A Light in the Kitchen Window
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.
Food: The Presence and The Afterglow
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.
Brianno’s Deli Italia: Intention Becomes Magic
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.
BREAKING: Major Shredded Cheese Recall
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.”
The Inflation-Illusion Conspiracy
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.
The New Year’s Feast By The Handful
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.
Drinksgiving 2025 — Why the Night Before Thanksgiving Is America’s Biggest Reunion
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.
Big Banks Just Stole Your ATM – What’s Next?
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.
Deep-Fried Turkey: Speed, Spectacle & Safety
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.
BREAKING: The First Crack In The Dam
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?
Welcome To The New Normal
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.
The Big Beef: WHAT WE HEARD ON AIR TODAY
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.
When a $24 Burger Isn’t the Story: What Minnesota Media Keeps Missing About Food Inflation
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.
Trump Hits Meatpackers
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.
Real Men Cook Every Day
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.
The Mona Lisa Graph Returns
This isn’t a market correction. It’s a margin extraction — and the fingerprints are all over BigFood.
For the past two months, SpokenFood has been dissecting what we’ve called the Price Gouging Conspiracy — a coordinated silence among major producers, distributors, and retailers who continue inflating prices under the pretense of “supply-chain recovery.” In truth, their supply chains recovered long ago.
The Incredible, Edible (Deviled) Egg!
The humble deviled egg has been stirring appetites—and debates—since the ancient Romans served up boiled eggs seasoned with spicy sauces at lavish banquets.
The great chef, Jacques Pepin, offers a very unique spin on the standard deviled egg – his mother Jeannette’s recipe!
Is Sandy Douglas a Wizard?
UNFI CEO Sandy Douglas – formally, J. Alexander Douglas – once presided over Staples…and proceeded to turn it into retail obsolescence. His transfer to UNFI and its massive revenue increases smacks of something quite wrong, but certainly in keeping with his overall track record. Read why UNFI wants nothing to do with an FTC investigation.
WalletGate: A 2nd Swing
The President of the United States, Richard Nixon, once conspired to lie to the American people about a political cover-up called Watergate.
Since the end of 2022–we at SpokenFood have uncovered an even more disturbing trend with massive national effect, and possible direct government involvement.
We’re calling it WalletGate. Remember the name.
C&S / SpartanNash Merger Tightens the Noose
Let’s do the math. If C&S touches roughly 7,500 stores pre-merger and SpartanNash’s wholesale network spans another 2,500, that’s about 10,000 retail outlets whose shelf pricing can be influenced by a single procurement ecosystem. Add in 60 distribution centers, unified freight contracts, centralized purchasing power, and national vendor terms, and you’ve created something close to a food-supply monopoly in everything but name.
National Greasy Foods Day? No, Thanks.
A SpokenFood Commentary Okay, some of these “National Food Days” are harmless fun — a nod to culinary craft, a tip of the glass to wine or champagne, a celebration of the humble meat loaf or the noble French fry or an honoring the national fruit of America: the apple. We go through our culinary […]
Whistleblowers Say ‘30% Margin’ Is Automatic
Between 2020 and 2025, Sysco’s profits surged, UNFI’s revenues jumped, PNG revenues tripled – this information comes from our archived stories. Meanwhile, diesel prices fell nearly 30% from their 2022 peak.
The math doesn’t lie. Somebody’s banking the difference — and it’s not the farmers or the families at checkout.
This UNFI source says the 30% standard has been internal knowledge “for years.” We’re working to verify supporting data and will provide all findings to the proper authorities – which we’ll divulge soon – before publishing specific documentation.
Best Recipes – Pizza Dough
Pizza. One word. So many positive thoughts, memories and images. Do you have a favorite pizza spot? Some low-key joint or a shiny pizzeria that serves the best pizza in the world? You walk in and that beautiful smell “punches you right in the nose”–that’s a SpokenFood shout-out to Mark Iacono, who happens to make the best pizza in NYC at Lucali in Carol Gardens in Brooklyn.
Whether Neapolitan-style dough is your thing, or if you love the crackly bite of a thin crust or tavern style ‘za (there’s a difference), pizza is one of the greatest
Chobani’s $650 Million Cash Grab Is Pure Crap
Chobani just pocketed $650 million in “growth capital” from unnamed “industry thought leaders,” according to Food Dive. The problem? Those “leaders” aren’t visionaries — they’re Lexington Partners, Blackstone, and Norges Bank, the same private-equity machinery fattening half of America’s processed-food sector. While Food Dive printed the press release and called it journalism, SpokenFood followed the money — and found a health-halo brand expanding on the same synthetic sugar and financial spin that define the very system it claims to reform.
BTW…We sent this story asking for comment to Chobani, Food Dive and the New York Times.