Bill Penzey, CEO of Penzey’s Spices, took it upon himself some time ago to publish a lengthy statement on their website excoriating all Republican voters and supporters and the general hatred he feels toward the Republican Party in America.
The message makes clear that anyone who supports any Republican candidate is essentially a moron...but they'll still take your money. Below is the link to the "Penzey Manifesto."At SpokenFood, our coverage centers on quality, consumer value, transparency in both food and the food supply chain, and enhancing the everyday joy in cooking and eating across our great country. Food has always carried meaning beyond the plate, but in politicizing it, Bill Penzey has clearly overspiced the food. The culinary world ideally reflects the culture surrounding it, but the family table should be a safe zone where we seek relief and respite from the screaming outside world.
Instead, Bill Penzey sat down at your table, uninvited, with dirty hands and lusty political belching. The honored tradition among cooks, chefs, and food lovers alike is that the table is a sovereign place that brings people together. It does not divide them. The next time you come to the table, Bill, wash your sensibilities along with your hands before you sit down. Because this statement directly intersects with both food culture and consumer awareness, we are presenting our response publicly for our readers. SpokenFood does not espouse or support either side of the political aisle, but rather we will call out those who rely on the very dollars for their business who then slaps the hand away because of its particular political color. https://www.penzeys.com/shop/about-republicans/Bill,
I am the editor and founder of SpokenFood.com, a hybrid website dedicated to all things food, from the fun to the foundational. Consumerism is as much of our daily editorial content as fun recipes and trends, and Penzey's has played a fine supporting role in helping home cooks flesh out the very best their food has to offer. Our coverage as such stops here, unfortunately.
The biggest issue facing American consumers right now is price-gouging. We have unveiled a far-reaching pattern where large food distributors appear to add significant padding at supply chain entry points before products ever reach store shelves. We have no doubt that many companies — across the industry — are affected by this reality through the suppliers they rely on.
We at SpokenFood have been longtime consumers of Penzey's Spices because of the quality of your product. That is no more.
We will be publishing your manifesto on our site as a warning to consumers to reconsider supporting Penzey’s Spices, both online and at retail locations across the United States. If you believe publicly targeting a large portion of your potential customer base benefits your company, we believe that is a serious miscalculation.
You have potentially removed a meaningful share of customers from your books — and for what purpose? To advance a political message through a food company?
I could point to mistakes made on both sides of the aisle, but that is a different conversation. What concerns us is the decision to embed political messaging into a business platform centered on food.
Food should be a source of comfort, curiosity, and enjoyment — not friction and fracture.
We strongly urge you to reconsider this stance.
Jack Lauber
Editor, SpokenFood Media
Editorial Note: SpokenFood remains committed to covering food culture, consumer value, and transparency in the modern food economy. When companies enter broader public debates, those decisions inevitably become part of the conversation around the industry itself.
There’s a particular kind of light that doesn’t just brighten a room — it signals a life. You see it from the sidewalk on a winter morning: one house on the block with the kitchen lamp on, the rest of the street still dark and sleeping. Something in you relaxes, almost involuntarily, for that glow means the world hasn’t gone completely cold. Someone is awake and alive in there, if only the light.
Great food doesn’t come from secrets—it comes from time, patience, and presence. It comes from connection. I want these words to be a meditation, something you can revert back to and draw from as you take back control. We all know what’s happening with price gouging by Big Food. It’s time to take back the real power.
What ultimately separates Brianno’s from the Minnesota-style pizza herd isn’t just the clean execution—it’s the absence of performance. This isn’t an ordinary pizza place; it’s a full-blown market of Italy’s best, with taupe-stamped concrete from floor to ceiling that feels like you walked in off a piazza in Turin.
On December 1, 2025, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) elevated a major cheese recall From Great Lakes Cheese Company, which supplies Walmart and Target to name but a few retailers. The recall was elevated to a Class II designation, which means ingestion of the contaminated cheese could cause “temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences.”
Remember the movie Soylent Green?
We may not be eating people disguised as crackers anytime soon, but make no mistake, our government and governments around the world are in a power and money grab the likes we’ve never seen before. Why is everything (not just food) so expensive these days? You’re about to find out.
You stroll away after all the goodbye hugs and handshakes, down a snowy driveway or street, smiling. Your spirit is light and your palate utterly enthralled by variety, sated by spice, by sweet, by richness…and by the warmth of shared food. Your stomach? Comfortable. Content. Ready to enjoy the memories of the party on the drive or the walk home, instead of surviving the aftermath.
Tomorrow, in America, if we’re lucky, we meet around groaning tables heavy with food and light with the spirit of loved ones and friends. Today, though…when the sun goes down, another ritual kicks in. Long before anyone named it, the night before Thanksgiving was already Drinksgiving.
It’s not just grocery chains and food manufacturers squeezing households. When a big bank quietly rewrites the rules on accessing your own cash, the shock waves hit the dinner table too. For many families, that “something else” is grocery shopping, meal prep and the already–tight food budget. But there are alternatives, ways to stick it back to Big Bank.
We’re about a week out from the big day, which means you’ve still got time. The pros of deep frying are hard to ignore. A blistered, insanely crispy skin. THE moistest white meat that actually tastes like something; dark meat that stays silky instead of stringy and a wide-open oven for everything else — stuffing, pies, rolls, casseroles. And don’t forget the spectacle out in the yard! It’s an instant crowd magnet.
One of the nation’s five largest food distributors is now quietly pulling back from the massive wholesale margin increases that helped drive the grocery inflation wave since 2021 — including the notorious “auto-padding” markup that insiders say added up to 30% to thousands of products. Is the dam finally cracking? And what does that mean for consumers?
If you want the New Normal to end, stop shouting into the void and start shoving this data into the agencies that are supposed to protect you. Send this story — and the Mona Lisa Graph — to three places: the FTC’s Consumer Protection Bureau, your State Attorney General, and your U.S. Representative’s office. Tell them exactly what you now know: diesel prices collapsed, Big Food’s costs didn’t rise, and the CPI never came back down.
This afternoon on Drive Time with DeRusha, University of Minnesota beef specialist Eric Mousel offered his explanation for why beef prices keep climbing. His reasons sounded neat, academic, and familiar: drought, aging ranchers, and the “two-year cow life cycle.”
There’s just one problem: none of these explain the price levels consumers are actually paying today.
On October 30th, Jason DeRusha — a longtime Twin Cities food personality and well-known WCCO Radio host — posted a nostalgic shout-out to a beloved Saint Dinette burger on his Facebook page.
The issue isn’t the post.
The issue is what he said next, after SpokenFood questioned the sanity behind why a burger and fries now costs $24 in Minnesota.
President Trump on Friday ordered the DOJ to investigate the meatpacking industry, including JBS, the largest meatpacker in the world.
“Action must be taken immediately to protect Consumers, combat Illegal Monopolies, and ensure these Corporations are not criminally profiting at the expense of the American People,” Trump said.
It began as a lighthearted holiday — a once-a-year nudge for men to put down the remote, pick up a spatula, and prove they could manage more than the grill. But National Men Make Dinner Day, first cooked up in the early 2000s, lands a little differently depending on who you ask. For plenty of men, it’s not a novelty — it’s just Thursday, and a reminder that the kitchen has no gender, only heart.
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I’ve had my Braun Coffee Grinder for nearly 20 years! Great for coffee and spices.
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The Softer Side of SpokenFood
Tea is the rare daily ritual that still feels earned. It isn’t loud, it isn’t trendy—it's simply a pause you can brew. Long before “wellness” became a billboard word, tea was already doing the work: warming hands, steadying nerves, bringing people to the same table for five quiet minutes of being human.
Tea’s story starts in ancient China, where leaves from Camellia sinensis were steeped as medicine and pleasure. From there it traveled—across trade routes, ports, empires—until it became a daily habit from Tokyo to London to the American kitchen. Different cultures built different rituals, but the core stayed the same: hot water, leaf, patience.
Tea isn’t a drink so much as a permission slip: slow down, even if only briefly.
Tip: If a tea tastes “thin,” you usually need either more leaf or better tea—not more steep time.
If you want tea to become part of your life—not a once-a-week mood—make it predictable:
Tea won’t solve your life. But it can give you a daily, dependable moment where nothing is demanded of you except heat, breath, and a little time.
SpokenFood.com® is the official website of Properly Seasoned Media, founded by journalist and novelist John Louis Lauber.
