What’s Been Cooking: January 2026
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Happy New Year, everyone! 2026 was off to a busy start for us – here’s what we were up to in January.
🤓 Tastemaker Conference
We started our new year full steam ahead with our first time ever attending Tastemaker Conference! It’s a 2-day event for food creators packed with classes, networking, and social events.
This year it was in sunny Los Angeles, which meant we got a much-needed break from the cold Vermont winter. Although we didn’t have much time to get out in the city, we did venture off the property for some authentic Mexican food, which we’ve missed so much since leaving the west coast!
We also made time for dinner at DAMA, a restaurant by Chef Antonia Lofaso, who we love watching on Food Network. They serve Latin-inspired small plates, so we tried a variety of dishes including an arepa, white bean dip, empanadas, and elote. Everything was so fresh and delicious.
All in all, it was a wonderful two days of meeting like-minded creators and soaking up all the knowledge we could. We’re feeling so refreshed and even more motivated and inspired to keep sharing our recipes.
😋 Winter FancyFaire*
Our tickets to the conference included a press pass for the Specialty Food Association’s semi-annual trade show, which was just a bus ride away in San Diego. We got to meet tons of brands, sample new food and beverage products, and attend a live cooking demo by Chef Joe Sasto (who we also got to meet – I was so star-struck).
One of the big takeaways we learned from both FancyFaire* and Tastemaker is that people are craving human connection and real life experiences. With the rise of AI, the past few months have felt a little scary for food creators – so it was a sigh of relief to hear that these advancements in technology are actually making people want more connection.
So we’ve been busy brainstorming ways that we can strengthen our community here at The Candid Cooks. If there’s anything specific you’d like to see from us, leave a comment or send us an email! Your feedback is what matters most.
❄️ Saved By The Freezer
Our flight home from California landed around 11pm on a Wednesday. Between a long day of travel, a late night, and a few days of jet lag, we didn’t make it to the grocery store until Saturday – but thankfully, our freezer had a few of our favorite ingredients waiting for us when we got home.
On Thursday night, we defrosted a block of pizza sauce from our half cup Souper Cubes tray and a half pound of ground sausage from the freezer and combined it with chopped Calabrian chilies and rigatoni for an easy yet satisfying dinner.
On Friday night, we defrosted a serving of refried black beans, some frozen corn, and a package of soyrizo and paired it with tortilla chips and cheese for a simple nacho platter. I’m a pro at raiding the kitchen and making nachos out of anything, so after finding a jar of pureed chipotles in the back of our fridge we whipped up a quick batch of chipotle mayo. Drizzled on top of the nachos, it was quite a delicious dinner for being thrown together with not much available to us.
All this to say, your freezer can truly be a life-saver when you don’t have the time or energy to go to the store. Stock up on your most-used ingredients and freeze leftovers when you won’t eat them in time, and you’ll always have something to fall back on!
🥖 Homemade Bread Bowls
For his birthday last month, I got Alex this double bread baker that reviewers said was the perfect size for bread bowls. It’s a baking project he’s been excited about since he started making bread (and I love eating bread), so we were both itching to use it when we got home from the conference!
He made the usual white artisan loaf from our Flour Water Salt Yeast cookbook and split one of the dough balls in two to fit the pan. It worked perfectly, and we had the most delicious dinner of broccoli cheddar soup in homemade bread bowls on a cold, snowy night.
It was a lot of bread so we didn’t end up eating it all at once, but the soup-soaked bread bowl was surprisingly good the next day. We put the leftover bread in the fridge so it would stay fresh, then warmed it in the toaster oven before eating it.
🏈 Game Day Eats
We’re counting down the days until the Super Bowl! For the championship games last weekend, we had a little party for two so that we could film a few more of our favorite recipes: high protein buffalo chicken dip, bacon cream cheese jalapeno poppers, and bacon jalapeno popper dip.
The nice thing about both dips is that they’re served cold. We planned to make these ahead of time so that we wouldn’t be rushing to get everything done in time for the afternoon game. But of course, filming took longer than we expected and it was a mad rush anyways 🙃
We’ve been sharing our best Super Bowl recipes on social all week long and will post a new video every day until the big game. If you want to follow along, check in on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok!
