And It Tastes Like Home
A Taste of Home is truer than I thought. I subscribed to the magazine on a whim. Could 3.1 million readers be wrong? In 2002 it was said to be the highest circulation food magazine in the country, and it still very well could be. An anti-Gourmet, one would presume.
And sure enough, there is not one single whimsical alfresco spread in the publication. The photos are about the food with an occasional thumbnail headshot of a reader who submitted a recipe.
Also of note, editorial assistant, Jane Stasik, shown sitting in a pile of mail (because she answers reader letters, of course) is clearly over 40. None of that young, striving Conde Nast business.
I was surprised at just what a taste of my home the recipes really were, good and bad. I haven’t encountered monkey bread in years, though we called the canned biscuit confection cinnamon pull-aparts. I’d whip up a batch right now if I kept biscuit dough around the house—mixing flour, water and baking powder, myself? No way.
I was not surprised how prominently ground beef is featured, it’s inexpensive and feeds a family. Plastic-and-Styrofoam-wrapped pink squiggles of meat always taste like compromise to me unless they’re going into a burger.
We were never served Italian shepherd’s pie, cream cheese and swiss lasagna or roadside diner cheeseburger quiche (second place winner in their Beef It Up contest) in my household but hot tamale casserole comes quite close to what I might’ve found on my plate. Not a taste I’d like to replicate. And sadly, only subscribers can access magazine recipes online, hence no links here.
On the other hand, there is an entire feature devoted to doughnuts from scratch. It’s quite possible that I’m just being wooed by the true blue–my favorite unnatural hue for food–doughnut topping their tree.
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