with consumer expectations on animal welfare. These are the nice things companies that sell meat, and the institutions that certify the meat, say. But Sam’s investigation — and more than 200 other ones — prove that reality rarely matches corporate platitudes. 

The most foolproof solution to this systemic cruelty is for consumers to simply eat fewer animal products. But animal advocates and organic food proponents have also proposed a number of solutions to reduce animal suffering on farms, which include:

• Setting higher organic animal welfare standards.
• Passing basic federal welfare laws for conventionally raised livestock (currently there are none for animals on farms and ranches).
• Unannounced, frequent, and thorough organic farm audits; stricter penalties for violators; and making audits free (currently, farms pay certifier companies, which could incentivize certifiers to minimize violations and penalties in order to maintain their clientele).
• Installing CCTV cameras on farms and inside slaughterhouses.

Some groups even want to see the federal government create a dedicated animal welfare agency.  

There is no shortage of ideas on the table to reduce animal suffering on farms and bring more integrity to the many “humane” claims on meat, milk, and egg packages. The question is whether lawmakers and regulators have the courage to implement them.  

The water was at our backs, but everything still looked blue.

It was a Saturday, and the sky above the lake was shockingly clear. The breeze hurried the fluffy clouds along like an invisible, impatient dog walker trying to jostle a pack of Pomeranians past the more interesting signposts and fence posts: a brief stall, then a fluid push forward.

Usually, all that blue would have felt like a gift. That day, walking home from a particularly sad documentary interview, I wasn’t sure it was helping.

Outside of writing this newsletter, I work on radio documentaries with my partner, Stephen. They are creative projects with the sneaky ability to hollow you out sometimes, especially when the story requires you to watch someone move through a series of the hardest days of their life. Not every documentary I’ve worked on has gone that way. This one has.

I carried my messy notes as we walked slowly. Stephen carried a neatly packed bag lined with recorders, headphones and batteries. We were quiet, as we typically are after interviews that heavy, letting our thoughts jostle and cure until we reached a coffee shop — always a coffee shop — where we could log the tape and our first responses to it.

That was when I spotted the Little Free Library.

It stood outside a brick six-flat, also fittingly painted blue, and decorated with a few stickers: “Protect Native Plants,” a rocket ship from a regional space camp, several iridescent birds. Inside, wedged among some children’s CDs—the kind I imagine hip parents buy, with sock monkeys and mandolins on the covers—a book about angel investing and a sweet, self-published chapbook of nature poems, was a copy of “The Secret Garden.”

Eerily, I had made a note only a few days earlier to see whether the real library had it.

---

Want more great food writing and recipes? Sign up for Salon’s free food newsletter, The Bite.

---

As we dug through the shelves, one of the building’s residents emerged from the front door with the stride of a woman on a mission. She wore no-nonsense sneakers with pink swooshes and carried two FedEx boxes.

“That is very good!” she called as she breezed past.

I couldn’t tell whether she meant the jazz CD Stephen was holding or “The Secret Garden,” but I took it as permission nonetheless and slipped the book into my purse. I’ll return it to another Little Free Library when I’m finished.

At home, I put it on my bedside table, pausing to start the rice cooker on my way. 

I could say that lately I’ve been regarding the things I find nourishing with renewed appreciation. But that sounds more composed than I actually feel. What I really mean is that, in my downtime, I’ve been steeping myself in things I already know will bring me comfort.

This morning, I actually squealed when the library emailed to say my hold on “The Wind in the Willows”—a book I first read in sixth grade—was ready for pickup.

And, more nights than not lately, I’ve been making rice and eggs.

The bowl first entered my regular rotation in 2023, during the great feta-fried-egg boom, though I suspect its staying power has less to do with TikTok than with the state I was in when it found me. I was badly burned out: singed and shaky, waking so often with heart palpitations, sweaty palms and a vague sense of catastrophe that I became intimately acquainted with the way my apartment looked at 3 a.m. Every familiar object — the chair, the laundry basket, the glass of water beside the bed — seemed to acquire a slightly accusatory moonlit outline.

Getting better took a while. The thing that helped most was finding my own secret garden, a nearby bird sanctuary that crags out over Lake Michigan. Each day, I made the three-mile round trip to inspect the warblers, chipmunks and generally mysterious rustlings of the underbrush.

On my recent rereading of “The Secret Garden,” I was delighted by the moment when Mary, initially pale and peevish and uninterested in her breakfast, begins wandering the grounds with a jump rope in hand. The exercise and fresh air work their plain Victorian magic; soon she is ravenous for the porridge waiting at Misselthwaite Manor.

I understood completely. I would come home from the sanctuary hungry and make rice and eggs—if not that evening, then the following morning. Millennial porridge.

It’s funny, my mother used to look at me with an expression that was neither mocking nor exasperated, merely seasoned, and say, “Baby, not everything needs to be a production.”

This applied to rearranging my childhood bedroom furniture after reading about feng shui in a magazine, redoing my makeup when we were already late and, eventually, cooking. Once I learned what a roux was, I wanted every meal to have one. There was a period when dinner seemed to require a mother sauce, three pans and a 45-minute drive to the crunchy health-food store for microgreens that wilted almost immediately.

My mother, an excellent cook, understood repetition better. For years, I would come home from figure-skating practice bruised from falling, exhausted from trying not to fall and tender from the ambient heartache of being a teenager. She would make bowties in a light Parmesan sauce with peas, ham and an indecent amount of black pepper.

Surely she fed me other things. But when I remember that stretch of my life, I remember that bowl arriving again and again. What I failed to appreciate then was that familiarity was part of the offering. Having something good to return to is not a failure of imagination. Traversing the same landscape does not make it less beautiful.

My rice and eggs began with a feta-fried egg over steamed white rice. The rest accumulated slowly and, for the most part, logically: lemon zest for brightness, bacon for savory crunch, avocado for cool richness. Scallions and soy sauce arrived because I add them to almost everything, occasionally without proper cause. Red pepper flakes and everything bagel seasoning cover the remaining territory — heat, funk, nuttiness, crunch — in a few economical shakes.

At some point, the bowl was finished.

Naturally, I continued to interfere with it.

I swiped chili aioli over the top. I added enough hot sauce to drown out the lemon. I became overly generous with the bacon and avocado. I stirred miso butter into the rice, which was delicious but made the entire meal feel as though it had changed its name and moved to another neighborhood.

None of these were bad ideas. They simply were not my bowl.

There is a popular idea that good cooking is a matter of building flavor, and often it is. But it is also the quieter skill of noticing when the building is complete and putting down the hammer.

In my perfect version, the yolk breaks over the hot rice and mingles immediately with the lemon zest, becoming a kind of lazy hollandaise. The soy sauce deepens it; the bacon crackles; the avocado cools everything down. It costs only a few dollars a bowl, even with the avocado behaving like an avocado, but I feel rich when I eat it: nourished, complete and relieved that dinner did not need to become a production before it could take care of me.

Here is exactly how I make it.

This story originally appeared in The Bite, my weekly food newsletter for Salon. If you enjoyed it and would like more essays, recipes, technique explainers and interviews sent straight to your inbox, subscribe here.

The post It’s always rice and eggs appeared first on Salon.com.

New Zealand’s Māori people often say that food is a feeling, a memory. It talks to your stomach.

Everything in Māori culture is tied to Papatūānuku, Mother Earth, especially its food. Located at the bottom of the world, it’s hard to imagine a place more closely connected to nature, where New Zealand’s Māori communities have long lived in symbiosis with the land. 

“Māori food (kai) concepts acknowledge an interconnectedness with living cycles, which renew and sustain us,” says Michael Venner, director of Kora Tours NZ.

The pristine farms, forests, ocean and rivers serve as the country’s pantry, where Māori food is regional, and ingredients are harvested based on seasonality and availability. 

“By understanding nature’s cycles and natural rhythms. Māori understood the connection between moon, sun, tides and seasons, the way all animals behave,” says Venner. “For example, if you know the correct moon cycle to go fishing on, lay your nets on the right tide, at the right place, you will have a higher success rate.”

A common everyday dish is a hearty stew or a “boil up,” made of pork bones, puha (an indigenous herb) and seafood like mussels, oysters and crayfish, alongside rēwena bread, a sourdough made with a fermented potato starter or a fried bread.

But Hāngī is arguably the most famous Māori cooking technique. Veneer describes it as, “A hot stone oven which cooks food layered inside baskets, covered by a wet cloth. Once partially buried for a few hours, it has roasted and steamed the food, infused notes of forest herbs, earth scents, smoked tea tree, Manuka honey and banana leaf.”

Veneer says if you get the chance to go to a traditional hāngī, do it. These special gatherings are often linked to special community events, like funerals, weddings and ritual occasions.

At Rosewood’s three hotels located throughout New Zealand, the chefs honor this ethically sourced ethos, working with local purveyors and farmers to source indigenous ingredients like beach spinach, fern fronds and abalone. 

During dinner, each guest is given a traditional koha, meaning gift or offering, between the starter and main course. “It’s an opportunity for our chefs to share a thoughtful expression of place, often drawing inspiration from Northland’s rich coastal environment and Māori culinary traditions,” says JT Mulry, Culinary Director at Rosewood Kauri Cliffs.

At Rosewood Kauri Cliffs, they periodically serve a Māori-inspired, multi-course meal. “This dining experience celebrates the traditions, ingredients, and stories of Aotearoa. Traditional techniques, such as hāngī, are paired with native ingredients and locally harvested produce, creating food that is both simple and deeply expressive of place. At its heart, it’s about sharing stories, culture and hospitality through food,” says Mulry.

When European colonizers came to New Zealand in the 1800s, it changed the indigenous food. “Settlers arrived with national foods, preparation and cooking methods,” says Venner. “As more people came, food influence evolved and mixed; rural and urban food traditions, tastes and trends merged into the modern era.”

In Auckland, the Hāngī Master, Rewi Spraggon, honors his ancestors with his traditional hāngī catered cooking. The stones he uses have been passed down through the generations to create staples like a Hāngī Tuturu, a plate of pork, chicken, potato, kumara (New Zealand sweet potatoes), pumpkin, cabbage, stuffing and watercress salad. At his Queenstown food truck, more modern, European-influenced offerings include a chicken Hāngī burger, served with a potato spread, grated apple and watercress salad on a sweet potato bun.

Today, New Zealanders are proud of their food culture. “As New Zealand’s demographics changed, new traditions emerged. Since the 1980s, when people returned from overseas, they added to the menus and our palates changed with them,” says Venner. Now, it’s known for incredible lamb, cheese, wine and fruit inspired by the natural, high-quality, hard-working traditions of generations of Māori.

 

 

The post How Māori food tells New Zealand’s story appeared first on Salon.com.

Summer, a season of good eats and fresh produce, has been tainted by a rampant parasitic outbreak that’s made us all scared to indulge in a generous plate of Caesar salad.

Within a few short weeks, an ongoing outbreak of Cyclospora, a foodborne parasite that can contaminate raw fruits and vegetables — and lead to several unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms — has fueled a nationwide panic. Bagged salad mixes and kits, which have been linked to previous outbreaks in the United States and Canada, were suddenly a no-go. Same with precut or packaged lettuce, fresh cilantro, fresh basil, raspberries, snow peas and green onions.

As the number of reported infections continued to rise and fears over our favorite seasonal eats reached a fever pitch, the exact source of the outbreak remained a mystery.

That’s until last Thursday.

A culprit had been named: shredded iceberg lettuce grown by Taylor Farms, the pro-Trump produce supplier, and served at Taco Bell, the Washington Post reported on July 16. A recall was promptly issued the following day. The outbreak was soon coming to an end — or so it seemed.

Then came more confusion. Just two days later, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) retracted its initial finding that a lettuce sample from Taylor Farms de Mexico tested positive for Cyclospora, classifying it as a false positive. The FDA, however, doubled down on the severity of the investigation, saying in an X post that the false positive doesn’t change “the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.”

To clarify, this false-positive lab sample DOES NOT change the basis for FDA’s ongoing outbreak investigation or the overwhelming epidemiological data supporting the current voluntary recall by Taylor Farms.

Over the weekend, FDA alerted Taylor Farms that a new sample of… https://t.co/hedRwhPLd8

— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) July 20, 2026

As it stands, the exact source of the outbreak remains largely unclear. And while lettuce shouldn’t be given up entirely, experts are advising to consume it with caution.

Keep in mind that washing your produce, even in a vinegar bath, isn’t enough to effectively kill the parasite. Instead, it’s best to cook them to an internal temperature of 158°F (70°C) or higher, health officials urged.

Now may not be the time to whip up your favorite cold salads or overload on the “L” in your BLTs. But fret not, because lettuce can still be enjoyed to its fullest when cooked. And it’s actually really delicious.

From Nigella Lawson’s riff on a Caesar salad to creamy lettuce soup, here are a few ways to cook and enjoy a produce item that’s typically eaten cold and raw.

Grilled Caesar salad

Summer also happens to be peak grilling season. While you’re grilling meats and corn on the cob, throw on a few romaine hearts (washed) and make a grilled Caesar salad as a delicious appetizer.

Courtesy of Loves Food Loves to Eat and shared by Food52, this recipe serves two when eaten as a meal and four to six when enjoyed as a side. To start, whisk together Parmesan, lemon juice, oil, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, garlic, salt and pepper. Cut the romaine heart(s) in half lengthwise, along with half of a baguette, and char them both on the grill over medium to medium-high heat. On a large dining plate, serve the romaine hearts whole alongside the bread. Finish with the homemade dressing and more parm.

Nigella’s riff on a Caesar salad

On the theme of Caesar salad, Nigella Lawson’s controversial recipe — which was criticized by fans and culinary professionals more than a decade ago — has earned its redemption by being timely, useful and effortless.

Unlike grilled Caesar salad, Lawson’s riff on a classic is essentially baked lettuce. A romaine heart (cut in half lengthwise) is first coated in olive oil, grated garlic and chopped anchovy fillets before going into the oven. It’s then taken out, seasoned with lemon zest and juice and baked once more. The finishing touch is shaved parm.

Sure, some may call it crazy or far-fetched. But during these trying times, Lawson’s revamped Caesar salad is pure genius.

Petits pois à la française

Lawson marries frozen peas and shredded Little Gem lettuce in her version of petits pois à la française, or French-style peas. The lettuce is cooked with buttery garlicky scallions and, once wilted, frozen peas and hot chicken stock. It’s then left to simmer and soak up all those flavors.

The finished dish is beautifully green, tender and, yes, gentle on your stomach.

Creamy lettuce soup

Almost anything can be made into a soup — even fresh, chopped lettuce. Epicurious’ recipe for a delicious summertime lettuce soup seasons, boils and purées a whole head of lettuce, including both the leaves and ribs, coarsely chopped.

The soup is built in a four-to five-qt. heavy pot and starts with chopped onions, scallions, leeks (or shallots) and a chopped garlic clove. Everything is cooked with unsalted butter, then seasoned with ground coriander, kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. Peeled russet potatoes, lettuce and three cups of water are then thrown into the mix, boiled and, finally, simmered.

A blender is used to purée the soup in batches before it’s simmered one last time and finished with more butter, salt and pepper.

Enjoy the soup as is, hot or cold. As for toppings, finish each bowl with a drizzle of olive oil or a dollop of Greek yogurt if you’re craving protein.

Cooked iceberg lettuce works excellently in this soup, the recipe notes. You can also add depth and variety to your soup by adding any salad greens, like arugula, spinach, kale, or watercress.

An iceberg and a romaine stir-fry

Similar to other leafy greens, lettuce leaves can be tossed, stirred and cooked in hot oil. In fact, stir-fried lettuce is a beloved dish in Chinese culture, often eaten for good luck during Lunar New Year. In Cantonese and Mandarin, the word for lettuce (“saang choy” and “sheng cai,” respectively) sounds similar to “growing wealth,” according to The New York Times.

Hetty Lui McKinnon’s recipe calls for a head of iceberg lettuce, stir-fried, then topped with crispy garlic and a fried egg and served over a warm bowl of rice. There’s also plenty of ginger and soy sauce, sesame oil and vegetarian stir-fry/oyster sauce.

There’s also Claire Saffitz’s recipe for a beef and romaine stir-fry, which combines cooked scallions and ginger and a head of romaine (sliced crosswise into 2-inch pieces), seasoned with a pinch of salt, in a large, hot skillet. The lettuce mixture is later cooked alongside short ribs (which have been prepped with cornstarch, red pepper flakes, salt and soy sauce) and a simple sauce made with vinegar, wine and soy sauce.

Coconut milk braised lettuce

Inspired by traditional Indian cooking and Southeast Asian flavors, this Food52 recipe bathes and simmers sautéed heads of romaine in a delicious mixture of gingery coconut milk, fresh lime juice and fish sauce. The cooked lettuce is then topped with fragrant crushed peppercorns and minced garlic, both cooked together in ghee over medium-high heat.

The post Yes, you can cook your lettuce — and it’s delicious appeared first on Salon.com.

I’ve been on a mission to transform a handful of my go-to “struggle meals” into something that feels and tastes more elevated — without breaking the bank, of course. Thus far, I’ve conquered the humble, often-overlooked canned soup, along with dinosaur chicken nuggets (a playful addition to any plate) and slabs of frozen pizza (the ultimate weeknight shortcut). My latest target is instant ramen, which remains a beloved pantry staple.

My earliest memories of slurping those warm, squiggly noodles are from sick days spent nestled under the sheets in my childhood bedroom. A warm bowl of my mother’s homemade soup, complete with a pack of instant noodles bathed in a gingery collagen-rich bone broth and topped with fresh corn, bok choy and a soft-boiled egg, was medicine. It had the power to soothe the roughest of sore throats and quiet the phlegmiest of coughs. It was also nourishing and deliciously comforting.

Throughout college, packs of instant ramen and cup noodles provided sustenance for long nights spent with the textbooks. Wet noodles and seasoned water were quick and satisfying. It was also cheap and pretty darn reliable. If I felt like putting in a bit of effort, I’d throw in a fried egg, edamame and a few dashes of hot sauce.

I’ve since upgraded my instant ramen game, playing around with different proteins, fresh vegetables, seasonings and toppings. It doesn’t take much to zhuzh up instant ramen into a genuinely good meal. My no-fail formula is as follows: noodles + your choice of protein(s) + your choice of veggies + seasoning packet + dry toppings. I’d also argue that loading up your ramen with as many vegetables as possible, namely leafy greens, is a great way to enjoy your favorite fresh produce, stress-free. What you’re left with is a colorful and hearty meal born from something so simple and nostalgic.

This is just one of many recipes I like to make when I’m craving a big bowl of noodles. I like to enjoy my noods in soup form, but you can also follow this step-by-step process for stir-fried noodles. Just drain any liquid, then cook your favorite ingredients and sauce with your choice of noodles.

The texture of your noodles is key

Arguably, the most important part of making instant ramen is choosing your noodles. Do you prefer your noodles long and thin? Or are you craving something thicker and chewier?

I grew up on Maruchan’s chicken flavor ramen noodles, which are my go-to for making soups. I also love the shrimp flavor. Open my pantry and you’ll see a glorious sight of orange and pink packets lining the middle shelf.

Nongshim Shin Ramyun is another one of my favorites, as the noodles are made to be enjoyed in a spicy soup. The noodles are springy and dense, meaning they hold their shape nicely when soaked in broth and have a nice chew.

Maruchan’s noodles, while chewy, are softer and more delicate. Cook them for longer than three minutes and they become mushy and clumpy. It’s not incredibly worrisome, just something to be mindful about when making your soup.

There are truly so many ramen brands to choose from. Sapporo Ichiban’s Tonkotsu Ramen, Nissin’s Top Ramen and Buldak’s line of spicy ramen are also stellar.

Know your flavor packet

That foil packet tucked neatly with your dry noodles is meant to be used, not discarded. I don’t care if it contains added MSG and holds a laundry list of seasonings you can’t pronounce. It’s a necessity. So please, familiarize yourself with it and use it. All of it.

Maruchan noodles come with one flavor packet. Whether your team chicken, shrimp, or beef, the individual packets are highly concentrated and on the saltier side. That strong flavor coats the noodles and produces a delicious, equally concentrated broth.

Nongshim Shin Ramyun, on the other hand, contains two flavor packets, including a dry seasoning powder (the soup base) and a packet of dehydrated vegetable flakes. The dry powder is more umami-heavy with notes of garlic and shiitake mushrooms and spicy, courtesy of gochugaru, or Korean red chili pepper.

Knowing your flavor packets will help you determine what complementary spices and condiments to add. For a hint of brightness, throw in lemon juice or dried citrus peel. For more heat, add a spoon of chili crisp and finely chopped green chilis. For an earthy, curry-inspired bowl of soup, sprinkle in a pinch of cumin and coriander or add in a few drops of toasted sesame oil.

Set your noodles aside

To prevent your noodles from overcooking and clumping, I prefer cooking them al dente (which is usually one minute less than the cooking time on the packet), removing them from the stove and then rinsing them under cold water for a few seconds. Set the boiled noodles aside in a clean bowl. They’ll be warm and brought back to life shortly when rich, warm broth is poured.

Ditch the starchy water and use chicken or vegetable stock

Yes, you can build your soup base from the water used to cook your noodles, but I prefer starting from scratch with chicken or vegetable stock, which adds richness and depth. Since I like to use all of my seasoning packets, I opt for unsalted or low-sodium stock.

Don’t skip the aromatics

Garlic, ginger and green onions — ingredients that will transform a bowl of ramen from simple to restaurant-quality. Sauté your choice of aromatics in oil until fragrant before adding the stock.

Umami is essential

Pour in a dash of soy sauce or fish sauce. Add a tablespoon of miso paste. Simmer dried shiitake mushrooms.

For a simpler option, sprinkle in a pre-made umami spice blend. My favorite is TJ’s Mushroom & Company Multipurpose Umami Seasoning Blend.

Throw in all the toppings…even if it’s not authentic

I like sprucing up my ramen with fresh bok choy, baby corn, spinach and pickled red onions. Go crazy with your leafy greens. Add in any veggies that need to be used up. Make things tangy and controversial with pickles. For dry toppings, I like nori sheets.

Finish with a jammy egg

Need I say more? Once the broth has been poured over the noodles and the toppings have been added, complete your glorious bowl with a soft-boiled egg. A fried egg is also great if you’re not a fan of a runny yolk.

The post How to upgrade instant ramen into a genuinely good meal appeared first on Salon.com.

This Guacamole recipe is balanced and refreshingly simple, and it always gets compliments from whomever tries it! Ripe avocados, onions, cilantro, lime, salt, and jalapeño are all you need. Our Go-To Guacamole Recipe  Guacamole is one of those recipes that confused me for years. I was young and naive, and for some reason, I was […]

Like embellished denim and indie sleaze, frozen yogurt is back. 

The signs of the froyo renaissance are everywhere. First, like any food trend worth its mettle, acquiring the treat at a hip purveyor might include a long line. In New York City, wait times could be upward of an hour and might include hairstyling or a DJ while you cool your heels. Meanwhile, ice cream upstarts like Van Leeuwen have started introducing their own froyo offerings. And then there are the many wellness influencers freezing their beloved yogurt at home with a few dollops of chocolate or peanut butter for a DIY “indulgence.”

The third wave of froyo resembles the previous crazes in one key way: The dessert is still marketed and perceived as a healthier choice than other treats. Every time it comes out of hibernation, frozen yogurt has revealed something about the diet culture of the moment, and this resurgence is no different.

This go-round, the emphasis is on froyo’s super ingredients — namely, the probiotics and protein in each bite. Mythos Greek Frozen Yogurt, for instance, promises “godly probiotics in every bite…supporting gut health and overall wellness,” as well as “prebiotics, probiotics, postbiotics, and enzymes to support your digestive, metabolic, mental, and cognitive health.” It’s all about highlighting what the treat does have, whereas previous froyo fads differentiated the dessert by underscoring what it lacked, namely: fat, lots of calories. 

On the surface, today’s wellness culture focuses on being additive as opposed to depriving yourself and counting calories, which we saw in previous iterations. The idea is balance: balanced diet, balanced gut. The word “holistic” gets thrown around a lot. But the same motivation — a desire for thinness — underpins it, even if the language has become less explicit. And that’s exactly what we’re seeing in every swirl of the latest froyo renaissance. 

Where froyo went and why it came back

Liz Moskow, who predicts food trends as a principal at consultancy Bread and Circus, didn’t have to strain her third eye to foresee the resurgence of frozen yogurt. “The buzzwords in the wellness realm — longevity, gut health, bone health, high protein — all lead back to yogurt,” she told Vox. She described frozen yogurt in particular as “that permissible indulgent way to get more protein in a dessert moment.”

Frozen yogurt first took off in the 1980s, as Americans obsessed over health and exercise — including President Ronald Reagan, who set up a gym at the White House. It was the heyday of fitness stars like Jane Fonda and Richard Simmons. The treat promised all the enjoyment of “naughty” frozen desserts, like ice cream, without the fat. Imagine: a guilty pleasure sans guilt. TCBY (full name: The Country’s Best Yogurt) was the standard bearer of the era. 

But the collapse of the low-fat diet trend, and consumers’ desire for overall low-calorie treats as opposed to just low-fat ones, brought an end to froyo’s first wave. “When you remove fat, you have to add flavor, typically with sugar,” Moskow said. Froyo’s status as the healthy alternative lost credibility once overall calorie counts came into play.

When froyo reemerged in the 2000s and broke wide in the early 2010s, tabloids and Tumblr were awash in a toxic sea of body shaming. This time, the flavor du jour was “tart,” which played up the natural taste of the yogurt and gave it another veneer of health. After all, it wasn’t sweet and rich like ice cream. At destinations like Pinkberry and Menchies, you self-served your yogurt and piled on toppings from a well-stocked buffet of options. And sure, you could opt for a mountain of fresh fruit, but you could also select gummy bears, Reese’s Pieces, and other confections. So, yet again, froyo receded “when vilification of sugar started happening,” Moskow said.

And now, we’re back in the ring with froyo for another round, amid an intense cultural focus on GLP-1s, proteinmaxxing, and gut health. This time, there are a lot of scientific terms getting thrown around. The website for Culture An American Yogurt Company, which has two outposts in New York City, cites the World Health Organization and Harvard Medical School to vaunt the benefits of its probiotic cultures and names the specific bacteria strains they use (Lactobacillus delbrueckii subsp. bulgaricus, Streptococcus thermophilus, Lactobacillus acidophilus, Bifidobacterium lactis, in case you were curious). The toppings on offer at many of these shops — fresh fruit, manuka honey, organic dates, and granola — also provide a halo of health. They seem “better for you, and even a little more posh,” Moskow said. 

While probiotics definitely take center stage this time, other ingredients are also getting their moment. For example, Meli Frozen Yogurt, in Miami Shores, promises six grams of protein per serving (and “zero regrets”). Yogurt Club in Manhattan briefly sold a banana milk-flavored froyo with collagen, which the company claimed in a social media post “improves skin/nail/hair health.” 

Will eating froyo actually improve your digestive tract and confer all of these other health benefits? It depends. Dietary probiotics are generally good for you, and yogurt with live cultures is considered a high-quality source. But it’s not clear if having froyo every so often will do a ton for your microbiome. (Poppi, a soda that promised it was “gut healthy,” settled a lawsuit last year; the plaintiffs argued that the company improperly labeled and marketed its products, and that merely drinking one can wouldn’t benefit the gut.) As for collagen, however, studies about its effectiveness when ingested have been inconclusive or simply haven’t occurred. “There isn’t enough proof that taking collagen pills or consuming collagen drinks will make a difference in skin, hair, or nails,” Dr. Payal Patel and Dr. Maryanne Makredes Senna wrote for Harvard Health’s blog in 2023. And things weren’t looking much better as of 2025. 

Still, the focus on hair, skin, and nails isn’t surprising in our current moment.

“It’s a lot easier to say, ‘Well, I’m eating this for gut health’ instead of ‘I’m eating this because this whole cup has 80 calories,’” Mikala Jamison, writer of the Body Type newsletter and the forthcoming book The Forever Project, told Vox. The current iteration of froyo is intertwined with the broader trend of “clean” living and the “clean girl.” Take Mimi’s Frozen Yogurt, which is located near New York University and regularly has lines around the block. Mimi’s describes itself as “Clean & Natural Froyo…Light as air, full of care.” But “clean” is similar to “plant-based” or “natural” in that it doesn’t really have an agreed upon definition in the food world. It’s mostly vibes-based and can be as much about morality as much as it is about nutrition.

Meanwhile, “light as air” isn’t particularly subtle. Mimi’s has collaborated with Shark Beauty to style people’s hair as they wait in line, further connecting frozen yogurt to a specific aesthetic. Mikono, which just went from pop-up to brick-and-mortar in Chicago, was part of a Porsche & Pilates event, tagging the Instagram post about it “#healthy.” Myka, a growing chain in more than 20 cities with long lines at its Paris outpost, says its product “is more than frozen yogurt: it is a way of understanding life. A way to enjoy what is simple, natural, and effortlessly beautiful.” 

Jamison coined the term “luxe lean” to refer to the current cultural moment: “Your body needs to be lean, not fat, look like you work out a little bit. But also, you pair that with these luxury signifiers. You have a blowout, you have the expensive workout set, you have the nails, you have the glowing skin.” As she sees it, it’s a body type that is also a class and status signifier. You want to look good without implying that you tried to look good, while still communicating that looking this good costs money. 

She wonders about the legacy of the body positivity movement. While some people have given up the pursuit of thinness and are making a concerted effort to build a world where women aren’t constantly denigrated for their weight, there is also an active cadre of people publicly advocating for being as skinny as possible, at the same time that GLP-1s are impacting every aspect of American life. And then, there are the people caught in the middle. “Maybe they do want to lose weight, but they don’t want to admit it because that doesn’t seem like the correct, feminist, progressive, body positivity whatever thing to do,” Jamison said. 

And that’s where the current froyo trend stands: promising “wellness” while letting the impetus for it remain unsaid. 

But if you simply love frozen yogurt, enjoy this renaissance while you can. Moskow expects it to “wax and wane” as it has in the past and, especially, as studies emerge that show the health benefits of ice cream: “I think we might be at peak yogurt.”

Just when we thought summer’s most perfect veggie couldn’t get any more delicious, corn FRITTERS graced our palettes. These crispy-on-the-outside, tender-on-the-inside, lightly spiced fritters are a must-try appetizer or side!

Not only are they incredibly delicious, but these fritters are vegan, optionally gluten-free, and SO easy to make! Grab your mixing bowl and 10 basic ingredients, and you’ll be enjoying fritters in 30 minutes or less.

Easy Jalapeño Corn Fritters (Vegan) from Minimalist Baker →

This is my go to side salad that I make often, whether it’s for two people, four, six, or ten. A good side salad strikes a balance of ease and satisfaction, and this has become my old reliable for simple dinners at home and entertaining.  The Key Ingredient Is Kind of a Big Dill The […]

Dakgomtang is a comforting Korean chicken soup with tender chicken and a light, slightly milky broth. Served with rice, soy sauce relish, and spicy seasoning paste, it makes a delicious and satisfying meal.

Friends! The fluffiest, most satisfying, Nutella lover’s dream dessert is here: vegan ice cream made with chocolate and hazelnuts. It’s creamy, dreamy, oh-so delicious, and kind of perfect! Especially when craving a sweet treat on a warm summer day.

Just 6 ingredients required for this (dare we say) MASTERPIECE. It’s going to be on repeat in our ice cream maker all season long. Grab your cones. Let’s make Nutella ice cream!

Vegan Nutella Ice Cream from Minimalist Baker →

These Gluten Free Scallion Pancakes are a marvel: chewy, crispy, scallion-packed and absurdly fast to whip up. Instead of using gluten-free flour, which produces a dense, dry pancake, we make them with layers of Vietnamese rice paper—to gloriously chewy and crispy effect!  The Best solution for a chewy, flaky, gluten-free scallion pancake Making Chinese food […]