From AP, April 28: "...For a third year in a row, launches of new food magazines topped all other categories, according to Samir Husni, director of the Magazine Innovation Center at the University of Mississippi School of Journalism."
To my utter astonishment, a not new magazine called Taste of Home is the nation's best selling "food" mag, according to the article--and I have never seen it nor heard of it.
In its website About section it states this:
"Taste of Home is part of the Reader's Digest Food Affinity (??!!), the first and only media community designed to unify the voices and experience of everyday cooks and home entertainers." "Home entertainer" brought to (my bizarre) mind some dame with an apron on doing baton twirling, or sword swallowing...Then, recalling my immersion in the House and Garden network a while back, I realized that the word is really "entertaining." People no longer have friends over for dinner, they "entertain." Silly me. Images of cocktail parties in the 1960's begin to swirl in my brain.
In any event, it appears that food magazines, like most of the food blogs out there---20,000 plus?---are all about pictures of dishes, and zillions of recipes--and the interweaving of foodish groupies with same. Why am I not enticed? ( Full disclosure: We subscribe to Saveur, a mag that started out emphasizing food history, as well as travel, as well as recipes, but I fear it is morphing more into mega recipe land.)
Give me The New Yorker, farm stands and growers markets, fun, unpretentious restaurants, and once in a while, a new cookbook to leaf through! Thanks.
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