In the future I hope to be recognized as a good writer, who often writes about food, or enjoys writing about culinary matters, but yes, first and foremost, a good writer.

I also agree with what has been said, in any profession one specializes. This doesn’t mean that the person can’t do something in another area of the same profession, it simply means that person has specialized, has expertise, even has a particular passion for the subject. I find nothing wrong with this.

And I know that writing about food, whether directly or indirectly, is what brings out the best in me and the best of my writing. Why would Ms. Reichl not be proud of this? Her food-related memoirs are stunning!

As I said below, when I asked about favorite food writers, readers answered Ruth. Maybe she’d feel pigeonholed to know that. But we all adore her writing, so how awful can it be?

Amelia, yes, at least, that was the thinking in journalism, where I had to write about crime, fires, city council meetings — whatever came up, whether I knew anything about it or not.

Reichl defined her priorities in her memoir, “Tender at the Bone.” She said, “I learned early that the most important thing in life is s good story.” And she tells a spellbinding one – usually about some aspect of our most common denominator: food. When we don’t know what else to do, we cook – we take food. We take it to births, and we take it to deaths. And the M.F.K. analogy was great: writing about food IS writing about everything else. Reichl has shown that, too – her memoirs are about food, family, love, lust, sex, travel, fear, triumph and failure.

But whether she likes it or not, like M.F.K., she will go down in history as a great food writer – unless she is working on a musical I don’t know about.