A letter from our publisher
Remember when food magazines were worth keeping?
One dinner out, or four issues you’ll keep forever. Here’s why I think it’s an easy choice.
You probably had a stack of them once. Dog-eared, a little splattered, sitting by the stove or on the shelf next to the cookbooks. Some of you have told me you still do.
Our readers write to us about those magazines all the time. One mentioned the old Gourmet. Another said we filled “the void that was left when Martha Stewart stopped publishing her magazine.” A woman who started her career at Bon Appétit wrote that it was nice to see someone making that kind of magazine again.
I think they’re all describing the same feeling. A magazine you sat down with. One that took you somewhere, introduced you to someone, and sent you into the kitchen with a plan.
So we made one.
My team already publishes Quiltfolk, a magazine that travels to one state at a time to meet its quilters. Then we started doing the same thing with food.
Every issue of Homecooked goes to one place. Las Cruces, New Mexico. Louisville. Florida’s Treasure Coast. We sit at kitchen tables, walk through fields and climb onto boats, and we come back with the dishes that make that place home, from the people who actually cook them.
The latest issue has a diver who works a 1715 Spanish treasure wreck and shares the protein balls that fuel his dives. A ranching family who still herds cattle on horseback, the way it was done in the 1500s. A nurse who runs a Haitian food truck on her days off. And fifteen of their recipes, from mahi-mahi tacos to Cuban flan.
We don’t take ads. Not one.
This is the part readers mention most, often in capital letters. There are no ads in Homecooked and no sponsors. Every one of our 164 pages is a story, a recipe or a photograph from the place.
It also means we print it the way we want to. Heavy paper, a textured cover, photographs that run the full page. A lot of readers tell us it feels more like a cookbook than a magazine. One wrote that it’s “not a cookbook, but an art thing that happens to have recipes.” I’ll take either.
“But will I actually cook from it?”
I hope so, and so far readers say they do. The recipes come from home cooks, not restaurant kitchens, so the ingredients are ones you can find.
One dinner out. Or five issues you’ll keep.
A subscription is $80 a year. I won’t pretend that’s nothing. Here’s what it gets you if you subscribe today:
Your subscription
Bought one at a time, the same five issues would cost $135 ($22 each plus $5 shipping).
That’s about what one dinner out costs. The dinner is gone by morning. These go on the shelf, and if our readers are any guide, they come back off it again and again. One reader did the math her own way: “For roughly $6/month, you have an exceptional cooking experience journal and reference.”
And if it isn’t for you, every subscription has a 100% money-back guarantee. Just email us.
One more thing, honestly.
Issues 01 through 05 are gone. So is Las Cruces. Readers who found us late write to ask for them, and we have to say no. Issue 08 is still in stock, and if you subscribe, it’s yours free. A subscription is the surest way not to miss the next one.
Pull up a chair. Subscribe and Issue 08 is on us.
Issue 08: Treasure Coast ships right away. Then four issues a year, $16 an issue your first year, shipping included.
Subscribe and get Issue 08 free100% money-back guarantee · Renews annually, cancel anytime
Thank you for reading this far. I hope we get to welcome you to the table.
Michael McCormick
Publisher, Homecooked
P.S. A single copy of Issue 08 is $27 with shipping. A subscription gets you that same issue free, plus four more, for $80. And if it isn’t for you, we refund every penny.