Or, 'I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Take This Anymore!' [Photograph: Cook's Illustrated] I've listened to all the heartfelt obits for Gourmet I can at this moment. My emotional and intellectual hard-drive is full. The final straw was Cook's Illustrated editor Chris Kimball's piece on the op-ed page of the New York Times this morning. Kimball's not-so-subtle, sledgehammer-like thesis: The ignorant, inexperienced, and untrained internet masses masquerading as journalists killed Gourmet. How do we plead, Mr. Kimball? Not guilty. Not in the least, as a matter of fact, as Hamilton Nolan so aptly noted on Gawker. Kimball in the Times: The shuttering of Gourmet reminds us that in a click-or-die advertising marketplace, one ruled by a million...
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Every Thanksgiving we check in with food magazine editors around the country to see how they have gone about putting together their Thanksgiving issues. The reductive and obsessive Chris Kimball, founding editor and publisher of Cook's Illustrated and host of America's Test Kitchen, is always refreshingly honest and forthcoming. "I am not in favor of green vegetables. I'm a white, tan, and orange food guy." Your subhead on the pumpkin pie piece in the magazine is fighting words in some quarters: "The best thing about pumpkin pie is that you only have to eat it once a year." Once in awhile we do back and do something again if we learn something about it in the interim. I made our...
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This is the time of the year when turkey buying panic sets in for those of us obsessed with finding the best-tasting (responsibly raised if possible) turkey to roast. There seems to be more and more choices every year, and I don't know about you, but I think there's a conspiracy afoot to befuddle and confuse us with these choices. Just consider what we are confronted with: fresh, frozen, frozen basted, free-range, free-roaming, all-natural, heritage fresh, heritage frozen, organic, wild, kosher fresh, kosher frozen. It's mind-boggling. Maybe that's why one year I switched to an all-pie Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't have to choose one pie. I just bought a dozen pies of every variety imaginable, including a turkey pot pie....
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