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I'm going to stick my neck out here - is it just me, or am I the only person who seriously doesn't like Celia Barbour's column? Or is no one else reading it? Maybe no one is reading it.

Desk . . . I read it and faithfully link to it every other week and I've been wondering what everyone thinks of it. Do tell.

I think it's exciting that the Times has dedicated an every-other-week resource to the bounty of the farmer's market, but I wonder if this is quite the right voice. I am interested in her focus on kid-friendly and healthy meals in a hurry. Seems like a work in progress.

It is ALL about the voice for me. It has a real suburb-mom woe-is-me feel to it. That column about her summer pasta salad is a prime example. I can tolerate how she keeps talking about her picky kids, and that she is busy. I get it. But what I can't tolerate is devoting so many column inches to her lagging prose and her failure to creatively come up with a recipe that really expresses the flavor of the ingredients she uses.

Like the recipe today. Are you seriously going to take a great meat product (that she says she can not really afford to serve all that often-c'mon?) and turn it into the gourmet equivalent of cheesy chickeny mixed-meat meatballs? What about a light touch? And how old is a recipe for Swedish meatballs? Doesn't EVERYBODY have an old family recipe for those? At least give a new spin on it. Had she used those ingredients plus some in-season veggies for a fresh take on Shepherd’s pie, I’d have been with her. That's using the season.

I totally agree with you that it is great to have a column devoted to ingredients that are fresh and in-season - at long last! And I get that her schtick is to be the everyman's busy-workaday cook, a'la Rachael Ray, except she uses better and more expensive ingredients.

But there is something painful about the writing and it just feels very much like it is trying way. too. hard. The column is just an editorial mess that I hope ends with the growing season.

I just find that the meatball article did NOT inspire me to go ahead &make the meatballs. It's written in such a negative way, it discourages. I agree with you Desk, I'm not a fan, &just from that one article alone. I wouldn't go out of my way to read her articles.

Desk, I think that the pasta salad was her worst attempt.

Rather than talking about the ground meat, I wish she had taken on a different cut of meat that is more difficult to use. Organic and true farm rasied meat behaves differently in the pan that the supermarket stuff and I would have liked to hear how she cooks with that. Since it's more expensive, you really want to make sure you don't mess it up.

Chris, that pasta salad article was, for me, maybe the worst article of the year in the whole paper. But I may speak too soon - maybe she will out do herself next week with a titillating and news-breaking recipe for applesauce and how her kids peeled all the apples.

I agree, the meat she used back in her 20's for her friends (and, um, is that the only anecdote she could come up with from 20 some odd years ago...hello, who's editing over there?) is different than the primo stuff she used for this article. A little technique info or altogether another cut of meat, would have made for more interesting reading.

man, you guys thought about this article a lot!
after i read it all i wanted in the whole world was swedish meatballs and buttered noodles!
i can't imagine how good homemade ones are... the only ones i've ever had were at ikea, and i thought those were amazing!
homemade meatballs of any stripe were NEVER served in my family (ever!) when i was a kid
we always had sausages

I agree that after reading I keep wanting to make the meatballs too!

I also think that the Times might be trying to lighten up a bit, maybe become more "bloggy" by including voices like Celia? I think that's a "good thing."

Well, Chris, maybe you’ve hit on what makes her writing lag so much for me. Barbour has been in magazines and newspapers for a long time and in an effort to soften up her writing style to become more “bloggy” she has allowed herself to wander freely with her thoughts and the paper has allowed the column inches to tick on by to a bloated 1200 words.

Indeed, the essence of bloggy writing is that it is quippy and short – not 1200 words. If the paper wanted to dedicate 1200 words to fresh food from local markets, why not approach it with serious writing and thoughtful recipes? Instead of the “what’s for dinner” stream of consciousness memory lane walk that we are forced to endure each week with Celia and her kids?