I don't think they're very idealistic at all. They give two examples of the types of recipe sites they enjoy, and neither match your description of recipe sites. Sure, there's ads but they're unobtrusive and don't block the content. And the actual recipes are just below the fold. Maybe you just need better recipe sites in your collection.

The first site I clicked on a focaccia recipe and had to skip to the bottom of the page, past 7 paragraphs, 10 images and a video to find the actual list of ingredients. The second one had a pop-up from the guardian begging me to subscribe that covers literally half the screen and pops back up with every page load.