Call it denial having taken this long to write about it. Call it anything you want but there will be NO MORE Gourmet magazine in anyones mailbox ever again and that will take a lot of getting use to. It was always the first food magazine that I opened each month, the others could wait. Of course it's shocking and sad, the end of an era and no more Ruth piloting the ship. And I will most miss her.
I have to admit that I was less then happy when she became the "new" editor, the magazine changed so dramatically or was it overdue to become more modern? Less elitist, less snobby, more real, perhaps? Well, Ruth you sure changed it! Last year I had the pleasure of spending a few hours with Ms. Reichl at a literary writers weekend in Camden, Maine. As part of the weekend event the hosts invited us to a Saturday night "church supper" Maine style. In the big, white Congregational church nestled among the oldest grove of Maple trees in full color was the venue for the event. Various restaurants in the area were picked to make each different course for the dinner.
Most people go to Vermont to watch the leaves change colors in the fall but I like it in the spring when the leaves on the trees are green, 67 colors of green, so that the bonnets of the trees look like a jigsaw puzzle and the tulips are in bloom and the geraniums and the cherry blossom trees – there’s nothing fancy about Vermont, it’s all straight up plain flowers plainly blooming everywhere, as if the earth is starting fresh again after winter and toward the end of May it hits an optimum equilibrium even if it does rain every other day which if you’re only there for a day and a half isn’t very good odds, at least not of skipping the rain. But people in Vermont don’t mind, they just take out their umbrellas and keep on truckin’…. 
My twin brother’s name is Paul Newman and when we were growing up in
Beverly Hills in the 1960s, because Paul had his own phone line, and
because he was listed in the phone directory, we often got calls from
fans thinking it was the home of the movie star. When you’re a
teenager and you’re desperate for something to feel superior about,
this fit the bill quite nicely.
My mother's bedside table was laden with books about food. On any
given night it might be Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French
Cooking. Or Michael Field’s Cooking School. Or the massive two-volume
set of The Gourmet Cookbook.
I had never heard of M.F.K. Fisher until I started working at One for
the Table. She was/is apparently one of the most famous food writers of
the last century. I rarely read about food, only branching out
occasionally to pick up Gourmet, Food & Wine or Cooking Light
depending on what recipe was featured on the cover. In recent months I
discovered I was one of the only ones not familiar with her work,
because her name kept popping up in various pieces on this site as one
of THE people everyone consulted when it came to enjoying good
food. Finally, intrigued by her reputation and tired of reading murder
mysteries, I decided to see what all the fuss was about...and found a
new friend.
