Honest answer: I don't know yet. BUT, I have a lot of rough thoughts - here are a few:
- Gourmet closes - there is an outpouring of sentiment from loyal readers everywhere that this is a loss of a cultural icon. Gourmet was more then just FOOD.
- Gourmet, for me, struck the most delicate balance of marrying and fostering the accessible with the aspirational in terms of cooking and living.
- Every month, Gourmet expanded my culinary and cultural horizons. Food, my friends, is one of the things that makes the world go around and defines cultures. With the loss of Gourmet, who addresses this now? (yes, I know, Saveur, etc. I still feel like there is a void here).
- We as Americans now eat out all the time, barely sit together around a table and should be afraid of eating ground beef. SOMETHING has to be done about this. The readers of Gourmet -and the staff that created Gourmet - care about these things deeply. And, let's be honest, we are an unhealthy group of folks. Caring about the quality of your food, valuing a meal, creating it yourself...all of these things can actually help address these pretty major societal issues.
- My husband and I were looking for an apartment a few years ago. We live in NYC. Do you know how many places we saw - new beautiful buildings - that had NO space for a dining room table!! Honestly. The brokers all said the same thing "nobody eats at home anymore, and if they do, they sit in front of a TV but the family dinner...sorry you silly silly people, but the family dinner is a thing of the past." Well, I will tell you what - it is NOT a thing of the past in my world. We don't do it every night, but boy do we think it's important so we do our best to make it happen as often as possible. This, to me, is a breakdown in family values, in connecting with loved ones, in helping your children learn to communicate and learn to listen, learn to try new things, learn to have patience.
There is more to life than Chicken Nuggets, people.
So this is all a work in progress - and honestly, I don't know if anything big (or small) will come of it. But when I think of Save Gourmet I think of all of the above. Saving Gourmet to me means saving values and ideals that I hope we hold sacred, that build our communities, that encourage exploration and curiosity.
I would love your thoughts.
