The Perfect Magazine

When you're in the right place everything tastes better.

Everything you already own becomes more delightful.

You find the details hitting your eyes like shots of sugar.

Suppose you found out there was going to be a publication dedicated to the subject of urban homesteading and let's pretend that you could ask the editor to include certain topics or ask that it address particular questions and curiosities you had about things like canning or growing medicinal herbs...what would those requests for information or topics be?

I'm not saying I know anything about such a publication. I'm just saying "suppose...". You know?

Here are the things I'd want such a publication to include:

irreverence mixed with solid useful information
canning recipes and instructions
recipes for using home preserved foods
growing medicinal herbs
how to be your own apothecary (aka: what to do with the herbs you grow)
how to raise backyard poultry
How to make a quilt out of old clothes
making cheese
How to wild harvest food
How to use power tools
food and environment news
Slow living tips and ideas
how to detox your house
slow life style (you couldn't expect me to not want fashion!?)
great photography
Independent thought


What would you add? The ideal magazine (for me) would be one that's exactly like Cooks Illustrated but with more humor and edge and that brings together all elements of home management: home economy, sustainability, self sufficiency, gardening, animal husbandry, crafts, cooking, preserving. It would be full of practical ideas for creating an efficient well run home. It would probably have to have some fun with modern versus old-school ideas about home management.

What do you think? Don't you wish someone would publish something like that? I know I do. It would be like Martha with a chainsaw in a vintage dress with hair down to her ass. (I know you're lingering on that image.) Isn't it time we had a really nice publication like that? The kind you keep forever because it's just as good as a book? I have a collection of the entire series of the magazine called "Kitchen Garden" (not the British one) and I also have a big collection of "Cooks Illustrated". I will never get rid of them because they are so high quality and excellent references. I love to look through them periodically. I hunger for something exactly like that but which encompasses a more well rounded coverage of related subjects.

I want your thoughts. I want to know your magazine dreams. I want to know your homesteading dreams too. What do you want to learn? What do you want to know? What would you try if only someone would give you the courage and show you how?

It's not likely your magazine dreams will come true, but how will you know unless you wish for it? What I can't believe is that such a thing has yet to be published. And don't tell me about "Mother Earth News". Please. It is too full of ads (it's hard to avoid doing this as making magazines is very expensive) but the main thing? Mother Earth News is much too serious and dry and I think alienates a lot of people who crave a little homesteading activities but who live in apartments or homes in cities.

I'm not dissing "Mother Earth News", in case you were worried. I think it's great, but they lack humor, style, and they leave me wanting more. Something is missing.

I think I know what.

Anyway. I was just wondering. Idly wondering. That's the problem with staying up late at night. You start thinking about things and plotting and planning and dreaming impossible dreams. I am a master at dreaming the impossible.

Please play the "suppose..." game with me and satiate my curiosity. I wish you were in my living room right now so we could talk.

C'mon, play my game!!