New Year, New Foods To Try

We tested three products and give you an honest review

Welcome to the first CulinaryWoman Newsletter of 2025! I hope you’ve had a delicious and restful holiday. The new year is already kicking off with lots of news, and it is great to have you with us.

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Thanks for being here, and let’s jump into some taste tests.

Pie Filling, Cake Batter And Sparkling Fruit Soda

Regular readers of CulinaryWoman have learned that food writers are offered a lot of free stuff, under the guise of “samples.” Those freebie offers include alcohol, kitchen appliances, and just about anything you can imagine eating.

I’m really judicious about what I accept. At the New York Times, we weren’t allowed to take anything worth more than $25. So much of what arrived in the newsroom got donated and given away, unless it was edible.

Here at CulinaryWoman, I consider testing brands that are familiar to readers, products that I might actually use, and things that seem innovative. This fall, three such items arrived on my doorstep, and I enlisted some help in testing them out. None of us were paid for these reviews.

Bonne Maman Apple Pie Filling

Who doesn’t love Bonne Maman, the French maker of jams and spreads? It has an interesting backstory and its quality has remained high. I try to nab it when I see it at Home Goods, where it costs a bit less than my local specialty markets. I was delighted to receive a jar as part of a Christmas present.

This fall, Bonne Maman rolled out three pie fillings in apple, blueberry and cherry, which retail for about $11 a jar. They sent me the apple variety to try. I’m not a great pie baker, so I used the filling to make an apple crumble.

My brother Frank and I each gave it a thumbs up. To be sure, this is prepared filing, which means it has a softer consistency than baking with fresh apples. But the apples still had texture, and the filling was not too sweet.

Now, you might say, “For $11, I can just buy a pie,” and it’s true that you can get a supermarket pie for that price. But most bakery pies now cost $20 and up, and this allows you to claim baking privileges without doing much work.

Krusteaz Pour & Bake Batters

You might know Krusteaz from its wide selection of mixes. I’m a fan of its cornbread mix, and people swear by its muffin and cake mixes. Krusteaz offers a broad line up of gluten free mixes as well.

Its new Pour & Bake Batters sounded intriguing: ready made cake batter in a pouch that you simply pour into a pan or cupcake tins and bake. They sent brownie batter as well as pouches of chocolate and vanilla batter (there’s also cinnamon spice and cornbread).

I kept the brownie mix and delegated the chocolate and vanilla batter to my friend Susan Kelley and my brother respectively.

The batters retail for about $5.49 each in the supermarket refrigerator section. There is enough in each pouch for a small cake or a tray of cupcakes.

While the idea of ready to use batter seemed promising, the product wasn’t as easy to use as we hoped. We each struggled getting all the batter out of the pouch, and our results were inconsistent.

My brother had the best luck with the vanilla cupcakes, which you can see above. Susan thought the chocolate batter resulted in bland cupcakes. (You could amp them up by adding espresso or spices.)

I made two test batches of brownies and each time, they stuck to the pan. I double greased the pan for the second batch, and they still stuck. I dug them out and made parfaits with brownie pieces and ice cream, so it was not a total loss.

Try them if you want the convenience of simply squeezing your batter and getting a quick result. I plan to stick to mixes.

Sovany Green Apple Sparkling Water

Since apple is one of my favorite flavors, I was happy to try Sovany, a fruit flavored sparkling water. But the competition is stiff: there are a zillion sparkling apple juice and apple flavored sparkling waters on the market. You can get them everywhere from your supermarket to Ikea and Asian grocers.

This water was a nice surprise and turned out to be my favorite of the three test items. The apple flavor is evident, but not overwhelming.

You feel like you are drinking something refreshing, and the flavor is tame enough that you could mix it with juice or use it with another ingredient to craft a spritzer. Cider season is pretty much over, but I could see mixing it with cider next fall.

Each can is 15 calories and it is available in a 12 pack on their web site for $18.99 (you can get a discount by giving them your personal info).

Let me know if you decide to try any of these products - and the results.

Denver’s Solution To Its Goose Problem

WARNING: read no further if you are squeamish

In many communities around the country, flocks of Canadian geese are a continual nuisance. Many no longer fly south for the winter, preferring to stick around northern sources of shelter and food. But they are messy and think nothing of holding up traffic, like their wild turkey cousins.

Denver came up with an innovative solution. After failing to reduce the flocks with non-lethal measures, Denver opted to cull more than 2,000 birds in 2019 and 2020. Then, it worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to process the fowl into meat for local charities serving hungry families.

Animal rights advocates and some local residents were upset that the birds were killed. But Denver was being overwhelmed by about 6,000 geese per season. As anyone who has encountered them knows, geese poop a lot, an estimated pound a day per day. I’ve had some spray my car, and it’s not pleasant.

Working before dawn, the USDA agents used kayaks and remote-controlled boats to herd the geese off lakes, through a chute and into a temporary pen. The workers then stuffed the birds into crates, six at a time, before loading them onto trucks bound for a nearby meat processor.

The project has worked spectacularly. There are only about 800 geese still visiting Denver. Clearly, word got around that they might become dinner and they are nesting elsewhere.

Crumbling Buildings Temporarily Close New Orleans Restaurants

I hope you saw my Note last week with ways to support New Orleans. Along with the tragic terror attack early New Year’s Day, Nola restaurants were plagued by a spate of building collapses.

The first took place in mid-December, when the roof partially fell in at Cafe du Monde in the historic French Market.

Then, a building collapsed in the Central Business District, forcing Maypop, a well-regarded Asian-fusion restaurant across the street, to go on hiatus.

Maypop subsequently came back, but another building collapse in the Lower Garden District on Monday night forced the closure of Gris-Gris. The restaurant lost $10,000 in holiday dinner reservations, according to its chef.

Trinh Vong, the owner of Lily’s Cafe, said her car was covered in fallen bricks. Officials subsequently planned to demolish the fallen building.

While no one was hurt by the collapses, it’s certainly not the way to kick off 2025.

San Francisco Drinkers Draw A Line

I’ve written a number of times this past year on the impact of higher prices on the restaurant world. In San Francisco, wine drinkers have collectively drawn a line.

Sales of red wine fell nearly 12 percent at San Francisco restaurants in the first half of 2024, while sales of white wine and sparkling wine also declined, according to data collected by Toast.

The San Francisco Chronicle said the only beverage category that grew was non-alcoholic beverages, which rose 1.8 percent.

Even in restaurants known as wine destinations, some customers are choosing not to order glasses or bottles. The average price of a five-ounce glass of red wine in San Francisco is around $17, the Chronicle said. The average for white is $14. Some unique varieties sell for as much as $90 a glass.

In a way, the news was not a surprise. Last May, the Chronicle reported that sales of California wines were slowing after a spike during the pandemic. Millennials and Gen Z customers are ordering fewer alcoholic drinks in general, for price and health concerns.

Keeping Up With CulinaryWoman

I had a surprisingly busy late December, as my editors wrapped up 2024. For newcomers to CulinaryWoman, I’m a contributing writer at Food & Wine, a contributing columnist at the Boston Globe, I write about urban topics at Time Magazine and I also write stories for the Ann Arbor Observer, a local monthly magazine.

That’s in addition to this Substack and our sister publication, Intersection, which looks at all the ways we get around.

Here’s a sample of my year-end writing.

At Food & Wine, I wrote about the outlook for more restaurant chain bankruptcies in 2025. I also looked at why grocery and menu prices are likely to continue to rise this year. (Yes, that is $6.50 for an espresso shot in Seattle.)

I wrote about support for food trucks in Dearborn, Mich., and I looked at how changing work patterns have affected restaurants’ catering business.

For the Ann Arbor Observer, I wrote about the $12 million quarterback at the University of Michigan and the impact that Name, Likeness and Image (NIL) is having on college sports.

You are welcome to get in touch and to follow me. I’ve been more active lately on Tik Tok and it’s been fun figuring out what resonates with its audience.

• Website: www.michelinemaynard.com

• Email: culinarywoman (@) gmail dot com

• LinkedIn: Micheline Maynard

• Threads and Instagram: (@) michelinemaynard

• Etsy shop: City Tips Vintage (use the code CULTURESTUDY for 25% off)

• TikTok: CulinaryWoman

Thanks for joining me for the first issue of 2025. I’ll be back tomorrow for paid subscribers with Red Beans & Advice, which is a weekly bonus that they receive for supporting CulinaryWoman. See you soon!