It’s that time of year again, time for our annual celebration of food and food lovers and everything and everyone in between. We hope you’ll hold onto this issue as a sort of reference guide. It’s loaded with tasty info, including a few must-try recipes. There are a couple for Jell-O salad (pg. 30) and, in celebration of Afroman’s trial victory, one for pound cake and its glaze. If you don’t know the whole story, go to pg. 39. It’s insane, but when cops busted down the rapper’s door on the hunt for contraband, all they found was some delicious-looking pound cake.
Speaking of wild tales, the one-woman show at Amphibian Stage is a real treat. In Did You Eat?, food and family come together in at times funny and other times poignant moments (pg. 20).
What we eat and the stories we tell go way back, and on pg. 37, we offer a look into Hollywood’s relationship with cuisine through the decades.
Zest 2026 also serves up an in-depth feature on how food affects our moods (pg. 11), a takedown of the new MAHA Food Pyramid (pg. 9), a list of spring foodie events (pg. 14), and so much more, so grab your apron and pull up a chair. It’s Zest 2026. — Anthony Mariani, Editor
