Hello Friends,

I'm hunkered down with the AC on. I don't love AC. It makes my sinuses go nuts, so I only turn it on when a big heat settles in to stay for a while. Even my cats hate it. They prefer to sploot outside than be coddled by cool air. I predict they will eventually give in.

The Week's Dining Highlights from the GF Team

From Evan: Host of Good Food.
Laryl and I had the same great bite this week (see below), so I'm doing a throwback to my time in Oregon City, where my friend Daria made stuffed cherry peppers. It's a dish I have so infrequently, but when they're well made they are so delicious! The peppers are first pickled, then filled with a well-seasoned fresh bread stuffing (anchovy, garlic, parsley), then baked. I ate them alone as an antipasto and also added them to a meatball sub. umami bomb

From Gillian: Supervising Producer of Good Food and voice of the market report.
An Anya CandyCot from Andy’s Orchard. If Jolly Rancher made an apricot flavor, surely this would be it.

From Laryl: Senior Director of Good Food.  
WFH Langer's #19 on Rye. No notes.

From Elina: Digital Producer of Good Food. 
I recently discovered the Potato Crisp at Bub & Grandma’s in Eagle Rock. It’s basically a wedge of thick, fluffy potato latke (they call it a casserole) served with a dollop of horseradish sour cream. Yum!

How much whey protein are you slurping up these days? Enough that the by-product of cheesemaking is transforming the dairy industry. Milk producers are relying on it to keep afloat since milk prices have remained the same for decades.

I love anchovies, so when I heard that a horror film producer turned food historian wrote a book about them, I thought, how apt! Christopher Beckman chronicles the little fish's history and use in the European culinary canon in his book, A Twist In the Tail.

Independent scholar and food historian Sally Grainger has degrees in archeology and ancient history. She is also a cook with a keen sense of curiosity. She bridges the gap between ancient Roman recipes and the contemporary kitchen with her book Roman Recipes for Modern Cooks, with engaging illustrations from Joana Avillez. "So many of the dishes that we eat when we go abroad — the kofta, the tagine, the cassoulet, the salsa verde, the pesto — all these dishes are there in the ancient texts. They are ill-formed, embryonic, you might say, but they're there," Sally says.

What is Food Studies and why does it matter? "It's really broad, and it really touches on our entire food system," says Jack Bobo, the Executive Director of the UCLA Rothman Family Institute for Food Studies. He was the Director of Global Food and Water Policy at The Nature Conservancy and a senior advisor on global food policy at the U.S. Department of State. And, because you never know where life will take you, he has an official entry in Wookieepedia. UCLA offers a Food Studies minor, and there's the Healthy Campus Initiative, which aims to prioritize the health and wellness of students, staff, and faculty. So across the institution, there are several initiatives and programs that touch on food. The goal of the Rothman Family Institute is to bring them together.