As you may or may not know, i have a number of hobbies ranging from those i am obsessive about (craft beer) to those that are short-lived because they're less fun than i think they'll be (it turns out that making homemade lip balm is even less exciting than one might think). one of my many enduring hobbies is cooking. i am actually a baker at heart, and, after having successfully* made croissants, pita, english muffins, pain de campagne, etc., i can say that it is clearly my strength in the kitchen, but even so, i do really enjoy cooking (at least when i'm not just cooking for myself).
knowing this, every year for christmas my parents thoughtfully purchase a subscription to bon appetit magazine for me. i love reading bon appetit. flipping through those glossy pages, i get to pretend that i have the kind of life where i host paper lantern-illuminated evening garden parties with fashionable, beautiful people, in which i effortlessly serve up plates of cherry and plum bruschetta with homemade ricotta and malden sea salt, bowls of bean thread noodles with spicy vegetables that i pickled myself, and tall glasses filled with sparkling tarragon-gin lemonade (note: i have never, ever made such things). i will readily admit that the entire magazine is a yuppie fantasy, but that is sort of the nice thing about it - when you are a poor grad student that eats cereal for more meals than you'd like to admit, it's fun to imagine a life in which you actually have the income and energy to, say, handpick mignonette strawberries for a strawberry and fresh ginger punch.
that being said, there is one thing that does make me a little insane about the yuppie-osity of bon appetit: the staff's love of, well, slumming it. take a look at these two short pieces from the june edition:
in just one-third of a magazine page, the following happens:
1) columnist andrew knowlton basically explains that the only reason he sent his kid PB&J for lunch was nostalgia for his own childhood (i mean, why else would he make something so uncultured). clearly it's been a while since andrew knowlton has had to eat PB&J out of financial necessity, if he ever did (side note: i'm sure his toddler is the sort of kid who readily eats kale and quinoa without even the slightest bit of coaxing. "my child has extraordinarily refined tastes for a 4 year old!").
2) in the neighboring column, he goes on to suggest that readers copy chefs and use plastic quart containers as drinking glasses, you know, just because they're so handy. i mean, why would you use those family heirloom cut crystal tumblers when it's just so much fun to drink your bubbly water with lime wedges out of a plastic take-out container? hey, bon appetit, there are actually people in this world who drink out of such containers because they don't have a choice and if you guys could get your heads out of your asses for a minute, you'd realize that the way you present these things is borderline offensive. look, if andrew knowlton enjoys pretending to be poor because it's Just. So. Cute. that's fine, but personally i don't give enough of a shit about andrew knowlton's plastic quart containers or PB&J dinners to read about it in your magazine.
so, please, bon appetit, just stick to what you do best: coming up with overly elaborate recipes made with obscure ingredients and sharing ridiculous gift ideas that only upper class people would find helpful (a $200 professional ice crushing machine makes a wonderful father's day gift for dad!). those of us that make $11k a year don't read your magazine to be notified that you can use plastic containers as drinking glasses - we are already well aware of that, trust me.
* note: 'successfully' does not = perfectly.
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