Food Magazines

[SharonT]

At this time of year, I always look for a special interest publication from Better Homes and Gardens -- "appetizers - your holiday entertaining made simple." I've picked it up on the newstand every year for the last 15 or so... always has some special ideas that are new to me.

 

[TATTRAT]

Art culinaire


Published quarterly, it always has the cutting edge of cuisine, and is always the leader of the trends.

Not the best choice for the "at home" cook, but from a professional standpoint, it can not be beat. The pictures are inspiration enough!

http://www.getartc.com/

http://www.getartc.com/backissues.asp

 

[urmaniac13]

We buy "La Cucina Italiana" every month. We would have liked to subscribe to them, but the postmen just leave oversized items that don't fit in individual boxes out in the open for anyone to grab in the front lobby, so we are afraid we would never see our delivered magazine unless we will wait for them on the day of delivery in front of the mail box...

It is a wonderful cooking magazine chockful of mouthwatering authentic Italian recipes along with good articles, beautiful pictures too. They may make an English version (I have an impression I saw them while I was working at Borders several years back), but Seven, as you are pretty good in Italian, you may be able to read the original version if you have a way to order them.

It looks like this


And this is their website (they have pages in English too)

 

[marigeorge]

I subscribe to far too many! Here is a list of the ones I can think of at the moment.
Fine Food-my favorite
Cooks Illustrated
Paula Deen
Rachael Ray
Kitchen & Cook
Cuisine at Home
Bon Apetit
Penzeys One

 

[Harborwitch]

Ooooops - forgot Penzey's One. Love it!

 

[PytnPlace]

Currently BonAppetit and Taste of Home. After 10 years, I'm not renewing my BonAppetit for the same reasons I have read above. I used to LOVE that mag but now flip through the mostly glossy ads and find nothing I want to cook. Taste of home was kind of "off" this Oct/Nov issue IMO . . . really strange stuff! I really enjoy the Paula Deen and Penzy's One mag and will probably order them.

 

[Debbie]

Taste of Home
taste of home cooking for two
taste of home simple and delicious
taste of home light and tasty

great pictures, no advertising....always easy to cook, but they only come every other month.. and are pretty expensive

 

[Debbie]

i had left out COOKs ILLUSTRATED which i also like, and seems everyone so far reads that one... it is a great magazine, and best of all, NO ADS!!

I have never heard of this magazine .. wonder if its available in Ontario.

 

[Happy@Cooking]

Some of mine--but I dont have a problem

Taste of home
Cooking for two
Cooking Light
Bon Appetite
Gourmet
Cook's Illustrated
Cook's country
Food & Wine
Southern Living

 

[Nicholas Mosher]

I currently subscribe to...

Fine Cooking (My favorite!)
Cooks Illustrated (Great experimenting)
Kitchen and Cook (Great all around, but kinda thin...)

I recently let my Eating Well subscription lapse, as the dishes started becomeing over-simplified, and the "health" articles started becoming a bit too earthy crunchy for me.

Bon Appetite & Gourmet I don't even consider to be magazines. They are more like expenisve books of advertisements. Those two must make a fortune between adverts and cover price! I usually pick up copies of other magazines too if something looks interesting. Scanning the mag-racks at Barnes & Noble is a sickness I have whenever I'm near one.

Cooks Illustrated has another publication almost identical but with big color photos and almost all homestyle dishes. Someone here mentioned it but I'm too lazy to search for it's name. I was going to subscribe to that one too, but I lost the card. No biggie, as I get enough junk in the mail as is... EDIT: Cook's Country

Oh, I'm also the type that tears mine to pieces. I read it once, then go back through and tear out everything worth saving. Otherwise I would have magazines out the whazoo (I get about 10 in every month for various hobbies). I keep multiple folders for each subject (cooking, flying, hiking, etc.).

 

[Claire]

I don't remember where I posted my "problem" of not wanting to throw away 20 years of Gourmet and 5 of Saveur, but lacking the storage space for them. I didn't want the trouble of ebay-ing them. Well, at my Christmas party, one acquaintance who I didn't know was a gourmet cook just was thrilled. He's a Gourmet collector and had never seen Saveur (I wish I'd have known that when I renewed, because they had a 2 for 1 special and I simply knew no one who'd really like them!). SO one day he showed up and carted the entire collection away to fill in his collection, along with promises to cook from them for us and to research any recipes should I want one, and I can "visit" them any time I wish to! Happy Ending!!!

 

[Veloce]

We subscribe to Fine Cooking, Cook's Illustrated and John Thorne's Simple Cooking newsletter. We have complete runs of the first two filed upstairs in the book room. Sadly, I can't remember the last time either of us looked at any of the back issues.

 

[legend_018]

I'm in trouble. I ordered 2 samples after doing some research. Cuisine at home and Cooks Illustrated. My goal was to only pick one to order for the year.
I got my cuisine at home sample magazine and it's GREAT. What if I like the Cooks Illustrated one just as much. ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. I haven't gotten that sample yet.

 

[Katie H]

Glad you're enjoying your Cuisine at home. Cook's Illustrated is also a wonderful publication but a little different from what you just received. I would say it's a bit more high-end and more scholarly, but very, very good, too. I subscribe to both of them and like them for what they each offer.

 

[foodstorm]

I, too, am giving up my subscription for Gourmet after 20 yrs. It simply has moved out of my lifestyle -- it seems that it's for the rich & famous -- mostly about a "resort" lifestyle or "my 300 year old farm house in Tuscany." I like Saveur more for cultural reading than recipes.

Gave up my Gourmet for the same reason, Claire, just too high falutin' for me. I'm feeling the same way about Saveur now, too. NOT renewing Cooking Light, either (so nice of them to throw in a recipe or two with all those ads!). Still love Cuisine at Home, Cooks Illustrated and for the time being, Cooking with Paula Deen because it has a lot useful info in it (gee, maybe that's why it has so few ads!).

 

[Claire]

I think maybe that at a certain age and a certain number of years of cooking, the magazines lose their usefulness. I've got a few hundred cookbooks, I have you guys and gals. I have a large network of friends across the country. So the magazines just pile up. This isn't just cooking mags, but all kinds. There's just very little that is new. I looked at magazines that were supposed to be geared toward older, even heavier, women. What I found was the cover had the fashion models who helped lead me to eating disorders on the covers, telling me how to deal with that awful extra 5 lbs. Huh? 5 lbs is what happened in my 30s, I (and those models) are now in my 50s. EVERY magazine seems to just be rehashing stuff I learned in my 30s. One laugh was that I didn't renew Smithsonian, and two months later they featured my home town! But for newbies, I think they, especially ones like cooks illustrated, are marvelous. And 'though I've said I no longer do "Gourmet", it doesn't mean it is a bad mag. I think if you are, as we all once were, in your late teens, early 20s, you need some inspiration to save your money and see places and eat foods you aren't likely to find in your town or neighborhood. When I started Gourmet, I was quite young, and I did wind up seeing some of the places they featured, and it thrilled me. I don't know if I will travel again (we keep saying, yes, when our sorry *** old dog dies), but it was a thrill to see the places we went in the mags, or see them after we got home. So go for it!!!

 

[BreezyCooking]

I both agree & disagree with Claire. Maybe because I have recipes I've been using from magazines like Gourmet & Bon Appetit for decades now that still work & many of which are above & beyond their "supposed" improvement recipes these days.

I still enjoy Savuer & Eating Well. I find the articles really interesting without the usual snobby atmosphere that Gourmet has now taken (I stopped buying Gourmet years ago for that reason). It's so unfortunate that Gourmet decided to center on hotels & travel rather than food. I can't help but feel it will lead to their ultimate downfall. Yes, many many people still travel, but it's also a fact that international travel has come down many pegs recently. If the folks at Gourmet had half a brain, they'd realize this & start focusing on more local food issues.

I find Saveur really down to earth. The articles are interesting & the recipes are exotic yet doable, regardless of where you live. I love the fact that for any "exotic" ingredient you might not be able to find locally, they give you online sources. Many cooking mags can't be bothered with that sort of customer service.

 

[foodstorm]

Claire and BreezyCooking you raise good points and of course everyone needs to find what suits their needs and interests. When I opened my July issue of Saveur last week the first page (well, two pages, actually) was an ad for a luxury car--same goes for the back cover. Those things just seem kind of out of place to me in a mag that invites me to "Savor a World of Authentic Cuisine." (The rest of the issue was good, though).

 

[Katie H]

You bring up a pet peeve of mine, foodstorm. Whenever I receive/buy a new magazine, I "peel" it. In other words, I tear out all the pages that have ads on both sides of the page. It's amazing what little is left of a magazine once I do that.

I can't stand all the visual "noise" the ads create. And, you'd think the publishers were subsidized by drug companies by all the prescription drug ads that are in magazines these days.

 

[foodstorm]

You bring up a pet peeve of mine, foodstorm. Whenever I receive/buy a new magazine, I "peel" it. In other words, I tear out all the pages that have ads on both sides of the page. It's amazing what little is left of a magazine once I do that.[/quote

Hah, wish we could peel them ALL, but that'd leave us with only 40-50% of a mag. That's awful, isn't it?
Just opened up July Bon Appetit. Car ad pages 1-2-3-4 (it's a FOLD-out ad, oh joy!), and another on the back cover.

I'm going to start peeling right now, KatieE! Thanks for the great idea!