Oh, how I loved Gourmet. By far my favorite of the foodie mags, it’s always been a voice for the joy of food. Gourmet celebrated not just food’s flavor and aroma, but food as a visual art, food as a universal language, food as a carrier of cultural meaning and dialogue, food as biography of a food-lover’s life. It facilitated this passion for the short on time or skills to some degree, but never compromised the indulgent joy of a day arranged around cooking and eating by bludgeoning it with excessive pragmatism (ahem, Bon Appetit). I would have subscribed at three times the price to have kept it alive.

Aesthetics of joy are alive and well on this penultimate cover, so much so I’d already planned a post around it before this sad news arrived. Bright, vibrant color; the spherical apple; the shiny surface; the sticky sweetness you can practically taste just by looking at it — this is the joy of autumn made visible, and a clear illustration of what food culture is losing in Gourmet.