2022’s Top Recipes: A Baker’s Dozen ﻿+ 2023: The Year of the Regenivore

Year-end lists, top-ten lists, trend prediction lists – you may throw up your hands at them all, but I am an unabashed list fan. I love to crawl inside the psyche of the hive mind. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting secret intel on the future.

My favorite year-end piece is always Kim Severson’s report on food trends for The New York Times. Amidst sexier predictions (more jiggly, Jello-y food; more bracing marine flavors – especially in cocktails; a new fascination with ube, a purple yam from the Philippines), this year's list (How Will We Eat in 2023? Here are 10 Predictions) includes the evolution of eco-friendly eating. While the 2022 food word of the year was climatarian, in 2023 it will be regenivore. What’s the difference? Severson writes:

“It’s no longer about eating sustainably, which implies a state of preserving what is. A new generation wants food from companies that are actively healing the planet through carbon-reducing agriculture, more rigorous animal welfare policies and equitable treatment of the people who grow and process food.”

Luckily our Vineyard farms have a jump on this trend.

Nationally and globally, this evolution will also mean stronger efforts to reduce food waste as well as waste in food packaging. Perhaps for us that will mean taking another look at this 2022 Cook the Vineyard list, Ten Tips for Climate-Friendly Cooking, and revising it for 2023. Feel free to help me out with this by sending ideas or letting me know what changes, however small, you've made this year.

The Top 13

And now for the fun list: our most popular recipes of 2022. The hive mind in this case is the aggregate of users visiting pages on Cook the Vineyard, as tracked by Google Analytics. Naturally, Cook the Vineyard readers as a group can be relied upon for their good taste. You can't go wrong with any of these.

I've arranged them by where they might fall in a meal, not by rank - though I will reveal to you (chuckle if you like) that the single most visited recipe was Simple Barbecue Sauce, perhaps the easiest recipe with the fewest ingredients on the website. Figures! Below are the other twelve.

Happy New Year to all. We'll see you on Instagram @cookthevineyard.