funny thing

I was looking at a recipe from Gourmet Magazine's 50th anniversary edition (1991), and thinking that I'd like to pick up a new copy of Gourmet, when I remembered that Gourmet magazine ceased publication last year. It gave me a little feeling of let-down. All my life, Mom faithfully subscribed to it, as did her mom. The 50th anniversary issue came out when I was 11, and it surely didn't seem like it was ever going to end.

But then they ceased publication within 20 years - they didn't even, quite, make it to 75. How stupid was that? Is "good living" an outdated concept? Because the economy is bad and the outlook is worse, should we give up on living well? All bread and no roses?

No. More than ever, we need some good living now - when people don't have jobs or much money, we need to remember how to combine basic ingredients with love and joie de vivre, to live well under any circumstances. But it's not about using expensive ingredients, it's not about following celebrity chefs or taking food-centric vacations to foreign lands... it's just about cooking the best you can with what you have, for the people you love - or just for yourself, if you're all you've got. Because every life is fundamentally beautiful and worthwhile. And if we can only afford bread, then for heaven's sake let's not abdicate our sustenance to the sterile and joyless uniformity of factory products in plastic bags. Let's make it ourselves, and we'll make it so well that we don't even miss the roses.

Maybe that is too basic, too simple and too honest a concept to sell many magazines these days. Too bad. When the bank account is nearly empty, "basic, simple and honest" are all we have left.