YES! YES! YES!

That really is at (or at least near) the root of all this, isn’t it? Fear of dilution of their precious, rarified air. The snobbiest of gourmets have claimed food for their own and none dare sully their territory.

A few years back I saw this same paranoia and outrage at the start of the digital art era, when professional 35mm photographers were up in arms over upstarts with digital cameras, and illustrators were throwing hissy fits over common folks with no professional training landing design gigs because they were skilled in Illustrator and Photoshop.

More recently, it’s been network & print politicos going batshit pissy over political blogs. How dare they — those amateurs — tread all over our elite territory! Surely, they can’t actually have valid, well-formed opinions?

In the publishing world, it’s (gasp! horror!) print-on-demand, and authors who dare reject the traditional route and publish their works online instead — and with (more gasp! more horror!) a Creative Commons license, no less. Good lord, what is this world coming to?

Well, it’s the internet era reaching full bloom, kids. Or Web 2.0 as the Big Geeks like to call it. It’s community, it’s access, and it’s everyone with an internet connection (or hell even occasional access to an internet cafe or a public library) getting their say.

The web isn’t about experts pontificating and the rest of us sitting back and saying “oooh, I could never do that” or worse, “I should never do that.” It’s about conversation. It’s about expressing yourself no matter where you’re at.

I’ve got a friend who, with her sense of humor and story-telling skills, could run bloggy circles around half the dull, self-important gourmets who think the web should only experience their level of cuisine. She’s not a great photographer just yet, and she’s only an assistant in the kitchen, not a head chef, but boy can she tell stories and draw great pictures.

And, despite the fact that she’s just seven-years-old, and probably can’t spell worth a damn, I’d take her blog over Snobby Gourmet’s blog any day.

It is pretty obvious to me, from looking at my readership and the readership of other blogs, that this is simply not the case.

Not everyone who reads food blogs is a food blogger, so not only were food bloggers insulted, but so were readers of food blogs.

This is where I think he went awry–and this is where I think a lot of people who are professional food writers for glossies go awry: they are writing for a particular audience that values particular things, and if you are not part of that audience, then you are not valued.

Food is universal, people. It is not “owned” by the gourmets, the foodies and the snobs of the world. Everybody eats, and apparently, lots of everybodies want to know what everybody else is eating.

I would like to remind Mr. Wells, and the editors of the glossies and all of the food snobs who look down on “the common folk” that Food & Wine, Gourmet and Bon Appetit are not the food magazines with the highest circulation in the US.

Not hardly.

The magazine with the highest circulation is Taste of Home, which consists primarily of recipes sent in by readers–home cooks from across the country. It accepts no advertising, because it doesn’t need to–it is completely reader-supported.

And its circulation figures blow the other glossies, all of whom are ad-heavy, out of the water.

What does this say?

That there is a significant portion of the country who don’t care for opinions like Mr. Wells’ nor do they care about what the glossy magazine arbiters of taste have to say about food.

They just care about food that is good, and how to make it.

People who read food blogs, I think of as being akin to the readers of Taste of Home.

Some of us care about different things than Wells.

And that is okay–there is room enough in the world for us all.

Jen’s mom, that Seuss quote is great!

We’re in swampy-busy land today so forgive me if I’m not more chatty (or profound — hah!) in my comments! More posting later (including chocolate from Chopper that is TO DIE FOR).

LOL! That could have been me saying that. In fact, I shy away from reviewing *any* creative pursuit, because what I write always seems to devolve into the Happy Flavors cliché.

Thanks for a post that made me feel more comfortable in my own skin. :-)