I’m grateful that the British royal family exists, because it allows the rest of us to procrastinate at work by wondering, “What does the Queen do all day?” When de facto British cultural ambassador and famed cartoon pig, Peppa Pig, considered that question, she came to the conclusion that because a queen can do whatever she wants, queens must spend all their time eating chocolate cake.

It’s finally, finally starting to feel like spring out there, and that means it’s almost outdoor-dining season. Or maybe we should call it Nigella Lawson season, because her new show, At My Table, features one of the most gorgeous alfresco dining setups I’ve ever seen, with a walled garden full of twinkly lights and a heavy wooden table big enough to seat 20 if they squeezed in.

Jamie Oliver sure is fast! While the rest of the world was sitting around idly wondering what Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge would name their new royal baby, Jamie Oliver was baking. Just 43 minutes after Kensington Palace announced on Twitter that the new royal baby’s name was Prince Louis Arthur Charles, Jamie Oliver posted a congratulatory cake to mark the occasion.

Ice cream sandwiches seem like one of the most innocuous things a person could have a controversial opinion about. Ice cream is good. Cookies are good. Sandwiches are good. If you make a sandwich out of cookies and ice cream, what’s not to like?

Fuller Goldsmith is just 14 years old, and he’s already a seasoned TV chef. He won Chopped Jr. in 2017, and he competed on Top Chef Jr. this year before having to withdraw halfway through the season, and he says he was inspired to become a competitive chef by his hero, Guy Fieri. Now, after years of fandom, Fuller got to meet his idol in person at a California barbecue festival, and the scene was so touching it will probably make you cry.

Nigella Lawson is one of my favorite food people to listen to, and not just because of the plummy accent. She was a writer before she was a cooking personality, and she has a very thoughtful, insightful approach to food. You can tell she thinks a lot about how people cook, eat, and relate to food. This week Nigella went on Eater Upsell, Eater’s fantastic podcast that you should definitely listen and subscribe to if you like podcasts and are interested in food at all.

I can’t believe it, but Mary Berry — queen of British baking, author of more than 70 cookbooks — is utterly and completely wrong about pies. On the last episode of Britain’s Best Home Cook, Mary Berry stunned the world and her fellow judges by asserting that pies should just have pastry lids and not be totally enclosed in pastry. According to Good Housekeeping UK, host Claudia Winkleman was asking the judges about their favorite pies when Berry let the bomb drop.

Ina Garten has the most gorgeous life. I thought I envied Ina’s fancy French range, or her huge collection of Le Creuset French ovens in Dune, but that was before I saw her library — and now I’m positively drooling. Ina posted a photo of her library to Instagram, and I can only imagine how many times it has since been added to people’s “dream library” Pinterest boards. It has a comfy chair with orange velvet pillows, because Ina loves a pop of orange.

Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond has turned her small town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, into a tourist attraction, and she’s just expanded her food empire with a brand-new restaurant called P-Town Pizza. Ree announced her upcoming new restaurant on Instagram over the weekend. “P-Town Pizza,” she wrote, adding several pizza slice emojis. “I think we’re gonna open next week if we can push ourselves over the finish line.

Side dishes have a bad reputation for being uninspired and feeling like they were added to the menu as an afterthought, usually because they were. One moment you’re at the grocery store picking out a protein to cook based on what looks good and is well-priced that day, like a responsible adult, and the next you’re standing there like, “Oh shoot, now I have to figure out something that goes with this.

Chrissy Teigen’s first cookbook, Cravings, took care of practically all of my gift-giving needs for an entire year. Everyone in my life seemed to want it, from very serious cooks to people who don’t cook at all. And even though people might initially have been skeptical of a celebrity cookbook in general and a supermodel’s cookbook in particular, Cravings was an enormous bestseller.

Ina Garten’s recipes are foolproof. She’s so meticulous in her measuring and testing that as long as you follow her instructions, you’re basically guaranteed excellent results. The only thing that ever makes me nervous about following an Ina recipe is the way she always says to use “good” ingredients. The phrase “good olive oil” is practically one of her trademarks, but “good” means different things to different people.

It feels like it’s a thousand degrees outside, but no matter how hot it gets, I can’t picture Mary Berry sweating. With her pristine pastels and giant pearl necklaces, Britain’s baking queen always looks as cool as Elsa (and I only just noticed they almost have the same hair). Mary Berry does not actually have magic powers, though, and she doesn’t want to be standing over a hot stove in the middle of a heatwave any more than the rest of us do.

Mindy Kaling’s Instagram account is an absolute treasure. Where else can you go to ogle a custom-made Naeem Khan gown and an ombré chocolate cake at the same time? Kaling is brilliantly funny, and she loves food as much as she loves fashion. And this weekend she revealed that she really enjoys making baby food and doing meal prep for her 6-month-old baby.

Oprah Winfrey just found a new Favorite Thing, but this one is quite a bit bigger than a box of scones or a hot sauce sampler. Oprah had lunch at a small health food chain restaurant, and she liked it so much that she’s added the company to her investment portfolio and taken a seat on its board of directors. That’s very good news for the restaurant chain known as True Food Kitchen, because Oprah’s investment prowess is legendary.

Jennifer Garner hung out with Ina Garten this week, and she knows we’re all jealous. “I understand if this brings up big feelings for you, but I spent the morning with @inagarten,” she wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of herself, beaming, with her arm around the shoulders of the Barefoot Contessa. She touched Ina Garten! I would be screaming. Garner looks like she might be squealing internally, too. If I met Ina, I would not be able to stop talking about it.

Have you ever tried to ask for Grey Poupon in a restaurant? I will never forget the time I wasn’t thinking and said to a server, “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?” And then he put on a fake British accent and said, “But of course!” Then all my friends laughed, and I felt so silly I made a vow to only ever ask for “spicy mustard” from that point on.

Ina Garten’s next cookbook, Cook Like a Pro, won’t come out until fall, but she’s already given us a couple of ideas about what’s to come. First there was the big reveal of the cover, and yesterday she shared her favorite summer salad from the book. It’s a simple tomato and avocado number, and it’s just the kind of thing I want to eat right now. “I’ve been making it so much this summer I just had to share it with you early!

Alton Brown is not happy about his most recent Amazon order. Sure, he received the 10 small pie tins he needed, but the packaging they came in was definitely not what he was expecting. Instead of packaging them all together and mailing them in a single box, Amazon sent each pie tin in an individual package.

People have been fighting over whether or not pineapple is allowed on pizza for years, and the debate doesn’t show any signs of stopping. Gordon Ramsay has delivered profanity-laced diatribes against pineapple pizza, only to have Alton Brown clap right back to defend it. Even the President of Iceland has an opinion on the pizza topping (he’s not for it).

If you’re looking for a change, you don’t need to rush out and get bangs. Follow Ree Drummond’s lead and make these Instant Pot carnitas instead — they’re a much better way to spice up your life, and you won’t run the risk of getting stuck with a bad photo on your driver’s license. This weekend the Pioneer Woman introduced a recipe for Instant Pot carnitas cooked in Sprite that she says “will change your life for the better.

When life gives you lemons you’re supposed to make lemonade. When life gives you tomatoes — a whole lot of tomatoes — do what Ina Garten does and make tomatoes and burrata for dinner. Garten is German for “garden,” and this year Ina’s garden bestowed a truly massive tomato harvest upon her. I thought I did a good job with my patio tomatoes, but Ina’s are on another level. She has red tomatoes, gold tomatoes, big tomatoes, small tomatoes.

Don’t you just hate it when you’re trying to make a recipe, but halfway through you realize you’re missing a key ingredient? It’s so frustrating. It happens to the best of us, though. Just this week, Alton Brown found himself with a raw steak, but no oil or butter to cook it in. Rather than give up, or drive to the store to get some more, the Good Eats host decided to improvise, and he cooked his steak in mayonnaise instead. Even he seemed surprised.

Cauliflower is huge right now. Sometimes it seems like we’re using cauliflower in everything. And cauliflower is generally very easy to cook: Just chop it up and toss it in a salad, pasta sauce, casserole, or whatever your recipe says to do. But Ina Garten recently received a question from a fan who wanted to know how to cut a cauliflower without getting little bits of it all over her kitchen. At first, she did not know what to make of it. “Why does it get all over your kitchen?

There are a lot of perks to being a royal. Queen Elizabeth II apparently drinks Champagne every day, is surrounded by adorable corgis, and owns so many diamonds her jewelry collection has its own curatorial staff. But news came out this past week that she never, ever eats garlic. Living in a castle sounds lovely, but it doesn’t seem worth it for a lifetime without garlic. Two former royal chefs have confirmed that the Queen banned garlic from Buckingham palace entirely.

British royals are Food Network fans, just like the rest of us. Except that when they have cooking problems, they get to go right to their favorite chefs and ask for help in person. So when Prince William needed help making lasagna, he went right to Giada De Laurentiis and asked her to tell him what he was doing wrong — and he absolutely made her day when he did it.

Nigella Lawson and her deeply enviable life are back on TV in the U.K. with a new cooking show called Nigella: At My Table. From the first episode, audiences were captivated by Nigella’s cooking, but also her amazing accessories, from her see-through toaster to her slinky dressing gown with a map of Venice printed on it. But one item immediately stood out even among all of Nigella Lawson’s other beautiful things: her copper KitchenAid mixer.

Ree Drummond, aka the Pioneer Woman, started a blog about going “from city girl to domestic country wife” in 2006, and people loved it. In the past decade she’s turned her “cowboy-friendly” cooking and super-relatable persona into a multi-million-dollar empire. She has multiple best-selling cookbooks, a print magazine that sold out its first issue, home furnishing and cooking accessory lines, and she’s one of the most popular stars on the Food Network.

The first year my sister and her husband tried to cook the turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, her mother-in-law made a whole spare bird, just in case. The turkey was fine, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. And Thanksgiving disasters can happen to anybody — especially if it’s their first time hosting. Even Martha Stewart, the woman who does everything beautifully, burned the turkey to a crisp and ruined her own Thanksgiving dinner the first time she hosted.

Celebrity chef BFFs Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert are a fascinating pair. They travel together, cook together, and drink an astonishing amount of alcohol together. Bourdain is a loud, opinionated TV host and writer with a habit of offending somebody every other week or so. Ripert has three Michelin stars and is a master craftsman who is widely regarded as one of the best chefs in the world.

The holidays bring out the best in desserts. There’s nothing like a giant pile of elaborately decorated sweets to make a person feel festive, and Giada De Laurentiis has a gorgeous take on a traditional Italian Christmas dessert called a struffoli. It’s impressive and fun, but it’s surprisingly easy and a great thing to make together with family. A struffoli is a big pile of honey-coated pastry balls that are sweet on the outside and soft on the inside.

Ina Garten is just the best. She’s warm, funny, casually elegant, and her award-winning cookbooks are absolutely foolproof. Her food expertise is renowned, she has the best dinner party tips, and I am about 99-percent sure that Prince Harry proposed to Meghan Markle over Ina Garten’s roast chicken. So when Ina Garten suggests something, we listen. That’s why it was so surprising to hear that her top choice for her last meal would be a hot dog. A hot dog!

I’m convinced Ina Garten’s kitchen is magic. She whips up roasted vegetable lasagnas and chocolate sea salt cookies effortlessly, and her holiday cocktail party menu involves handmade French chocolate bark and roasted figs wrapped in prosciutto. But there’s one food too time-consuming and labor-intensive for even Ina Garten to cook at home, even though it’s one of her favorites: cassoulet.

Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, has a multi-million-dollar food empire, an adorably rustic kitchen that’s bigger than many apartments, and a reputation for whipping up down-home recipes big enough to feed an entire cattle ranch. But even she knows what it’s like to be surprised by a huge group of her kids’ friends, and it turns out she handles it just the way the rest of us do: with pre-made food from the grocery store.

It’s pretty safe to say that Nigella Lawson eats a lot of very good things in any given year. In 2017 alone she used a spiralizer to make perfect golden shoestring French fries, and we even watched her eat a salted caramel sundae topped with crushed homemade meringue cookies. But even among all the very good things Nigella Lawson eats on a daily basis, some meals in particular stand out, and she says the vada pav she just ate in Mumbai is the single best thing she ate in 2017.

Sheet cakes are the unsung heroes of the baking world. Those flat, single-layer, rectangular cakes are easy to make and decorate, and they’re a staple of children’s birthday parties everywhere, but they don’t tend to wow a crowd like a towering layer cake. But now supermodel, cookbook author, and Twitter darling Chrissy Teigen is taking a stand for the little guy, and she says it’s time to bring back sheet cake.

Anthony Bourdain’s favorite city in the world is Tokyo, but if he’s looking for pasta, he goes straight to Italy. On a famous episode of Bourdain’s No Reservations, he declared a simple bowl of pasta to be “the greatest thing in the history of the world,” and it’s actually very easy to make at home. Bourdain’s favorite pasta in the world is cacio e pepe, which is one of the simplest things in the world to make.