Are most food hubs on this site poor quality?
- Matthew Kirkposted 11 years ago
0I think my criticism is of cooking in general as well as of some hubbers
- screamingposted 11 years ago0
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
"Insult-a-lot-of-other-Hubbers-who-are-just-doing-their-thing" threads can be hard to resist, can't they? I'm guessing you started an "insult-other-people" thread in order to get people to read your Hub about making a cheese sandwich from leftovers (a Hub to which you've tacked on at the end the line about how making or growing one's own will make it even better). Sort of clever, I suppose - but not likely to get you any outside traffic or followers on here.
There are a lot of different people with a lot of different preferences. The OP may not be "the only who thinks" like he does, but then a whole lot other people think very differently from him. Not everyone cares about, of wants to be "all involved" with the kind of recipes he's suggesting. Some people just don't care about food all that much and want to come up with meals that are quick. Others may like the "real" recipe now and then, but may also have interest in the quick approach. Besides, to be honest, I wouldn't trust any recipe I find on a site like this. If I want a "real" recipe I'll go to a site like a well known cookbook/cook's site for it. It goes right back to the thing that searchers tend to prefer authority sites to sites like this. "Quick-and-easy" from a site like, though - people don't have to worry as much about ruining expensive food with a bad from-scratch recipe. No, "quick-and-easy" isn't gourmet; but people at least know what they're getting when they dump in those ready-prepared products. Whether or not "our pallets are dulled", I don't know. I just know that a lot of people are like I am, and that is being someone who doesn't live life with the idea that what I have for dinner is all that important in the scheme of things, as long as it's healthy. These days, a lot of people have finally figured out that we "eat to live, not live to eat".
(Snobbery about attitudes toward food can go in both directions, can't it.)
The OP is yet one more person who thinks he knows what's on the minds of other people (with the "deluded chefs" and "think this is cooking" in the last couple of lines of his post. People who write the "quickie-meal" Hub don't necessarily think it's "cooking" or think they're chefs. They're very likely to be thinking they're writing a "quick-meal prep" Hub (I've done a couple of those even though I hate cooking, food, and writing about food.) There's a difference between "quick-meal prep" and cooking. Most people know that difference. People who have more interests in life than just food often think quick-meal type material is actually kind of handy. Instead of starting a whole thread about what other people do that I don't happen to like, I think I'll add what a lot of people don't think much of here: a) people starting Hubs to knock one kind of Hub or another for whatever reasons anyone does that kind of thing, b) people who worry more about what others write than they ought to and not enough about what they write (or how much they've written) than they should, and c) people who think they know what other people are thinking when they do one thing or another.*This* is a dull pallet:
Sorry, but when someone comes on here and starts slagging off other people's writing, I reckon any spelling and grammar howlers of theirs are fair game.
I agree with the OP about hating the "saying nice things about other people's hubs in order to be social" thing though.
I might as well go into full-on Spelling Nazi mode while I'm here.
Pallet: wooden thingy used in warehouses
Palette: funny amoeba-shaped thingy with a hole in it, used by artists to mix paints
Palate: your taste in food.
Well, Lisa, I was going to bite my tongue about this thread until I read your post, specifically the part about the cheese and leftovers. Isn't that exactly the kind of hub being protested? Cheese, chutney, crackers, smoked meat...don't all these come out of a store? Or did the OP make the cheese from milk and rennet, the chutney from fresh ingredients, bake the crackers from scratch, and smoke the meat from a butcher's cut of hog?
I thought more than twice about whether or not go with "the full reply bit", because I can most often remain silent about a lot of threads that kind of bug me. My weakness tends to always be that thing when someone starts insulting people who are just minding their own business and writing their own kind of Hubs. (Well, that and the thing that people do when they believe the know what other people are thinking.)
thanks, missed that.
I haven't insulted one specific hubber at all and I could have, if that would of wound you all up more though I would have.
And Sally I have made cheese and smoked meat and you should too
Well I hope the OP isn't referring to my food hubs which have been prepared to the same high standards as the, er, food itself.
Granted, there is an element of using canned food to provide a nutritious meal for a very stoned person but I have had very few complaints and even fewer readers.
Now I have upgraded it with the Star rating, and voted it five stars (not stupid) I am looking forward to an increase in sales.
...
As for what other people write. Eventually the search engines and readers determine the cream, which floats to the top - much like my recipes if I had used cream, which I didn't.
There is such a diverse range of writing abilities, standards, goals, attitudes and most importantly AUDIENCE - that it is hard to be judge and jury. Or critic.
A while back there was much mumbling about an iPhone 5 review which got something like twenty million views. It was essentially a piece of crap BUT people liked it. They shared it, it must have gone viral or something.
That is the ultimate critic. People out there.
...
Sorry about the pictures but it's the weekend and I don't seem to have anything I want to write about. I hope you don't mind. I mean, let's not get into an art discussion and as a word of advice - do not pick on the poets.
If that isn't delicious then I don't know what is.
- Matthew Kirkposted 11 years ago0
Mathew, respectfully (and I honestly do mean that sincerely), what has gone on in this thread isn't about HubPages. People criticize all the time. They criticize the HP team. They criticize individual Hubs. They criticize everything. So criticizing isn't at all off-limits here.
The problem with some of what happened on this thread (at least as far my thinking goes) is that a) there's a difference between criticizing one particular thing and blanket-insulting whole bunches of people on here. (I don't write cooking Hubs at all, so I didn't happen to take the insulting thread personally). Then again, I suppose, for me, I took it as an insult to suggest that anyone who is happy to run into one of those "quickie recipe" kind of Hubs, and who thinks that kind of Hub actually has its place on this site, is in the "don't-know-anything-about-real-food" category.
I find it hard to believe, though, that you don't know the difference between saying something like, "I think HubPages ought to raise it's standards for what are called recipe Hubs," and saying, instead, something like, "All food Hubs that include prepared foods from the store are junk".
Here's what you started your thread with that set the tone for the rest of it:
"I was initially shocked at how 1950's food is on here when I started! Cut corners, quick, easy, and quite simply poor recipes are all pervading it seems." You ended the thread with the remark about "deluded chefs" and people who "think" a quick recipe "is cooking". "Pervading" isn't a word people generally use when referring to something that's neutral or positive. Calling the ingredients to other people's recipes "poor quality gloop" is obviously not a matter of recognizing that people just have different degrees of interest in food.
I'll admit (as I did above) that I tend to be someone whose buttons get pushed when someone comes on here and seems to insult a lot of other Hubbers out of the blue (and I'm not usually someone who has all that many buttons that ever become pushed, but I do have that one; and I'm always fighting off the urge to defend other people who I see as "minding their business and not bothering anyone else". So, partial apology for some things about my post above.
Then again, I don't think there's any twisting of what the following implies: "What are your thoughts on cooking hubs? Are your own more traditional? Why are there so many deluded chefs? And why do they think this is cooking?"
Anyway, maybe some of the wording of your thread lacks diplomacy; and maybe my "defending-other-people" alarm is a little more sensitive than it ought to be. Even so, and either way, the "deluded-cooks" remark pretty much amounts to implying/suggesting something that isn't very flattering to any of those people who have quick-recipe type Hubs. (And, you have to admit that there's irony in the fact that a person who has a sandwich-making Hub is the one to start this thread).
On the other hand, your discussion topic about food quality and/or what constitutes a "real" recipe is a legitimate one. It just could have been presented without the "crack" about "poor recipes on here" linked to "cut corners" and "quick". I think one point with regard to "criticizing" HP's food Hubs is that HP doesn't present itself as a cooking site, It presents itself as an all-purpose, writing, platform with all kinds of different Hubs. Suggesting that all meal-prep-related Hubs meet recipe standards that a cooking company/site would have just seems to disregard the fact that not all meal-prep Hubs are designed to be "official recipe material".
In any event, don't be freaked out. Criticism is more than allowed and widespread on this site, but one thing about it is that it's likely to get criticism back to the person who posts it. (People may not have missed that you have baking Hubs, but when you have that one sandwich-making one on the first page of your profile, and then when you make the issue here that you have; all a lot of people are going to notice is something like the sandwich-making Hub. )
Anyway, "sort-of" (but not complete) apologies for my first reply. 
I have stayed out of this thread for specific reasons, but now I find myself getting into it.
First off, there are different levels of cooking to begin with and those levels is solely based on education of the individual. Many people are taught by their parents "how to cook?" and it's a generational thing(it's passed down from generation to generation). This is the uniqueness of family.
Secondly, I don't think everyone is educated on the proper format for writing a recipe, which will lead to many hubs being a mess.
Thirdly, if you're going to talk about what to use in a recipe or what is proper to be used in a recipe? Then you are wasting your effort in this thread. It is understood by your initiating this thread, that you seem to have a problem. What that problem is? Is most likely related to your own experience and education. If you are expecting to see results as per your standard, then just as in Life, you're going to be sadly disappointed.
Lastly, people write hubs for many reasons and not all of them are going to be completely educated. When things are not known to an individual, that individual doesn't always go in search of learning how to do it. They just simply pass it up and move on to the next thing. This happens because of the previous systems of our environment have been manipulated by others, so as to distort almost any real perception of reality, as it should be.
I'm sorry to hear you have a problem with many of the hubs on here and I can understand your reasoning for starting this thread. However, there are too many variables/factors to weigh, in order to get a correct conclusion for your question. Are you to be the decider of what "poor" quality is when it comes to a recipe? I don't think so.
Either way, that's my two cents about it. Take it for what's it's worth.I think I'm a little offended by this thread (I'm trying to decide. lol) I have a few quick and easy recipes here, but I also have many of my own creations, with lots of details.
I am not offended. Anyone who writes '100 healthy Pesto" articles and then doesn't bother putting 100 recipes for pesto in the article, has no leg to stand on.
Let us know when you have added the other 98 recipes and we will talk.Is that so? SEO in a packet huh? Misleading titles will not do you any good at all.
Personally–I hit the back button the moment I come across a misleading article like that, so excuse me if I'm not impressed with your SEO skills either.
Why don't you try matching your article to your title? There you go - 1st bit of free advice.
Then perhaps you can start slagging off everybody else.
Then you obviously have not chanced upon mine
I have found many great recipes on Hubpages and especially step by step videos by some great chefs.
Of course I seek many sources,but I feel the OP may be just a tad hasty in his/her's first impressions- Matthew Kirkposted 11 years ago0
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
If you provide both, that's great!
I'm playing devil's advocate, because I personally do not like being told exactly what to do. *evil grin*
I think that is why peasant-style coooking from all ethnicities appeals most to me. This way of cooking has arisen from situations where people had to make a meal out of whatever was available, so recipes fixed in stone were out of the question.
My favourite way of cooking uses the same peasant principle. I like to go shopping with no plan whatsoever, buy food that is on offer at excellent prices or has had the price reduced because it is near the sell-buy date. I bring it all home and then decide how to combine the various bits into a series of excellent meals. I don't need to do this out of financial strictures, but shopping and cooking like that adds a bit of challenge and makes kitchen duty more interesting.Ah, you should check out the pioneer woman website; love that lady. She does alot of that kind of cooking. i love peasant cooking as well; hey half the time it has the best flavor for the cheapest price.
Love the evil grin
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
Actually I have a picture of a redhead somewhere...
Oh no. It's tomato soup. Oh well, it's pertinent to the thread I think and adds to the dialogue....
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
- Arlene V. Pomaposted 11 years ago0
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