Recipes run rampant

Why do we need so many? Who's pushing them out so vehemently, and why? Have recipes become the fast-fashion of the food world?

Happy Friday, besieged cook!

Does it ever seem like everywhere you look, the world wants you to try a new recipe?

Have you noticed how important cooking coverage has become in the New York Times? In the Washington Post? In The Guardian? Even in the city magazine where you live, which never used to even acknowledge that cityfolk would eat dinner at home that wasn’t take-out. All that coverage seems to start with the assumption that we all need a constantly refreshed stream of recipes all the time.

And the cookbooks: I have the impression that new authors, following their debut title, now feel they need to publish another immediately. And that more than a couple veteran cookbook authors keep pushing out volumes full of recipes whether or not their readers are hungry for them or their author’s hearts are in them.

Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like there were a gazillion recipes published this year that weren’t published because someone was dying to have you cook them and eat them, but be…