My name is Barbara and I am a food magazine-aholic.....

B

barbara-in-va

Well-known member
I scour the magazines every time I am at the grocery store. I am in an endless search for magazines full of wonderful recipes, beautiful pictures and stories. I used to find them often.

I have discontinued many of my subscriptions because they no longer fulfilled that need. This morning I pulled out some old October issues of Bon Appetit to page thru. It was WONDERFUL!!! Why don't they make magazines like this any more? Am I just too old to like the "new" styles and recipes? The October 2000 issue is stuffed with recipes that I want to try, not just one or two. Here are some examples:

In the RSVP section there is Apple Fritters with Vanilla Custard Sauce and more, an article about pancetta is supported with butternut squash soup with pancetta and tomatoes and more, there's a wonderful article by Dorie Greenspan about Dutch ovens, the Cooks Exchange has Triple Ginger Pound Cake, Eggplant with Sesame Seed Sauce and more, pages of "A Harvest of Fall Menus" including pistachio topped flan, polenta pizzas with roasted tomatoes and olives, and how about: red cabbage, apple and caraway soup; pork tenderloin with maple glaze; wild rice pilaf, buttered brussel sprouts, apple and dried cranberry pie? Or wild mushroom and leek galettes, baby greens with shallot tarragon vinaigrette, roast chicken with mushroom stuffing, chocolate cognac profiteroles with raspberry sauce.....I can continue, there are more....

I get so inspired. Why can't I find any magazines today that inspire me like that? Have you found any lately that really inspire you?

 
At the risk of sounding dull: it's about ad revenue. Few magazines can pull it in like they used to.

For example, Martha Stewart Living will cut "Everyday Food" from 10 issues a year to 5 and will stop issuing it as a stand-alone mag, folding it into "Living"; "Whole Living" (ok, maybe technically not a food mag) lost 24% in ad pages, is up for sale, and will cease production at the end of the year.

Granted, MSLO is beset by financial troubles of its own making, to some degree, but the drop in ad pages reflects a larger trend in the food-mag industry (such as it is, these days).

Other industry-wide issues: falling circulation, stagnant paid-subscription rates, declining newsstand circulation. "Food and food products" is the magazine category with the single biggest ad-revenue losses.

I don't think mobile apps (iPad, etc.) have quite ridden in yet to save the day, as publishers had hoped...

 
They have a 10-Step program for that, Barb.

It's a splinter group formed by those of us who rip out all the advertizing inserts before reading the magazine back to front.

 
I know I have a problem but I refuse to seek treatment

Seriously - I subscribe to over 20 food related mags.....

 
I do that!! I do that too!!! Rip out all the inserts and throw them away...

or sometimes use the poscard sized ones as page markers.

Deb, I used to subscribe to a bunch too (I don't think I ever made it to 20 tho!) but I no longer find them inspiring so have stopped almost all the subscriptions smileys/frown.gif

 
Why I subscribe

1) I love being able to rip out a page (the recipe) and putting it a 'to try' list that I cull every few months.

2) I like that a magazine is flexible (easy to fold, bend) unlike a book, and that I'm not worried about hurting the mag by folding over corners, etc.

3) If I get 1 FABULOUS recipe a year from a publication than I feel the subscription is worth it.

4) If the recipe is a keeper, I can usually find it online and easy copy and past it into my recipe files.

5) I like receiving so many 'seasonal recipes' as well as learn about chefs and restaurants

6) I love getting mail - LOL

 
I love your reasons. Not only do I tear and clip but I keep those as well as the Living Cookbook

copy. Sometimes it's easier to go through the printed and clipped envelopes than try to find it on Living Cookbook. And I can tell by looking at the hard copy which magazine it's from.

Do you subscribe to Fine Cooking? I get a lot of good recipes from it. I also enjoy BA, Food Network, Cook's Illustrated, Taste of Home, Cooking Light, and Food and Wine. I subscribe to BH&G, Southern living, Country Living and Midwest Living just for the recipes. What good ones am I missing?

 
I do get all off those - LOL

Well almost, not Country Living. I also get (just off the top of my head):

Cuisine at Home
Cooks Country
A whole bunch of Southern mags (I think three in total - something like: Southern Lady, Taste of the South and one other)
Teatime (I don't even drink tea except for once in a blue moon - LOL)
Rachel Ray (can't watch her but love the mag)
Woman's Day
Martha Steward Living
Everyday Food
Family Circle
Ladies Home Journal
Saveur

 
Curious, I do get Fine Cooking and it is one of my favorites, I also get:

Southern Living
Eating Well
Cooking Light
Delicious
Cooks Illustrated

None of them inspire me like my old Bon Appetits!!

 
I do love Cooking Light but I always triple their sauce recipes

and use full fat ingredients; I think they use spices, herbs etc. so well!

 
They've really improved over the years. I dropped my subscription a few years ago because so many

recipes called for egg beaters or whatever they are and non-fat everything. Then I picked up a copy to look at while in a waiting room and was pleasantly surprised that they had changed. I agree with the sauces, I usually have to make more, too. I find the recipes I use to be quite good. They have a good staff, I've wished they would develop recipes without so many diet restrictions, I bet they'd be awesome.

 
The great thing about old magazines...you can look up the recipe reviews and see if it was any good!

 
I love this thread!

I was at an estate sale the other day where there was a whole box of old Cuisine magazines, and Gourmet from the 80's. I was transfixed. I used to have all the Bon Appetit from up until 1995. Loved browsing through them. I remember how my friend Teri and I were in Jamaica and we had the 1980 BA, I think it was, and we managed to perform the menu as written for our families. It was a thrill = especially since we had to shop at the commissary in Guantanamo for supplies!

All those subscriptions! Wow!

 
Me too Deb, always make more sauce. Overall I really like their recipes and..

use regular fat ingredients too. The magazine does not have the same inspiration factor as many of the food mags of the 1990's smileys/frown.gif

 
I subscribe to Fine Cooking and Bon Appetit

that's about it, but occasionally, usually if I am flying some place, I buy a Saveur, a Cooking Light

Fine Cooking has been my favorite forever, and Bon Appetit got a lot better lately, so I kept my subscription.

I subscribed for a year to Cucina Italiana - a beautiful magazine, that strangely enough I cooked NOTHING from. Not sure why. So I dropped the subscription.

 
I still mourn the passing of my old Gourmets...

I discovered Gourmet magazine in August 1980 at Duettenhoffer's newstand in Clifton when I was a student at the Cincinnati Conservatory. The issue had an article on Bayreuth, Germany by Lillian Langseth-Christiansen. I couldn't believe that a publisher had published this magazine especially for me. It was everything I had ever wanted to see in a magazine. Thus began my love affair with Gourmet magazine. But as time marched on, eventually and gradually the relationship became strained, Gourmet tarted up, streamlined, reduced, and dumb-downed the content. We were rapidly losing interest in each other and it was obvious the relationship was over as the millenium changed. But I still had a collection of Gourmets from the 80-90s. And then, in a fit of madness, they were tossed out in a fit of delerium during a mad housecleaning purge. I wished I still had those magazines... : (

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Gourmet-Magazine-August-1980-L-A-Farmers-Market-/310225917629

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Gourmet-Magazine-August-1980-L-A-Farmers-Market-/06/!BvWo6BwCGk~$(KGrHqMOKkEEwQOfWmnGBMEPoDYkvw~~_35.JPG

 
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