Daily Loaf

As part of its survival-mode restructuring campaign, Conde Nast announced today that it is shutting down production of four of its magazines, including big name brands Gourmet and Modern Bride, as well as Cookie and Elegant Bride. There have been rumors about Gourmet’s demise for almost a year now, and in the first half of this year its ad pages had fallen by almost 50%.

So what becomes of Gourmet honcho Ruth Reichl? Maybe she can don the drag again and usurp Sam Sifton as the new NYT restaurant critic for a second tour of duty?

Here’s a sad note: There’s still a pop-up on the Gourmet site asking if you want to subscribe. And where will I go to find absurdly complicated, poorly designed recipes?!

Have you ever heard the Vietnam-era quote, “war is not healthy for children and other living things?” It is a staunchly obvious and painstakingly reasonable appeal that cuts to the ethical core and casualties of war.  I read an article this week that reminded me of it, but instead of war, the murderous culprit in this story is climate change.

A new report by the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) says that global warming already kills about 300,000 people a year.  If that projection is not startling enough– or if you have more of an economic mind, and are not much swayed by stacks of human figures—the report also says that climate change costs around $125 billion in economic losses annually.
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I had a dream the other night that I was on a transatlantic flight on its way to Africa. I was sitting next to a man in a brown jacket, clown pants and Jesus sandals who kept repeating, “Down we go.” That should have given me a clue to the unfortunate end to my dream, or nightmare, but it didn’t. Suddenly, the no-smoking sign started flashing a blood-red color and the pilot got on the intercom and said something along the lines of, “We are going down, hold on to your fucking hats.” I couldn’t really make out what he said, but I’ve always thought that would be the best way to break the news to the passengers. If we’re going to die, I don’t want to hear, “Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to bring an unfortunate situation to your attention. Blah, blah, blah.” Cut to the chase, man! Anyway, to make a long story short, we plummeted thousands of feet into an island and, magically, I was the only survivor. That is the point when I woke up. And for some batshit crazy reason, the first thing I thought of was an episode of The Office when the employees play Desert Island. This taught me something about myself: Apparently, if I were the sole survivor of a plane crash on a deserted island, the most important thing to me would be what movies I was carrying on me and how I could watch them. So, if that were to happen, and if there were a television and DVD player on this said island, these are the movies I would take… Read the rest of this entry »