The magazine will launch its first-ever Home Cook Superstar Search contest in the September issue. “This is truly the year of the home cook,” said Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin. Anyone over 18 can enter here until December 1. The winner will receive a feature in the March 2010 issue and two tickets to the Cayman Cookout food-and-wine festival....
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A piece in the New York Times today states the obvious: Upscale food magazines are reacting to the economic downturn by focusing on recipes and stories about meatloaf, macaroni and cheese, and burgers instead of missives on the joys of foie gras, caviar, and Kobe beef. The cover from the various March issues tell all: Bon Appétit: "Comfort Food Now" is a coverline; the photo is shephard's pieFood & Wine: Root vegetable gratin, a fancy-pants casserole, is the coverGourmet: Grilled ham and cheese sandwich on the cover Interestingly, the story barely mentions the web at all, which is kind of strange when you think about it....
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Every Thanksgiving we check in with food magazine editors around the country to see how they have gone about putting together their Thanksgiving issues. Food and Wine's editor in chief, Dana Cowin, gave us some insight into how the magazine does Thanksgiving. How do the ideas get developed? We think first how we can help people make Thanksgiving dinner. We try solve their problems. That's how we come up with our chart to help people cook Thanksgiving, no matter what kind of meal they want to serve. A lot of people cook a lot of dishes and they need help with timing and cooking space, so we show people how to use a grill as an extra oven and how...
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What a treat it was to page through the just-arrived August issue of Food & Wine magazine and happen across this photo (right) in an article titled "What's Your Food Personality: Picky or Adventurous?" That's Meg Hourihan, aka Megnut, who has served as senior adviser and so much more here at Serious Eats. From the article: Megnut.com blogger Meg Hourihan credits her adventurous palate to her family's "no thank you portion," a rule stipulating that there could be no outright refusals at the dinner table. Blubber is next on her list of foods to try. What kind of food palate do you have? What's next on your list of foods to try?...
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The magazine heaps praise on ... April Bloomfield: The Spotted Pig; New York Gabriel Bremer: Salts; Cambridge, Massachusetts Steve Corry: Five Fifty-Five; Portland, Maine Matthew Dillon: Sitka & Spruce; Seattle Gavin Kaysen: El Bizcocho; San Diego, California Johnny Monis: Komi; Washington, D.C. Sean O'Brien: Myth; San Francisco Gabriel Rucker: Le Pigeon; Portland, Oregon Ian Schnoebelen: Iris; New Orleans Paul Virant: Vie; Western Springs, Illinois Biographies and more info on Food & Wine's site....
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Food & Wine is actually my guilty pleasure food glossy. I know it's style- and star-driven, but it's a very well put together magazine whose editors execute their vision very well. That said, the "Taste Tests" in the front of the book almost always wimp out. I'm sure the reason is that they don't want to piss off any present or future advertisers, but the result for me is that I don't believe a word that's said in them. They tasted frozen pizzas in the April 2007 issue and reported on three, Amy's, American Flatbread, and Stouffer's French Bread Cheese Pizza. In a shocking development, they liked them all. If you need further proof that Food & Wine wimps out...
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