Picking the best of the best

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Flavour Of The Month, Hear Everything | August 30 2013

By: TODD SULLIVAN

 

Asking me to try to pick my favorite issues of The Stew is a bit like asking a parent to choose their favorite child. Except for the fact that past issues of The Stew aren’t sentient, and so I won’t hurt their feelings if certain issues don’t get singled out.
Seriously, though, trying to figure out the top issues of the past three years was a challenge, but I’ve never been one to run from a challenge, so here they are, in the order they appeared.

 

1. The First Issue
(October 2010): Well, obviously the first issue was one of my favourite issues. It was the issue that we finally said, “Hey, look at this crazy
thing that we’re trying to do over here!” while hoping that we wouldn’t completely lose our shirts. But beyond that, I’m a really big fan of
our initial feature story. If there is one memory from The Stew that I cherish to this day, it was the opportunity to go ghost hunting in
Barkerville. Awesome!
2. The Booze Issue
(March 2011): Speaking of stories that were fun to do, what’s better than being able to greenlight your own story idea about chronicling a local pub-crawl in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day? Juli and I took to the road and hit up a handful of local watering holes, taste-testing a variety of concoctions and chatting with all the friendly staff. We also featured a chilling recipe for something called “Peaches Wine”.
3. The April Fool’s
Issue(April 2011): One of the reasons that Juli and I started The Stew Magazine is that we wanted to be able to make terrible decisions
without having anyone standing in our way, such writing a story filled with nothing but lies for the April Fool’s issue. I’m not sure how many people were fooled, but it was likely the least amount of research I ever did for a story.

 

4. The Conspiracy Issue
(June 2011): AKA The Guest Editor’s Issue, this was the issue where we allowed our good friend (and future poetry editor) Laura Kelsey
decide the editorial direction for the month and write the feature story. While The Guest Editor’s Issue was an idea we’d had for awhile
(and something we wanted to continue each summer), there was a practical reason to lighten our workload during that period — Juli
was giving birth to our daughter, Morrigan, whose photo appeared in this very issue for the first time.
5. The Political Issue
(November 2011): With a civic election at our doorstep, we decided to try our hand at some political coverage, asking the sorts of questions we didn’t think anyone else would be asking — the sorts of questions that seemed relevant to our demographic. Let the newspapers get at the “newsy” questions, we’ll try something a bit different. I still don’t know if our experiment in political content was a success or
failure, but I’m ultimately glad we tried it.

 

To read the other 5 best picks from Todd Sullivan, please pick up a August Issue of the Stew Magazine.