Farewell to Cooking Light

The magazine Cooking Light is folding and I seem to be the last person in the world to know. This despite my longtime subscription which I have reported on at great length over the time I have been keeping this, ahem, chronicle.

Our subscriptions are being replaced with subscriptions to Eating Well. I already subscribe to Eating Well so we will have to see how this sorts out. Oh (Eating) well....

I suspected many times that Cooking Light was circling the drain.

There was the issue in 2010 that, all it did was yell at you.

There was the Thanksgiving of the "cooked plants."

And my suspicion that the magazine was trying to get me addicted to breadsticks.

I get the idea they repeat and recycle a lot of recipes. Just now I opened the Farewell Issue at random and it opened to "Shrimp and Grits." I know I have seen versions of that before.

The magazine irritated me to the last. There is that word "gut" unattractively used literally, as in the illustration above.

Gut ist nicht gut! When that word first surfaced maybe five years ago I knew right away it was here to stay, and sure enough.

Yet as I have written before, the price kept dropping, and I kept capitulating, and I do look forward to the monthly thump of the magazine in the mailbox.

I like pretending I am organized and crossing off the recipes as I make them.

I like the food photography. I liked this one editor, Ann Taylor Pittman. And the magazine's most recent makeover -- the last of dozens -- looked good.

Plus, I just like the excuse to consume.

I'll have to find another!

Mad about Howard Cosell

On Facebook my friend Daryle started a discussion of Muhammad Ali and Howard Cosell which led me to remember Mad magazine and Howard Cosell.

All I know about Cosell is what was in my older brother Tony's Mad magazines!

With which, I went looking on Google for Mad magazine stuff on Howard Cosell, so I could splash it up on Daryle's Facebook wall and annoy him, as he was in the middle of a serious discussion. I found examples of what I was looking for. Memory served me, as it always does when it comes to trivia and useless stuff. But alas and son of a sea cook, I could not find any imagery big enough to blow up and show off.

However. I found all other kinds of classic stuff. Such as the corny cover up above. I was describing this cover to Howard the other day because he eats corn really neatly, every single kernel just so. This is my Howard, Howard Goldman, we are talking about here. Not Howard Cosell! I do not know how he ate corn.

Continuing down our Mad memory lane... I found stuff I had never seen before. Like this:

Mad always loved hippie stuff. Such rich material.

Where else would you be seeing this stuff? Nowhere, that's where.

You forget that before Kennedy was assassinated he was the target of humor.

Can we hang this sign up now?

This is amazing. Perhaps my favorite of the lot.

Ha, ha! This is the great thing about writing on a Web log every day. You do not need anything earth shattering to warrant writing about. You can just put what is in your head. And today Mad magazine was in my head, thanks to my friend Daryle and his mention of Howard Cosell.

Click on any of these to study them in detail.

You know you want to!

Gimme the skinny

We do not normally write about world events here at the Leonard Pennario Web log. Pennario did not talk politics and neither as a rule do we. You make enemies that way!

And so instead of talking about events in France let us turn to Cooking Light.

I have this on-again off-again thing with Cooking Light. Sometimes I love it and sometimes I hate it. For instance it always shows super-skinny women cooking things like cookies. As in the Getty Images picture above.

There was that time it told me everything that was wrong with my cooking.

And the business with the cooked plants.

I still stand by these gripes I aired several years ago.

And these...hahahahaha! I stand by them too! No wonder there the time in '12 when I renewed it and instantly regretted it. I am starting to regret renewing it now, just looking back.

However, I beat that price! That was $8 and this time I got it for $5.

It is amazing it is still here so I can do that. "I am starting to think Cooking Light is hitting the skids. When I used to get it before, it was better." That is what I wrote, yikes, five years ago! I noted that the magazine had just been redesigned and in my experience that meant it was probably in trouble. Well, now it is five years later and Cooking Light is still going. It has been redesigned something like five times, too.

You know what, though, I was thinking the other day, I have to chill. I like these cooking magazines. It brightens my day when I find one in the mailbox. My heart soars when I can add to my clutter!
So I should quit letting them bug me.

However, I do reserve my right to kvetch.

It is just so delicious!

The last Ladies' Home Journal

It is fun to have an excuse to read magazines. And so when I was at the chiro I picked up the new issue of Ladies' Home Journal that was lying around, and when they told me I could go into the chiro room and lie down, I took the magazine with me. God forbid I have two minutes, you know, without something to read. I opened it up and --

Oh, no!

Another one bites the dust!

They had a page titled "Portrait of a Lady" and it was all about how Ladies' Home Journal was ceasing publication after 133 years.

And I felt bad. I love these old magazines, their quaint titles. We have lost Redbook and I forget what other ones, and now we are losing sweet Ladies' Home Journal. I feel guilty too because it was not as if I read it or subscribed. Magazines like Ladies' Home Journal are not exactly my bag. Not smart enough for me, I want to say, although I should hesitate before being so arrogant. Because I have to admit, I have a lot to learn in the home department.

Hmmmm.

Reviewing the situation I see there are a few bright sides to the situation.

One, fewer magazines means fewer distractions as I strive to tie up my writing on Leonard Pennario.

Two, it does appear that Redbook has an online presence so the name lives on. I believe Ladies' Home Journal is going to do the same thing. At least we get to keep the names.

And finally ... excuse to take out more magazine subscriptions! Someone has to support these magazines, right? I do not know if I can justify Good Housekeeping. It is kind of like Ladies' Home Journal, not my speed. But perhaps Better Homes and Gardens. There is another title I love. I remember my mother getting Better Homes when I was little.

I got Better Homes for a few years because they drop the price so low you cannot resist it. Last time they sent me that almost-too-good-to-refuse offer, I stood firm. I heard in my head the voice of my friend Melinda: It's clutter. It's all clutter.

Now I have an excuse to say yes.

Next time, I will!

Curtains

I have this plan to get curtains in the kitchen, such as the ones picture up above, instead of the blinds that are there.

The blinds have been there as long as I have had the house and they are really dirty from having been in the kitchen so long, with the kind of cooking I do. They cannot be cleaned. I have tried.

So I thought, curtains. I really do not need blinds, you know? I would rather have half-curtains that would block out the sight of me from outside but still let in the light from the higher panes. They would brighten up the kitchen.

Howard said: "But the neighbors would still be able to see you."

I said: "How?"

He said, "Well, from the upper floors." Meaning, if they went upstairs and looked down, maybe they could see me.

I said, "Well, they can knock themselves out."

If it is worth running upstairs to get a glimpse of me listening to Leonard Pennario and stirring things with wooden spoons and swearing at my back issues of Cooking Blight, so be it. I still want curtains.

With that in mind I went to Kmart after work. I got those springy curtain rods that fit the windows without you having to screw them in. I am not a hardware store person. Kmart is a whole other story I will have to get into another time.

After Kmart I went to Amvets all bright and hopeful that I would find cute vintage curtains.

Alas, no luck. They had tons of bath stuff, such as those furry covers that fit over your toilet, haha. But no kitchen curtains that I could find. Darn, and I had such an image of cute curtains with geese and strawberries and rolling pins and whatever. Oh well. Perhaps I will learn to make my own curtains. Meanwhile I did get a great deal on a Food and Wine cookbook that I love. It is Food and Wine Herbs and Spices!

Already I have made a recipe out of that book. I made Cod and Potatoes With Thyme.

Still with dirty blinds.

Great things take time!

Stir Up Sunday

My heart stirred this morning when I heard the words that signal Stir Up Sunday.

Stir Up Sunday gets its name because of the Collect prayer, which begins, "Excita, quaesumus, Domine," which means "Stir up, we beseech Thee, O Lord..."

Over the centuries people began taking that as the cue to stir up your puddings and fruitcakes!

There was that one Stir Up Sunday when I planned to make fruitcakes. I do not remember if I ever carried through with that plan. This year though, I have already carried through a plan. I made cookies!

I made cookies early so I could take them to our church coffee hour. I was feeling festive because I had written this story for the paper all about Thanksgiving and Buffalo and home. There were these cookies in Cooking Light that looked easy so I made them.

They took a while. All cookies take a while, you know? In this case I had to shape them and roll them in sugar and cinnamon.

But they came out great! And I have forgotten how relaxing it is to make cookies, just by yourself, la la la la la la la. I was very pious and ate just one. At the coffee hour they went over big. All the kids were eating them. And as one gentleman pointed out, my cookies were competing with glazed doughnuts right next to them. That the kids were grabbing the cookies was a great compliment to the chef. I sure stirred things up there!

Every cookie has something that makes them wonderful and in the case of this cookie it is the texture. They are thin and really crisp and they are coated with granulated sugar so, yum. I do not have the sweet tooth that Leonard Pennario had but I do get excited about treats now and then. "Excita, Domine ..."

It is funny thinking back on Stir-Up Sunday a couple of years ago. I have fallen into such a medieval view of the seasons. Stir-Up Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent begins. Then Advent starts and you get the beautiful "Rorate" prayer. I have gotten used to all of this and anticipate it even though I did not grow up with it. Then in the middle of Advent comes Gaudete Sunday, "Rejoice."

We have a potluck feast planned for that Sunday.

I guess I will be doing some more stirring up!

And the new cooking buzzword is ...

Today The News printed my insightful interview with the chef Lidia Bastianich and so I have been thinking about food. Oh, wait, I think about food anyway. But still.

It is amazing the lengths to which cooking magazines will go to be unappetizing.

My new issue of Cooking Blight arrived and the new buzzword seems to be "plants."

As in: "For Thanksgiving, I am serving up a smorgasbord of cooked plants."

The editor actually wrote that! I might not have it word for word but I know I have the part about cooked plants right. They pay this guy to write and that is what he writes. Cooked plants!

You know, I love vegetables probably more than anyone. If you are what you eat, I am a vegetable! But can't we find more appetizing language? Cooked plants?? All I can picture is, well, plants.

What about Robert Plant?

They should have him as the editor of Cooking Light. Because "plants" are suddenly the it-word. It is what "local" was last year. Now it is all about plants. The word is all over the magazine. It is like a weed.

Plus naturally they trot out all this language as Thanksgiving is approaching. Along with long lectures on portion control. Cooking Light is crazy about portion control. Every issue we are lectured.

This is very much at odds with my life-enjoying, Leonard Pennario-listening self.

Fie on Cooking Light.

Fie!