Is it pretentious to assume that Bon Appetit is a better magazine than Paula Dean's or Rachael Ray's?

May 11, 2012 by Lindsay

| 3 Comments

magazine covers Anna Brones over at the Huff Post sat down and took a hard look at three magazines: Cooking with Paula Deen, Everyday with Rachael Ray, and Bon Appétít. Among her questions, if they're promoting the same food, why do we have different reactions to them? For example, "Rachael Ray gives me a handful of fried chicken recipes and I cringe, but Bon Appétít says the food is "trending" and I start to think about what gluten free type of batter I can come up with?"

So are Rachael's and Paula's magazines (and, by extension, their TV shows) not really worthy of "serious" thought by sophisticated food types, or is it just a form of snobbish pretension? And should anyone feel "ashamed" for admitting to enjoying the Deen and Ray magazines? A lot of food for thought in this article.

And for those who haven't caught up on the latest activity at EYB, check out our growing magazine collection - we now have over 650 magazines indexed, and counting.

Category: Antipasto

3 Comments

napaneedlepoint on 5/11/2012 at 11:36 AM

Here's my thoughts about them. I rarely see anything of interest in Paula Deen, her food just isn't my style. Rachel Ray's magazine mostly makes me nuts. Maybe she's cooking the same kind of dishes as might appear in BA, but she'll call anything even remotely resembling a sandwich, a "sammie," she can't cook in plain old olive oil, but always in EVOO; the whole magazine, her books, and her show are all full of this NewSpeak crap. It's as if by calling it something different, we won't be afraid of that terrifying thing, a grilled cheese sandwich. Cut me a break. It demeaning, it's embarrassing, and even children would be ashamed to call or think of things this way. I feel almost as if she thinks that unless she talks to her readers like 5 year-olds, they will not understand or cook her dishes. Mind you, some of her recipes are good, but even in them I inwardly cringe at her language and tone. I subscribed to BA for many years and it really shaped my cooking. I like it much less these days. But always they take food and cooking seriously. They don't use cutesy names, they don't call things by weird made up names, and they expect you, as a reader and someone cooking their recipes to use some semblance of intelligence. Cooking isn't rocket science. Cooking should not have good humor and fun left out of it. but WORDS MEAN THINGS and so does respect. Respect for the food, the techniques and the people we cook for. When you make up words and try to be cute when you are talking to anyone who has reached school age, you are not showing the respect and courtesy they deserve.
ellabee on 5/11/2012 at 7:02 PM

Paula D-E-E-N. Everyone deserves the respect of having their name spelled correctly; additional respect optional.
Lindsay on 5/12/2012 at 2:49 PM

You're definitely right -- I apologize for the error.