Content vs. Pages

Now, don't get me wrong -- I loves me some Nigella. Everything she makes looks fantastic and accessible. I've tried several of her recipes and they all turn out well. Her Lemon Risotto is a particular fave.

I recently made a few from the copy of Nigella Bites that I checked out of my local library and I could not help noticing that the book seemed awfully heavy on pretty pix of Nigella cooking and eating. Then I noticed the glossy paper (necessary for making the food appear sexy, I guess). Then I noticed that the percentage of these pages seemed awfully high.

Between the pages reserved for "notes" and the food porn shots, I calculated that 144 of the 244 pages in this book could have been left out. This would leave the reader with the same amount of useful content, but paying a lower price.

I had long ago noticed the same thing about Giada de Laurentiis' books. I had Everyday Italian and did a similar count. Since Food Network relies so heavily on Giada's alleged "sensuality," (cough) I expected to unearth a similar discrepancy between the number of pages and hard content. Even though both books had nearly the same number of pages, Giada's book only had 100 pages of essentially useless content. I was rather surprised.

That said, even though I believe that the publishers are padding these titles for all they're worth, the recipes contained therein are still tasty, easily prepared. I just wish the puppet masters would realize that we aren't as dumb as they seem to think we are.

We noticed, Food Network.