A trio of food-truck and showbiz rookies from Montpelier are contestants in the upcoming season of  "The Great Food Truck Race,” a Food Network TV show that kicks off its 10th season Sunday, June 9, at 9 p.m.

Sue Aldrich, her son Charlie Aldrich, and her friend Paulette Fiorentino-Robinson  form a team called Make It Maple. It’s one of nine food-truck teams competing for a $50,000 prize by cooking and peddling food on a southern road trip along the Atlantic seacoast.  The teams, including Brunch Babes (Grand Rapids, Mich.) and the People's Fry (Nashville), also compete in various culinary challenges. Each week,  the truck that makes the least amount of money is eliminated from the competition.

Update: This post was updated on September 14 to include information about layoffs at Meredith Corporation.

EatingWell and Cooking Light magazines are merging under a plan announced by the magazines’ owner, Meredith Corporation, in a September 13 news release. The combined publication, which will keep the EatingWell name, will be “the largest subscription magazine in the epicurean category under the EatingWell brand,” according to the release.

EatingWell, based in Shelburne, will increase its print publication from six times a year to 10, editor-in-chief Jessie Price told Seven Days. In addition, the merger of the two food publications means that EatingWell’s circulation will rise from 1 million to 1.77 million, she said.

“It’s amazing news for us,” Price said. “It’s so validating of everything this brand, and everyone at this brand, has been working on every day, every week, every issue, and every year.” 

You might remember chef Sara Moulton as one of the Food Network’s original celebrities during its first decade of television. Maybe you recognize her from her current show, "Sara's Weeknight Meals," which is set to air its sixth season in January 2017.  Or perhaps you own one of her best-selling cookbooks. Her latest, Sara Moulton’s Home Cooking 101: How to Make Everything Taste Better is an opus of home cooking, relevant to those with and without experience in the restaurant world.

With more than 30 years of culinary experience, Moulton’s other distinctions include being a protégé of Julia Child, executive chef of Gourmet Magazine, cofounder of the New York Women’s Culinary Alliance, and a member of the James Beard Foundation’s Who’s Who of Food and Beverage.

On July 9, I had the privilege of meeting the acclaimed chef at the 2016 Grafton Food Festival. Moulton and I settled into two armchairs at the Grafton Inn to talk about Child, culinary media and Vermont's influence on the food world. 

When everyone at your table grasps at a basket of warm rolls as if they're hundred-dollar bills, they're either very hungry, very cold, or both.

It might have been sunny and 72 degrees outside, but inside a conference room at Montpelier's Capitol Plaza Hotel yesterday, the temperature hovered closer to arctic. A few dozen journalists had gathered for the Vermont Press Association's annual meeting and awards ceremony and, after a few hours of sitting through panel discussions, the rolls were the very welcome advance guard of our lunch, one that would almost certainly (I was told) end with chocolate mousse.

The rolls were also, indeed, vital warming devices; I was tempted to place one on my lap, but instead slathered it with Cabot butter and kept an anxious eye out for the main event.

A new four-minute online film featuring Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is taking aim at a powerful pair of billionaire brothers who the senator claims are bankrolling think tanks and politicians to spread misinformation about Social Security.

In a fast-moving online film titled "Echo Chamber" (embedded below), in which Sanders is the narrator, the independent senator offers a litany of examples in which he claims David and Charles Koch have spent tens of millions of dollars to dupe the American people into believing that Social Security is going bankrupt and needs major changes to survive.

A group of think tanks have received more than $28.4 million in Koch funding and produced more than 300 position papers distorting the purpose and effectiveness of Social Security, according to filmmaker Brave New Foundation.

The film reveals a cottage industry comprised of Koch brothers’ spokespeople, front groups, think tanks, academics and elected officials, which have built a perpetual echo chamber that Sanders argues is transforming what were once "fringe" ideas into popular mainstream public policy arguments.

Those fringe ideas? That the retirement age for Social Security needs to be increased to 70; that Social Security is already bankrupt; and that Social Security, or portions of it, should be privatized and invested in the stock market.