Wednesday, March 20

 
In Praise (Or Not) of 'Taste of Home' UPDATED

Do any of you read this magazine? It makes a big noise about being different from the usual food magazines because it uses only recipes from readers; in other words, real people, not those snotty East Coast editors who are too skinny for words and wouldn't know how to use a tub of Cool Whip on a bet. Personally, I am not a fan, although I know many are (even a couple of you!). I find it hard to read, and it's a little too just-us-girls in the writing style. But, as this New York Times article shows, (it's written by confirmed New Yorker Regina Schrambling, who manages to look only slightly askance at the magazine and its solidly Midwestern staff and surroundings) the magazine has a devoted readership and reflects its readers. I loved the paragraph that says the magazine opened a Taste of Home restaurant to divert its groupies from visiting the offices. The main reason I don't read it is that one of its readers ripped off a recipe that won a prize in the Wisconsin State Journal's old cookbook contest in 1989 or 1990 - the reason I know she ripped it off is because I rewrote the recipe based on an extensive phone call with its originator, and the version that appeared in the magazine didn't even change my somewhat colloquial wording. Still irritates the heck out of me, but it was a great recipe: Blueberry Stuffed French Toast. Mmmm!

Update! The reason for all this East Coast interest in a distinctly middlebrow foodiemag is that Readers Digest had been rumored to be interested in buying it for $700 million. The rumor came true and the sale was announced on Friday. Seven hundred million?? That'll go a lot farther in Greenfield, Wisconsin, than it would in New York or LA.
posted by Unknown 11:18 AM