I have no good excuse for not noticing this sooner, but Taste of Home is ruint. Totally ruint. At a party a while back I ran into a founding editor of another food magazine who lamented that its new owners had decided to turn a Jaguar (or something) into a Ford Taurus, never realizing they had bought something unique. But you gotta wonder about an investor who has no clue that the future of publishing is niche and decides to turn its lowrider into an SUV. I was flipping through and started realizing I couldn’t tell the “flavor packed” sandwich layout from the Mrs. Dash ad and it struck me: Isn’t this the magazine whose readers choose it primarily as a respite from endless shilling? The class cleansing is bad enough — the disappearing of so many hometown cooks and their weirdly fascinating reality (and ’dos) — but to replace them with Cool Whip and Gallo? My in-law equivalent has subscribed for me as an Xmas gift for more than a decade, but I’m going to respectfully request that she throw her $12.99 Conde Nasty’s way this year. At least I’ll get ads that look less Everyday. And I am really and truly sick of GE Profile kitchens.