This week in my Kaimin arts column, Keep Missoula Weird: Food!

I’ve long held fantasies of paying the bills with food writing, but a food writer’s thesaurus is about as thick as the space between these paragraphs. And I adore variations in typed thought. Rather, I admire with ardor all the bright, matte and muted colors of the adjective palette.

Still, scratching out an existence by constantly eating and writing about it sounds like a dreamy, hedonistic life.

This column also brings up my constant reminder for my writers: there’s a difference between advocacy and advertising, and if you have to ask, don’t do either. Toward the bottom I write “I haven’t mentioned corporate fast food joints like (your ad here) or (your advertising money in my pocket),” yet I have no qualms name-dropping local joints like Flippers, the Silk Road and the Old Post (cripes I did it again!). But don’t restaurants without million-dollar advertising campaigns deserve media space too? Isn’t that fair?

I guess Michael Pollan staked a space inside my brain long ago and built a fortress of food snobbery, despite my occasional corndog siege.