Gourmet is GREAT!

This is a very satisfying read every month. I am the kind of person who looks for a lot more than recipes from a food magazine. Gourmet, like Cook's Illustrated and Fine Cooking, makes a significant effort to ferret out some wonderful stories from the culinary world, and I appreciate that distinction. Although Gourmet gets some criticism for the complexity of the recipes--not to mention some very oddball ingredients sometimes--the point is to challenge the proficient amateur cook, and on that score they succeed admirably.

I like Gourmet for a lot of reasons--and at the low subscription price, I bet you will, too!

address change

I have moved and cannot find a website to use to change my subscription address. I have done so with other subscriptions. What should I do in this case?

Look elsewhere for your recipes

I used to be a devoted subscriber, for years and years, to this magazine. Routinely, I could find about a score of recipes that I really wanted to try right away. It was a great magazine.

However, a few years back, there was an change in editorial staff, and the emphasis shifted away from cooking and focused on "gracious living." All of a sudden the reader was bombarded with many more advertisements than before, as well as articles focusing on some exotic vacation venue that most of us couldn't afford in a million years. Similarly, the recipes began to become more exotic and outlandish, looking like some out of Charlie Trotter's outlandish cookbooks.

Sorry, but I don't like having my nose rubbed in it. I like cooking with flair, but I can't afford the budget-busting that this magazine now seems to advocate. I cancelled my subscription a few years ago; occasionally I will pick up a recent issue to see if anything has changed, and unfortunately, everything looks all too familiar.

If you like fluff articles about some fabulously expensive get-away spot, more power to you. If you are looking for lots of interesting but feasable recipes --- there are lots of magazines out there that do a much better job these days.