[Sca-cooks] Christopher Kimball

[Susan Lin]

He mostly replied to question.  He was very entertaining and told some fun
stories.

Someone mentioned the NYTimes article and his reply did not come off as a
food fight - rather that the old model of cooking magazines is being
challenged by the internet where some sites are good and some are bad and
there's really no way to distinguish which is which because anyone can put
anything they want up on the internet without having to stand behind it.

He worked for Gourmet.  Then he started his own magazine and learned the
hard way about the magazine world.. The original Cooks magazine was paid for
by advertising  -  Conde Nast bought it and promptly closed it and gobbled
up all his subscribers for Gourmet.

He also told us that his no advertising idea was met with distain when he
started it but recently with ad dollars drying up he's getting calls from
editors wanting to know how he's doing and how it's working for him.

He and his staff go through a lot of work to make sure a recipe is good and
will work for the home cook and I guess it's hard to see other people just
throwing stuff out there without backing it up.

I took away from it that experience and skill still matter.  Beware of
recipes found on the web - some are good, some are bad and there's just no
way of knowing which is which.  Training and skill is not necessarily
reflected in a twitter post.

That being said - I really like 101cookbooks.com - she tells how she gets a
recipe and what she does to change it.

They also joked about him not being Alton Brown!  But, I personally think
they have a lot in common.

-S

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:22 AM, Johnna Holloway <johnnae at mac.com> wrote:

> Did he happen mention the food fight he is in versus the
> recipe blogs and wikis?
>
> It started with this OP-Ed piece.
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/opinion/08kimball.html?_r=1
>