LOVED this piece by Ann Bauer. Great writing, and I did enjoy that little bit of food porn at the end!!

But good grief, all you jealous food writer wannabes...so she had YOUR dream job and she didn't appreciate it as much as you would have, because she wasn't a true believer and worshiper at the temple of friseed escarole.

GET OVER IT!

great topic. on a different note, i've been at plenty of fine restuarants and have also discovered that i was the only one eating at the table. my friends, all wealthy (myself NOT included) women, stick thin and brittle of body and soul were all involved in some sort of food program or another - no wheat, no dairy, no meat - no flavor. colonics scheduled, new diets to try, another 12 step program to attend - these women were on to anything that would dissapate a carbohydrate or burn a calorie. Chicken Ceasar salads were ordered with dressing on the side, no cheese and god forbid, no croutons. this is not a ceasar - it's lettuce topped with chicken! infuriating - but revenge was sweet - or should i say pleasantly carb loaded - i would tuck into my fusilli with eggplant (i wasn't much on big plates small portions, frankly)as my women friends would at first eye me suspiciously for eating such poison and then ask, ever so quietly and demurely, as if asking their husbands for yet another st. john suit, if they could have a taste. of course, i'd answer. their fork would enter my bowl of pasta, stab one strand and take the rest of the meal to finish it. such suffering for the sake of a few pounds.

You don't cook, you don't even really like food, so I gather you wanted to be a food writer mainly so you could feed your people your writing.

That's rather dishonest. I can see why you want to blame it all on skinny women. It's so easy for women of your political orientation to do that.

Well, as everyone knows, skinny women have no souls, they have no feelings, they are incapable of experiencing pain or humiliation. So they can be abused and judged in print as much as any writer of your highly judgmental generation desires.

In Paradise, Muslim men are supposed to be given 72 virgins who have no souls and hence can't be hurt by being used as sexual gratification devices.

Perhaps when you arrive in Heaven, you'll be given 72 skinny women without souls, and then you can judge them and criticize them in public without hurting the feelings of any real human being.

Obviously,

She doesn't like or respect food

I hope this confession makes her lose her job and send her back to her kitchen cooking pasta sauce Minnesota-style

...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.

However, I would rather have read the author's take on organic pork frams, the resurgence of beets, and upscale restaurants feeding the homeless.

It would be nice if Salon bought these kinds of stories rather than so many referential articles by journalists about journalism.

Thank you for the informative and entertaining article. It is stories like this that keep me checking in to Salon everyday. Happy New Year!

There seems to be an endless number of Salon readers who have gargantuan chips on their shoulders (Harri whoever being a prime example). The new year is hardly one day old, and some of you have already begun 2006 just as you finished 2005--by finding fault in others just to make yourselves seem smart(er). Why not make a resolution to lighten up and get over yourselves. Self-absorbed, indeed!

As a professional food writer for nearly 12 years, I can indeed relate to some of the things Ms. Bauer talks about. Yet, since graduating from journalism school, I have been writing about food (in San Francisco) for a living and I still love writing about food each and every day. I am now the editor of two newspapers, but what it really comes down to is that I still love to write, and I also love to eat. I grew up with a Sicilian grandfather who loved food for all the right reasons. None of my grandfather's life lessons sound even remotely like Ms. Bauer's experiences with food, so perhaps she was not fortunate enough to learn to appreciate food through the eyes of someone like my grandfather who loved to eat but also understood that he ate to live. There was nothing fancy about his cooking -- a basket of fried smelts or a bowl of aglio e olio -- but I've rarely eaten anything as satisfying. I would like to think that when I write my restaurant reviews, food features and chef profiles, I write with a sense of whimsy, curiosity, and a large dose of passion --- all the things my grandfather taught me about food and all the things my favorite cooks (not just "chefs") have in common. Without passion, all the fancy linens, farmers' market heirloom tomatoes, top culinary school training and $20 glasses of Pinot can't make a meal memorable.

As for Ms. Harri Covert, you try far too hard to be engaging and simply come across as immature, inexperienced, catty and jealous. Pinot has been "passe for ages"? Really? Did you mean to say Merlot? As someone who eats out for a living six nights a week, I can tell you it still dominates the wine lists of SF's top restaurants and is still the number one selling glass of red wine. (And a little film you may have heard of last year called "Sideways" has made it more popular than ever). I assume when you say you are a "food writer" that you are not a published one. Ms. Bauer, on the other hand, has some chops, even if she is bored with writing about food. So Ann, if you want to write those thought-provoking pieces that your former publication turned down, give me a call.