The summer I really started thinking about recipes and AI

Hello and happy weekend! I’m writing this on Friday after a week in Portland + Pacific City, Oregon for a Tillamook brand trip, and I’m excited to harness my biggest introverted tendencies tonight and start The Summer I Turned Pretty. I can’t resist a cultural phenomenon, and I’m three seasons behind on this one.

I also can’t resist sharing anecdotal evidence with little to back it up besides my own ears, and that’s where our topic of AI comes in. I was just on a trip with a bunch of journalists, but unlike them I do not operate with journalistic integrity, only food writer gossip. So let’s discuss.

On these trips it’s usually a mix of media writers and content creators. I’ve been on a few of these trips before, but this was the first one where AI was mentioned more than once. It felt like the topic everyone came back to: digital media was dying and AI was killing it. This wasn’t brought up in big group settings, more whispered about on the sprinter van, lamented over at breakfast.

Yet there was one conversation that grabbed me because of the casualness of it, two writers were complaining about AI being ineffective (duh) because they were asking it to generate headlines and every time they used it, it came back trying to showcase what it learned. Like “Look! I turned your headlines into a table!” and “Look! I harnessed Semrush data to put the highest performing terms at the top of the list.”

(If you don’t know what Semrush is, please continue enjoying your life, it’s just a way to track traffic on the internet).

The reason this conversation jarred me is because it felt like these editors were being forced, whether inadvertently or directly, to train AI to replace them. To take a job that personally, I don’t think should be outsourced. Deciding and defining media headlines is powerful, even if it is creatively draining.

And listen, I get it. In digital media now, volume comes first. These sites make money very similarly to how my blog does, we rely on clicks, sessions and ad revenue. For a site that is reporting, that often means more headlines, more clicks, more money. And now with Google Gemini, those clicks are going away, which means they need even more volume for more clicks to get through.

But using AI to generate an article idea just feels…wrong. Writing is such a part of the human experience, and reading is the same. Communication has value, and something twists in my gut knowing that media tastemakers are trickling down work to AI. I don’t want to read a food article generated from artificial intelligence, no matter how much data it drew from.

And my work, my recipes, are not immune. People are using ChatGPT all the time to get recipes, ask for advice on their sourdough starter, learn how to best store red onions (I would advise against all of this because ChatGPT is wrong all the time but that is for another rant). I’ve had a CEO of an app who was trying to get me to paywall 100% of my recipes via her company say, “aren’t you worried about AI?”

And when it comes to food, I’m really not sure.

AI can’t eat. AI can’t tell you how fennel tastes, really tastes, when it’s finely shredded versus when it’s thickly quartered and roasted untilled charred. It can show you how to make a pot pie by stealing from the top 852 published pot pie recipes on the internet, but it will have never made it. I know AI will make a lot of progress in the next years, but I can confidently tell you it will never taste.

This is going to be in my head for the coming months, but as a good self-editor, I’ll leave my rant here. I’d love to know if you use AI for your meals, and if so, why. Safe space, I promise. What I can tell you is that our recipe recap was made by yours truly, and ChatGPT could never.

And now, the weekly round up!

Corn Salad with Scallion Ancho Chili Dressing - Corn is still cheap and delicious for the next few weeks or so, and this bowl with some warm and fluffy white rice is one of the better dinners to end the summer season. The recipe has instructions for tofu or shrimp, whichever way you swing.

Butter Oat Corn Cookies - okay, okay, I know I already shared these. But they’ve been the top post on the blog for the last two weeks so that must mean there’s something good there, right? We also have reports that swapping the corn for raisins is a wild ride.

Roasted Salmon with Gochujang Wild Rice Salad - I am so in love with this bowl. The dressing is bibimbap reminiscent, but uses a heavy does of almond butter for some rich, buttery notes to counter any heat. It’s a simple way to get in many, many vegetables.

Dill and Feta Egg Salad - While this might be a nightmare for some of you, this is my dream. A vinegar-based (no mayo here!) egg salad with dill, feta, buttery Castelvetrano olives and just a hint of salt and spices to keep everything nice and layered. Serve it with farro as a salad, or as the best egg salad sandwich you’ve had this year.

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Of course, there’s always more recipes on the blog. Thank you for subscribing and if you are new, consider staying awhile. I’ll be back next week with another recipe for New York Times Cooking, and it’s a great one.

Have a fantastic weekend.

Xoxo,

Artificial_Snacks