News You Can Use About Gourmet Closing Down

This sounds so harsh:

PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT GOURMET MAGAZINE WILL CEASE PUBLICATION AFTER THE NOVEMBER ISSUE.

I haven't started looking for that issue. It'll probably disappear the second it hits the stands.

This is interesting:

Your Gourmet subscription will be replaced by one to Bon Appétit. If you’re a current subscriber to both, they’ll extend your Bon Appétit subscription.

This is worrying:

The Gourmet website will only be up “during a transitional period”.

Oh, wait, the recipes will remain on Epicurious. All right then, that’s okay.

This is too bad:

No more Gourmet Institute events. You can get all your money back. For more info, call 1.866.811.4111.

My Single Most Favorite Idea From Gourmet

It wasn’t a even a big complicated recipe, it was this gorgeous photo on the November 2000 cover. I thought that surrounding a turkey with those little jewels of Lady Apples was the greatest, simplest, most appealing (and kind of cute too) idea for garnishing a roast turkey that I ever saw.

The directions are here and this Thanksgiving will be my 10^th year finishing off my turkey platter like this. Strewing baked apples around a turkey isn’t revolutionary, but I appreciated it because it really spoke to me about what Thanksgiving food is all about - homey, delicious, manageable and lovely looking.

I imagine a Gourmet Thanksgiving issue has already been put to bed, so hopefully, there will be one more cover to admire and to learn from.

Gourmet Magazine Going Out Of Business

Read about it here.

I wonder if foodies divide (divided) themselves by which food magazine they read. Was there a clash between the erudite Gourmet subscriber and the more down-to-earth Bon Appétit reader?

For a long time, I subscribed to both. I read Gourmet, but I USED Bon Appétit. But after awhile, I wasn’t even READING Gourmet, unless I had a long train or plane ride. They were just piling up, so I stopped subscribing. Yet every time I did read a new Gourmet, I always determined that I SHOULD read it regularly again, because it was so darn good. This was especially true after Ruth Reichl took over. (Was that REALLY 10 years ago?)

Time got away from me, though, and I never did. I wonder if that was part of the problem….that we look at food magazines like Bon Appétit as ones that we actually cook from, but Gourmet is for coffee tables. It’s a shame that no one can really figure out how to make money from the web and that Gourmet can’t continue online, although its recipes will.

Au revoir! Gourmet. Or actually more accurately…Adios.