...the ones you said you used to write, the ones you said you'd rather write, the comfortable, in-depth interviews over supper where genuinely interesting people tell you about their genuinely interesting lives. I hope you will write more like that, and that Salon will publish them. Of course, I'm just a warm, sensual, zaftig creature who works in a food store -- and eats the food. However, no matter how much money the fashionable are plunking down on food porn, I suspect there are more people like me than your former editor would ever suspect -- or be interested in reaching. See, I also suspect that what you went through at that publication had more to do with the self-image of various individuals under whom you worked than real pressure in the real marketplace.

I heard on NPR over the weekend that the most successful food magazine in the country is Taste of Home, with a readership on a scale with People or Time. Unless they also listen to NPR and heard the same story, people who buy cooking and food magazines but don't eat probably have never heard of this magazine. Most of its sales are home subscriptions, not newsstand sales, and it doesn't accept advertising. The kind of food it talks about is the kind your mom made, if your mom cooked, probably not much in the way of port wine reductions. I doubt very much this magazine's editors have ever felt the need to feature an interview with a celebrity chef.

You are the journalist. You can draw your own conclusion(s). I just wanted to point this out, and to encourage you to write more about what's real and true, whether it's ultimately about food or people, or (preferably) both. There is a market for it. I'm in that market, and I'd like to read it.