Homecooked Magazine | Mike McCormick
Suzy Chase: When two podcasts collide, magic happens. Welcome to Dinner Party, the podcast where I bring together my two hit shows, cookery by the book and decorating by the book around here. We're all about cooking, sharing stories behind recipes, and creating a cozy home. I'm your host, Suzy Chase, a West Village wife, mom and home cook. Inspired by Martha Stewart trying to live in a Nora Ephron movie, surrounded by toile, plaid, cookbooks, decorating books and magazines, cooking in my galley kitchen and living my best life in my darling New York City apartment in the cutest neighborhood in the city, the West Village. So come hang out and let's get into the show.
Mike McCormick: Hi, I'm Mike McCormick. I'm the publisher of Homecooked Magazine and I'm excited to be here today.
Suzy Chase: There's so much synergy between my podcast and your magazine. We're both at the intersection of storytelling and food, and in this crazy new year, a homecooked meal brings comfort and gets us through. A couple of things you believe to be true are great recipes come from all kinds of kitchens and recipes with a story just taste better and I couldn't agree more. So could you please read the passage in the publisher's note that starts with that is what homecooked is all about.
Mike McCormick: What it's all about is putting words and images to the intangible feeling you already know to be true, that homecooked meals nourish us in ways that go beyond the dish. They bring us closer to family, to friends, to tradition, and to each other. After years of dreaming about this moment, I'm thrilled to invite you to our table with the inaugural issue of Homecooked. Inside each quarterly keepsake, you'll find stories and recipes that surprise, delight and inspire you at every turn of the page. Thank you for being part of this journey. I look forward to many more meals shared together.
Suzy Chase: So how did this terrific magazine come about?
Mike McCormick: Yeah, so I'm not a cook. I love food. I love to eat. I'm pretty good at that, which my wife loves, but I've been very fortunate. I have a mother and a wife, Marissa and a mother-in-law who loved to cook and bake and food is really a love language for them. And so they all have appreciated bringing people to their table in one way, shape or form. When I was a younger man, I spent a lot of years away from home, oftentimes on the road for 6, 7, 8, 10 months at a time where I wouldn't see a homecooked meal. Everything was restaurants, eating out fast food and I would come back home and be reminded of how powerful homecooked meals really are and not just the recipes and the food of course, which were familiar and I would request certain things when I'd come home, but it was more than that.
It was the table, it was the sounds of the oven opening and shutting the refrigerator, the candle burning in the corner. Of course the conversation, the people, the faces, all of those things, the plates. So you start to understand that home meals are much more than the food, even though that's a big part of it. So home cooked magazines really started with that sort of genesis of an idea, which is how can we take everything we love about the homecooked meal and turn that into home cooked magazine? So trying to have this sort of sensory experience to the degree that you can in print and trying to put people in those places, in those kitchens of home cooks around America at their table so they can experience their traditions and try to share that and scale that in a way to the best that we can.
Suzy Chase: Now, when you say sensory experience, is that kind of what you mean when you said you wanted to reimagine the traditional food magazine?
Mike McCormick: I mean, we didn't set out with that goal. The goal was not, Hey, let's just do something different to be different. But I think when we talk about rethinking, it was more just like, Hey, we want to be able to show some things that you may not necessarily find in other food magazines that didn't make it in. We want to be able to allocate large spreads and photos and these things too. Maybe trinkets on someone's shelf or a picture of their dog in the backyard hanging out by the barbecue or something like that. These things that give you a sense of place that I think historically maybe haven't always been a part of a publication. We just wanted to be able to do that because we wanted to make it not because we were trying to do something different. And again, it all goes to that end of how do we make a reader to the best of our ability feel like they're in that space and they understand those traditions. So I think that's kind of our view of it is this just make something beautiful that we feel like has that sensory kind of you're there feeling and not be bound by what we think we're supposed to do or what magazines have done in the past.
Suzy Chase: I love that. I love that it's a sense of place for you because so many food magazines are just like a compilation of recipes, but you're right, food is home, sounds coming from the kitchen.
Mike McCormick: We do Sunday dinners and usually there's a recipe that my mother-in-law or Marissa got from somewhere, and if we have guests over, they'll say, well, where did you get this recipe? This is really good or whatever. And my dream was instead of just saying, oh, we got it from xyz.com, it would be like, well, we got it from Homecooked Magazine. There's this woman in the Pioneer Valley who has been making it this way for three generations and she does this and that and she's got this crazy story and it launches you into a conversation. I mean, that would be the dream scenario. And that's like the intent behind it is in every issue you've got maybe 15 or so recipes, but I hope that they're recipes that stick and that you can talk about and that you want to share with people. That would be the dream scenario.
Suzy Chase: So you also talk about how the digital world is amazing, but there's something timeless about flipping through a beautiful print magazine. So chat a little bit about the power of print in our digital world.
Mike McCormick: Well, everything that we're doing digitally is incredible. I mean, the way that we operate our own businesses reliant upon that, and we all interact online all the time. However, I think there's this view that print is dead or dying. And my argument is that the business model of magazines has certainly changed and has maybe gotten as close to dying as it could because it has changed a lot and the role of magazines have changed a little bit, but the fundamental connection we have to print and being able to sit down and flip a page and have that quiet time where you're not, there's no threat of interruption, at least not digital interruption in that way. I don't think that's ever changed. I don't think it's going to change. In fact, I think it actually offers a reprieve for us right now. The other night I went to Barnes and Noble, I picked up a new stack of magazines and my wife had just gotten Ina Garden's new memoir, and so we were both just in bed and I was reading magazines, she was reading her book. It felt great. It was a great way to wind down. And I just think that whole interaction has not changed and will not change the role of publishers now. And the way that we see it is that we have this chance to reimagine sort of the business model to make it make sense so that we can continue that, continue to serve readers and continue to make that a viable way that people consume content.
Suzy Chase: I live in the West Village in New York City and there's this magazine shop called Casa Magazines and it is the hottest thing. They have the hottest Instagram, it's always packed and it's been going for years and it's still going strong.
Mike McCormick: Whether you're a homecook or you appreciate those kinds of things, I think you sort of intrinsically already understand and know and appreciate some of those moments to slow down. And even just flipping a page is a very tactile experience. And our magazine has a soft touch cover too, so it feels very good. The pages are thick and I mean the more senses that you can bring alive in an experience, I think the more memorable and the stickier it is. So I think again, I think the hope is when you read something in a magazine that you're holding and flipping and it smells good and it feels good, and all of that stuff is strong, that those are going to be stories and memories and recipes that you remember and that stick with you for a long time.
Suzy Chase: And you can always tear out the recipes to keep.
Mike McCormick: Absolutely. I hope people do. And we also, we played with some ideas of how can we pull out the recipes and the issues and create keepsakes for people too as well. And we'll probably look to get more creative in that way as we go a little down the road. So
Suzy Chase: Tell me about the themes of each quarterly magazine.
Mike McCormick: So every issue of Homecooked takes you to a new region of America. So it's a quarterly magazine, so you're going to go to four destinations per year. The first issue focused on the Pioneer Valley in western Massachusetts. We started in the Pioneer Valley, partially because some of our team members are there and we felt like we could experiment. And the first issues are tough, you're trying to make a lot of decisions. So it gave us a little bit of wiggle room on that, but also the Pioneer Valley has got a very rich agricultural tradition. There's a lot of neat stuff going on there, and as we started to dig into it, we really uncovered some great stories. But anyways, that's issue one, issue two, which comes out March 1st, which is right around the corner from when we're recording. This is Austin, Texas. And then issue three, we haven't officially announced yet, but it's Monterey Bay, California.
We actually have a team traveling there now. So when I say that we cover these areas, we really do send a team of people. All of our photography is original. We're in the homes, in the kitchens for hours at a time, talking with people, taking photographs and experiencing that. We're also sightseeing around those areas, taking scene of photography so that when you sit down with an issue of Homecooked, you do get a sense of that place because it does impact people's stories, their traditions, the things that they make, what ingredients are going to be in season there, what is the agricultural history that shapes a lot of that place. So yeah, it's a really unique part of our business model. And also because I did again travel quite a bit, I think I sort of was always interested in some of the unique regional differences that help craft people's stories
Suzy Chase: And their backgrounds too. For example, Laura Bowman, who's in the Pioneer Valley issue, she owns the Blue Door restaurant in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and it's a beautiful look inside her restaurant and she talks about one of her favorite dishes to serve tortellini soup. And what I love about this is she goes into depth about how much that soup means to her and the background of that soup, and then we get the recipe. Could you talk a little bit about that piece?
Mike McCormick: Yeah, so Laura's a great story and I think one that we can all relate to a little bit. It's a homecoming story really. You can even say in a certain way like a hero's journey because she starts in a place and then she goes off and grows and learns and acquires skills and things. And then in her case, she's brought that back to her community and to her family, and now she's sharing those skills. She was classically trained in a number of ways and worked in really amazing restaurants around the world. And so she went and had that experience and is now bringing that love, the passion, the skills back to her community there in the Pioneer Valley. And I just think that's a story a lot of us can relate to either ourselves or someone that we know. And it's fun to explore that what does that mean for her business?
What does that mean for her personally and her family? And it's worth noting that in an issue of home cooked, about a third of the people focused roughly, approximately have a background or are actively working in the culinary space. There are a lot of home cooks who you've never heard about, who've never been in a magazine, who don't work professionally in food. But then there are some folks who do, and our view of that is, well, let's show them differently. Let's show a different side of them. Let's show them in their homes. And I think that's important too. So the kind of makeup is about a third of people like Laura are in there, but you're going to see them in a much different light and in a different way than maybe you normally would.
Suzy Chase: Yeah, it's not just a picture of the person. A little bit about the recipe and the recipe, it's really kind of a deep dive into Laura's life.
Mike McCormick: When we talk about being different, I mean, I personally believe that inspiration can come from anywhere. It's fun when you're feeling inspired from someone's story in a way you didn't expect. And so you really never know what people are going to hold onto. If you take that as just one example, you may be going through or the reader may be going through their own little hero's journey where you're like, man, I've done this thing. I've went away. What does this mean? Where am I at? And that may inform a completely different part of your life than even what you're expecting from the recipe, and maybe it wouldn't. Maybe it's just you love the food, but you have that opportunity. So when you sit down an issue of Homecooked 160 pages, there's no advertisements at all. So you have a lot of different ways to, I think about food that could potentially make an impact on your own relationship.
Suzy Chase: That was a bold move. No ads
Mike McCormick: It goes back to a little bit of what we were talking about in terms of the business model of print. I mean, I think it has changed. And so I think I have another magazine called Quiltfolk, which travels similarly state by state and tells the stories of quilters. And I started that in about eight years ago, I guess, and that was ad free as well. It is. At that time, ad free was pretty unique. I think it's becoming a little bit more commonplace, but for us it's just kind of goes back to the idea of it's difficult to serve two masters. You have readers who ultimately, our goal and our job is to try to give them something that they love and that we're reader supported. And so I think sometimes, not always, but when you do have ads, it can add a layer of complexity with that relationship as it stands right now, if someone we're interviewing uses a certain brand of whatever it is, equipment or ingredients or whatever, we could just tell it because we're not getting any money from that. There's no benefit for us. It's just, it's authentic to their story. I think for us, at least in the way that we'd do it, if we were to ever introduce advertising, I think it would just potentially add a little bit of a conflict. So it's a clean model for us. We're completely supported 100% by readers, and if they appreciate what we do and we're comfortable with that, I mean we'll live and die by their sort of love of the magazine.
Suzy Chase: Now for my segment called The Perfect Bite where I ask you to describe your perfect bite of a favorite dish.
Mike McCormick: If I had to say, I'm going to give you two answers to this, I don't know if that's allowed, that's okay. But the first one would have to be my mom's cornbread stuffing for Thanksgiving. Ever since I was a kid, I mean, we didn't get it often. Whenever we did, it was just like I would fill my entire plate. I wouldn't want anything else in Thanksgiving, just give me the stuffing corn bread. I loved it and I still to this day do it, but when I married my wife, her family was very much like a bread stuffing family. So she makes me my own big pan of it every Thanksgiving and it's out there for the family. And every year I watch to see how much of it gets taken. I think every year a little bit more goes away. So I think I'm slowly converting the family, but I just love that. And then I would say for a second would be the first thing that my wife ever made for me, which was, I think it was actually an Ina garden lasagna recipe, but it just was like love at first sight there. She makes it well and we still make it all the time. So those would be my two picks I suppose.
Suzy Chase: Now, does the stuffing have sausage or no?
Mike McCormick: No sausage. I couldn't even tell you all the things that go in there. I know it's a whole bunch of spices and some celery and the cornbread, which my mom was born in Oklahoma and she spent most of her time actually in Alaska, but she still has some of those sort of Midwestern roots and a lot of her cooking, very simple, very classic, a lot of meat and potatoes, just kind of that thing. And so she's been making cornbread and jalapeno cornbread for a really long time, and I don't know what she does in there, but it just always feels like home to me.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web, social media, and where can we get our copies of Homecooked magazine?
Mike McCormick: Homecooked magazine.com. Great place to find us. And social accounts linked there as well. As I mentioned, we're just on issue one as our current issue. It's going really well. People seem to really like it. Issue two comes out very shortly and we're already producing issue three, so we'd love for folks to find us there, interact, let us know what you think. We also, I should just say it's a hundred percent money back guarantee with anything ever purchased, you could literally subscribe, get three issues and decide you don't like it. We still refund you. People have questioned that business model, but at the end of the day, we believe in our product. And so I hope you'll give it a shot, and I hope you love it.
Suzy Chase: Everyone's going to love it. I love it so much, and I'm so thankful you came on Dinner Party Podcast. This was so much fun.
Mike McCormick: Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Suzy Chase: Okay, so where can you listen to the new Dinner Party Podcast series? Well, it's on substack suzy chase.substack.com. You can also subscribe to Dinner Party for free on Spotify and Apple Podcasts. Additionally, the episodes will be available on both Decorating by the Book and Cookery by the book. Long story short, you'll be able to listen to it virtually everywhere. Thanks for listening. Bye.
