Food news antipasto

Radio Cherry Bombe has a new miniseries debuting this week called “The New Home” which will feature conversations with women about their lives, kitchens, and inspiring careers. They are kicking off the series with Donna Hay, the culinary legend from Australia. ⁠According to Cherry Bombe, the episode “traces how [Donna] found her visual voice (thanks to some crêpes and a brioche shop in Paris), navigated the world of food media, and, seeing something missing, carved her own path.”

This one is for the pretzel lovers: Salon brings us the surprising history of the snack so ubiquitous that it has a shape named after it. Like most foods, there is not a definitive time and place to which we can trace pretzels’ origins. However, it’s generally agreed that they took hold in the seventh century when the Catholic Church enforced severe Lenten rules. Pretzels were seen as an ideal food to eat because they did not contain any of the restricted ingredients.

Do you leave your butter out at room temperature or always keep it refrigerated? If you do the former, you won’t like the advice that Land O’Lakes experts provide about the best way to store butter. While it may be okay to leave butter out at room temperature safety-wise, you run the risk of it getting rancid and developing off flavors, say the experts, who recommend that you always refrigerate it when you aren’t using it, and you shouldn’t let it sit out longer than about 4 hours.

Saveur Magazine recently sat down with actor and comedian Lisa Ann Walter to discuss her love of food and cooking. One of the stars of Abbott Elementary, Walter brings that love to the set – literally, by bringing in food for the cast and figuratively through her character, Melissa Schemmenti. Walter talks about her first culinary experience, her latest cooking adventure, and about her favorite cookbook.

The James Beard Foundation has introduced a tool it is calling the Good Food Finder that helps consumers search award-winning restaurants and chefs by city or region in the US. The tool currently features all 2025 and 2026 James Beard Award winners, nominees and semifinalists, as well as America’s Classics restaurant. While the tool is only available on the JBF website for now, the foundation is considering a mobile app.

Bread is called the staff of life, and it has played an enormous role in the development of human civilization. While the exact origins of wheat are still a mystery, researchers studying the history of the grain think they are a little closer to finding where it first appeared. “Using genetic studies and ancient plant remains, an international team of scientists has narrowed the location and timeline to the Neolithic period (around 8,000 years ago) in Georgia, in the South Caucasus,” according to the article in phys.org.

Other articles posted this weekend:

• Getting the arrangement right
• 2026 Fortnum & Mason Award Winners announced
• Get ready for Cinco de Mayo