Today Conde Nast announced that it will be closing down Gourmet magazine. I feel like someone just killed my aunt.
My grandmother subscribed to Gourmet, which started publication in 1941. When my mother got married, my grandmother gifted her a subscription to Gourmet until she died. That’s 1974 to 2000. There are copies of Gourmet from the 1980s that my mother used for Thanksgiving every year. They are still in the house including the one with the three chutneys on the cover that has long since ceased being meaningfully attached to the rest of the magazine. I could draw that cover from memory.
When I got married, my mom started gifting me with Gourmet. I have them piled up with the cookbooks. Some I get rid of if they are super boring or not very applicable (the Italian issue doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for a house that doesn’t eat gluten). But I read them all, cover to cover. Some really great food has come out of those magazines.
Mom and I used to talk about the latest issue. “That risotto looks good!” “Oh, with the radicchio, yeah!” We would talk about which recipes we were definitely going to make and the ones that looked delicious but way too much trouble. We would share our successes and failures in replicating the gorgeous food the magazine presented. And now that mom isn’t there to chat with anymore, I look at recipes and think “Hmmm, mom would have really liked that.”
And now even that little bit will be gone. One more piece of my life with mom taken away by a shite economy and a venal corporation.
Well thanks for nothing Conde Nast. At least we have a new cook book and the website to keep us going.
I think I hear a Saveur subscription calling my name.
-fyre