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I think the thing that I like about Gourmet is that there are some really simple recipes in there that can be made pretty much any time - and the aspirational recipes are there for when you want something a little more special for company or on the weekend.
Having said that - I'm pretty bad about actually MAKING the recipes - I use them more for inspiration than anything else.
My favourite recipe came from Gourmet MANY years ago - Cashew Chicken Chili. Try it, you'll NOT be disappointed! (and yes, its on epicurious!)

Hi everyone! I'm just perusing the latest issue of Gourmet and it occured to me that its my favourite foodie mag. What's yours? Bon Appetit? Cook's Illustrated? Food & Wine? What's your favourite foodie show?

i get cooking light and everyday food, and i think there's room on my coffee table for one more. i'm debating between gourmet and bon appetit. i'm definitely more of a home cook than a chef-y cook.

can anyone recommend one over the other?

hands down my favorite is Saveur, followed closely by the dearly missed Chow
BA & Gourmet are interchangably boring to me, but if pressed, I'd go with Gourmet simply for their once a year issue that looks at the cuisine of one country
the one a few years back about Mexico was simply breathtaking

as for tv, Good Eats all day, every day, and I'd be one happy camper!

I'm a low-budget foodie -- no money for magazines (not even my beloved Atlantic Monthly!) or cable tv. So I'm confined to the web, the occasional magazine from work (NYT mag and various design/home mags) and the cooking shows broadcast on PBS.

I've really come to like Jacques Pépin's Fast Food My Way (got the cookbook for xmas) and Simply Ming (to satisfy my asian-ness). Nothing terribly sophisticated, but good viewing and good ideas.

Hey Liz,
I really like Everyday Food as well - and its helping to teach my culinary challenged boyfriend how to cook. I like Gourmet as its getting a bit more realistic while still maintaining some challenging recipes to make things interesting.

Ann, I love Saveur as well but I find its just far too expensive for the content - perhaps its time for another look. I love Good Eats but I think my favourite right now would have to be Barefoot Contessa. She just seems to have such a passion for entertaining and great food - the kind of stuff we could all cook if we had unlimited funds, a little BMW convertible to tool around to the shops in and a great house in Connecticut. :-)

MY favorite is cooks illustrated-food writing form the perspective of a scientist. And I will bet my life that the recipes they pick truely do always turn out perfectly

Baklava- perfect
Chocolate bundt cake- perfect
perfefctly roasted chicken- YUM!

Moving away from the techincal scientific manual that cooks illustrated is, I also like reading Gastonomica- less of a recipe book but full of inspiration and writing about food! Recntly read a great article about morel hunting - Molly moochers. Always full of odes and praises to. food

I just came home from a memorial day weekend and while I was there I visited my brother who works at a strawberry and asparagus patch.

Needless to say I came home with 20 lbs of strawbabies and 4 lbs of asparagus. What will I ever do with all of this? Any ideas?

It was great seeing the asparagus poke its head through the ground!

I have a mixed love hate relationship with Barefoot Contessa. I love the background music which always puts me in a festive mood! The intimate camera shots always lure me in and make me think about how great her parties must be.

But on reflection, I always feel like she is always making the same thing- a big hunk a' meat!

While I love her show I think it is heavy on marketing her lavish lifestyle and light on food content. I'm a sucker though and love watching her. I'm always amazed at her well stocked fridge of boos- it makes one think she sits around the house all day drinking and cooking!

I'm not the least bit adventurous in the kitchen (although I would like to be) but I came in this afternoon, saw an advocado that was going to have it's peak in the next 30 seconds so I scooped it out into a bowl, chopped garlic, onion and cherry tomatoes in a food processor, squeezed a lime into it and voila - guacamole. And it's good - surprise! Just had to post that since I'm proud of myself for actually doing something different in the kitchen.

I like Cooking Light, Food&Wine and Gourmet; I don't buy every month. I know now that Gourmet features a diff. city in every March issue, so I will definitely buy that issue each time.
MoM - if you subscribe on line to Epicurious mailings, you get recipes bimonthly from latest Gourmet&Bon Appetit, plus a link called: See All New Recipes, it's changed/updated on the 15th of every month. So you get all the recipes from the latest issues. You can remain low budget that way! :)
Liz-years back a friend said that she preferred bon appetit because it featured more sweets & desserts than gourmet; don't know if it's still that way.
Luke - my fav. asparagus recipe is for this great asparagus and leek soup-
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/11958
-it's almost like eating pureed asparagus, but better.
You can prob.multiply the recipe (which serves 2)& freeze some minus the finishing sour cream.
Anne-good going! you just reminded me I have a few avocados at home awaiting my attention.
Does anyone have a good (cold) avocado soup recipe?

I don't have a good cold avocado soup recipe but I did have an interesting avocado experience the other day. Being SO hot in Toronto this week, the boyfriend and I went out for gelato where I tried the avocado flavour (just a spoonful mind you!). VERY creamy, interesting texture and flavour - though I have to admit that there is NO way I'd be able to eat a whole cup full of it!

Anne, that guacamole sounds wonderful. And if you want to try something adventurous with it in the fall, I have a recipe that I love from Epicurious for guacamole with pear, grapes, and pomegranate arils! It is incredibly good, even though it sounds weird. People rave over it! Best dip I have ever made. Plus it looks really pretty.

I get Gourmet - my mom and I started getting it at the same time last Christmas - and I have not been really impressed so far. It feels more like a travel magazine for rich people than a magazine truly about food and cooking. Plus the recipes show up for free on Epicurious anyway. I love Ruth Reichl, though. I think when my sub is up I might switch to Food & Wine.

And also - I want to hear how Melissa's diabetic/Crohn's/vegan dinner went last week!

faith, that sounds yummy. What do you put it on?

I love the magazine "Eating Well" I'm also a fan of "Everyday Food." I enjoy "Gourmet" and " Saveur" more for the food porn, than the recipes. I tend to be more of an everyday cook.

Anne, I just serve it with regular tortilla chips - I like the little scoop ones because they can hold all the chunky fruit in the dip. It's like the ultimate combo of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy.

I wanted to make it for a long time and had to hold on to the recipe until pomegranates were in season again!

I just made a simple avocado lime dressing for ~50 (woo). It's different than what I'd normally do since it involves mass amounts of sour cream, but the dressing was basically for a cookout and I needed something that wouldn't have me whisking at the last minute.

2 ripe avocados, scooped
2 limes, juiced
1-2 cups sour cream
Cumin, Coriander, Salt and Pepper to Taste

Throw everything in the food processor, duck and then taste and adjust based on texture and taste.

Then carefully scoop onto greens and use the heat of your hands to loosen the dressing as you toss the greens and vegetables.

Recommend this great site for avocado recipes, from the California Avocado Commission:
http://www.avocado.org/recipes/index.php
found some chilled soup recipes

huh. maybe i won't get either. i just enjoyed the recipes on epicurious, so i thought i'd like the magazines. but yeah, i hate reading about stuff i'll never be able to afford to do. maybe i'm the anti-aspirationalist. (although i LOVE barefoot contessa! at first i thought she was flaunting her wealth, but the more i watched, the more i got over it. ina and jeffery are the cutest, and the food is not intimidating to prepare.)

so what magazine would people recommend? food + wine?

I love Food and Wine, though some of the long features on winemakers are a bit cheesy. The recipes are a bit simpler than gourmet. (no cakes that take millions of hours to make.) I actually enjoy my B & A subscription too, though there are only so many variations on whatever's popular, and after a year you feel like you're seeing repeats.

rec.food+wine,accessible. I like their reviews of kitchen appliances/tools. They have a DIY cheese article in June issue, see link.

One vote against barefoot contessa from me. She cooks high fat food, always adding butter &/or sour cream, etc. I find the soft focus 'intimate shots' creepy.
I like Mario Batali's cuisine & personality.

I love Cooks Illustrated and Gastronomica. My dad bought me a subscription to Gastronomica for my birthday and it was such an unexpected surprise. It isn't full of recipes but gets you thinking about food in very interesting ways. Cooks is great because the recipes always end up perfect. (And it is ad-free, so you trust the reviews.)

I also get food and wine- Even though magazine recipes can be aspirational I find that I hardly ever make recipes from the magazine but use the magaine as insipration of how I may be able to use a certain ingredient.

My menu planning usually entails mutiple reviews of magazines and cookbooks and finally through a little bit of everyone in together and creating my own creation.

I'm a Saveur reader all the way, with the occasional Cooks Illustrated...actually, if you flip through a Saveur right now (the summery issue) they have a subscription thing (one of those annoying, fall-out-of-the-magazine scraps) with a really good deal - $23 for 27 issues (3 years). Online it's $20 for 9 issues, so I figured I'd pass the word along.

That's a GREAT deal Kate! I wonder what their Canadian rate is... I'm sure its no where NEAR as good a deal...

Eric - As I recall, I think you had to add ten dollars for Canada?

Thanks Kate! I'll have to check that deal out!