Stacks o' Mags

This year, I’m letting all foodie magazine subscriptions expire and am going virtual. Curling up with a stack of food porn and a glass of wine used to be a pleasure; nowadays, it seems like work (because it is). It’s also less pleasurable because of all the print advertisements. Looking back at some old Bon Appetit magazines (circa 1986), the ads were all food-related. Now, these rags accept glossy, multi-page ads from automakers, jewelers, whatever. Most annoyingly, the food ads are often indistinguishable from the articles - was recently halfway through a great article on cheese before realizing it was an ad for a middle-of-the-pack brand I wouldn't buy anyway.

For years, my favorites were Gourmet and Bon Appetit. The former was glam, globe-trotting, and snobby ("tinned" tomatoes, always), like a girl crush-worthy upperclassman at a ritzy boarding school, destined to marry well and often. The latter mag was by contrast the homebody little sister, a little plain, a little bit the rube, but the food was real. Over the years, the two became almost indistinguishable (having the same publisher helped) as home cooks began cooking more globally and regular restaurant forays became the norm for most middle-class families. Now, Gourmet is defunct and you've gotta wonder how long the rest of these glossies will survive. My current favorites are Eating Well (resurrected after a few years out of print) and Dessert Professional (a girl can dream...and drool).

My biggest problem is letting go of the damn things because there's always one recipe that intrigues, or a technique that looks interesting, or an interview that I keep meaning to read. So I hang on, intending to revisit it and it ain't gonna happen. Here's hoping that going paperless will take care of the packrat problem. (A couple of viewings of A&E's Hoarders usually puts me in the mood to clean up and out.) Will probably just wind up bookmarking the one recipe, the technique, the interview - thus recreating the same problem. Paperless doesn't mean less hoarding; it's organized hoarding.