They Know Their Audience

I haven't really been cooking much of interest lately, with the exception of the tea-smoking fiasco, so I don't have a lot of luscious pictures to share with you. Dinner has mainly consisted of some worthy but unremarkable roast chickens and other similarly satisfying but relatively boring offerings. So, instead, I'll show you my Christmas presents.

My Beloved and several of my friends know their audience - they buy me cooking-related items. My Beloved subscribed to The Art of Eating for me, a quarterly periodical which features well written and illustrated articles of interest to the food-obsessed. I expressed an interest in this magazine because Molly Wizenberg told me as we were up to our elbows in cracked crab on Christmas Eve that she had prepared an article to appear in an upcoming issue. I'm looking very much forward to that article but the ones in this issue were terrific, too.

First, the one about the lovely woman with the wonderful name of Soyoung Scanlan who makes artisanal cheese in Sonoma County, California. I need to find her Andante cheeses to try, for sure. Then, other articles on topics as various as Madeira wine, hunting and eating the kill, paprika and non-vintage brut champagnes, to name just a few. There are also restaurant and book reviews, and sources for wonderful ingredients - but no ads whatsoever. The $50 subscription rate is high, but it covers the cost of writing and publishing without resorting to carrying advertisements.

I devoured my first issue cover to cover and relished every delicious bite.