November 2017 Cooking Light (1,578 views)

Really? Oh boy, can't wait to see it!! Thanks for the heads-up. I love it when I'm alerted to a trail that I'm compelled by my own weird nature to follow!!!! LOVE IT LOVE IT LOVE IT!!!!!!!!! Thanks again.

Hi. I browse this board occasionally, but I've never posted before. However, this topic stirred up strong feelings in me, so I just had to reply.

If you take the November CL as just a regular issue, then I think it's quite good. However, if you take it as a special "30th anniversary" issue, which it claims to be, then I think it's a real dud.

Let's see—they list their "all-time favorite recipes" from the "past three decades." Well, let's look into that claim a little further. Here's a breakdown of these 20 recipes:

First decade (1987–1997): 0
Second decade (1997–2007): 1
Third decade: (2007–2009): 0
                      (2010–2017): 19

Let's hear it for history, folks!!!! So, from their first 20 years of publication, they deemed that only one recipe was good enough to make their "all-time favorite" list. What a joke. And that recipe comes from 2006. What's more, all the other 19 recipes come from the past seven years. That's not a retrospective. It seems all they did was examine their top Web-page hits and then sift through those. How long did that take them—a whole 25 minutes??

Furthermore, it seems that just about every single one of these recipes is an entrée. What about their all-time favorite side dishes? And their favorite desserts?

Let's contrast this Nov. issue with their 10th-anniversary issue from April 1997. The theme of that issue seemed to be "10th anniversary all the way, baby!" In it, they featured their top 10 recipes (which included both desserts and sides), and the whole issue was tied to that theme. I thought it was a great, unforgettable issue. OTOH, the theme of this new issue seems to be:  "It's kind of like . . . well, you know, our 30th anniversary, and we wanted to . . . um . . . show you our very best recipes ever! Actually, we don't really want to do that, but we're hoping you just won't notice. In fact, we think the first 20 years of the magazine were a total joke, so we'd just like to do a celebration of our favorite recipes from the 2010s!!!"

I recall their 20th-anniversary issue from 2007 being quite decent as well. And in 2012 (for their 25th anniversary), on the Web, they named their favorite recipe for each year going all the way back to 1987. They also featured every single CL cover going back to the very beginning in a gallery—I thought that was cool.

Anyway, as I said, if you take this new Nov. issue as a regular, normal issue, then it's a good one. But for a so-called 30th-anniversary issue, I think it's a half-baked travesty.

Well, I feel better now that I got that off my chest. Also, of these new "all-time favorite" recipes from Nov., while they look pretty good, I really didn't find many that I wanted to try. Maybe the pot roast and the chicken piccata, but beyond those, I just wasn't that interested. In fact, I think many of the other "regular" recipes in the magazine sound just as good, and honestly, I'm probably more likely to give those a try.

Welcome Neptune!

Lol. I will have to admit, I totally disregarded the whole "anniversary issue" bit. As I was skimming through the first time and hit "the best of" article, I was quietly going "made it, made it too, made that one..." so, yeah, perhaps as an Anniversary Issue it missed the mark. And this is where I confess, I really don't read the articles - I just want the recipes. So for recipes, I found myself excited about quite a few.

Thanks, Varaile! 



I'd say you were very smart to do so. 



Well, those recipes are all so recent, I'm not surprised.



I wonder if they thought nobody would even notice?  Then again, maybe not many folks care about stuff like that.   But I just found it deceptive for them to call it "the best from the past 3 decades" when it's clearly not even close to that.    It feels like they have little respect for the history of the magazine, and put zero effort into discovering the many hidden gems from the past.  In contrast, for their 20th anniversary, they featured a whole variety of recipe types:

www.cookinglight.com/eating-smart/from-the-editors/all-time-best-recipes#best-beef-beef-daube-provencal

And then 5 years ago, they put out this retrospective (along with others featuring their 25 best desserts, 25 best chicken recipes, 25 staff favorites, etc., all of which are still available on the Web):

www.cookinglight.com/food/top-rated-recipes/best-recipes-ever#best-recipes-ever_2

Even if you don't agree with all their picks, at least the editors seemed to do their homework in the past—unlike this year.




I think that's probably the way most people approach food magazines.  Besides, who has time to read all the articles anyway?



That's good to hear.  I'm still going through it slowly, so maybe I'll find more to get excited about as well.

Actually, I suspect that if a CL reader made up a list of their own favorite recipes from the past 3 decades, it would be far more interesting than an "official" one put out by the magazine anyway.    Unfortunately, the philosophy of the editors seems to be: "Only what's recent is decent."  Or another term for that is chronological snobbery. 

MrsWaz: Remember CL's recipe for Smokey Vegetable Bean Soup? I have that recipe somewhere. I used to make it all the time. (It used canned beans.) It was loved by so many forum members.

While thinking about beloved CL recipes...and just because I ramble and think out-loud: I'm still drooling over some brownies from CL. They were salted caramel chocolate brownies. OMG. (And I have that recipe somewhere, too.)

I should go find those...I will!

Are these the ones you're referring to, Catbatty?

www.myrecipes.com/recipe/salted-caramel-brownies

They sound tasty.  And I think the "3.38 ounces all-purpose flour" is pretty funny.  Who exactly has a digital scale that goes out to the hundredths of an ounce anyway? 

Pretty sad, if true.  Well, he did use to work at Bon Appétit and Saveur, I believe.  Of course, that doesn't mean he was ever truly into food. 



In other words, he's just using the job to get places.  Could very well be.



That definitely makes sense.  And if he can't get all excited about a 30-year anniversary, then something is seriously wrong.  Hey, it's sort of like giving your spouse a piece of toast for your 30th anniversary! 



Interesting term—I had never heard that before.  When you say you were "raised" without technology, do you mean before you graduated from high school?  The Internet started to get big in '95, so I guess that's about when you were graduating.  There wasn't much e-mail before then either.  Frankly, I'm glad to have grown up in the "stone age."  If the Web and "social media" had been available back when I was in high school, I think I would've become addicted to all of it. 

I've embraced technology in many ways, but I don't like cell phones (except for emergencies and stuff like that), and I don't do Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Actually, I do have a FB account, but it's under a screen name, and I only use it to post comments on the Web—not for anything personal.  But it seems that so many people just don't have a life outside FB, and I was speculating that maybe the current editor thinks nothing good happened before the digital age.  However, as you said, it may be simply a lack of passion for cooking on his part.



You're welcome, mrswaz.   I love these "best of" lists, in case you haven't noticed.     That's why I was so upset over the half-baked anniversary issue. 



Just curious—what's the earliest annual you have?



Definitely!  Another reason I enjoy "best of" lists, even if I don't usually agree with them. 

[quote author="neptune " source="/post/7009/thread" timestamp="1509649516"
Interesting term—I had never heard that before.  When you say you were "raised" without technology, do you mean before you graduated from high school?  The Internet started to get big in '95, so I guess that's about when you were graduating.  There wasn't much e-mail before then either.  Frankly, I'm glad to have grown up in the "stone age."  If the Web and "social media" had been available back when I was in high school, I think I would've become addicted to all of it. 

I've embraced technology in many ways, but I don't like cell phones (except for emergencies and stuff like that), and I don't do Twitter, Facebook, etc.  Actually, I do have a FB account, but it's under a screen name, and I only use it to post comments on the Web—not for anything personal.  But it seems that so many people just don't have a life outside FB, and I was speculating that maybe the current editor thinks nothing good happened before the digital age.  However, as you said, it may be simply a lack of passion for cooking on his part.

[/quote]

Here's an article that sums up an Xennial.

www.inverse.com/article/33453-what-is-a-xennial-what-people-born-between-77-83-need-to-know

Yes, I graduated high school in '95. When I started high school there were maybe six computers in the whole school hooked up to the internet. To use one you had to have a teacher or one of the computer techs with you to supervise. By the time I graduated, a good portion of the school was hooked up to the internet, but it was still a precious thing. We had internet in my home well before most of my friends did, but I did not get a cellphone until I worked for a cellphone provider in college. Ha! Now that I think on it, I even had a pager! Antique texting!

I have the annuals labeled 2001-2009. That was a glorious time to be a Cooking Light fan. So many great recipes, and I learned so many cooking techniques.

Oh, I had the magazines AND the annuals. I had my 5 minutes of fame being quoted from the CLBB in the magazine. The CLBB was hopping all the time too- one would go away for a weekend and come back and have pages upon pages of chatter to catch up on.

I kept those magazines for a very long time. But after moving 4 or 5 times, I finally had to pass on all the magazines and just keep the annuals.

I also had one very old Cooking Light binder from before they published an annual. I don't recall which year I had, but it was this giant folio that you would insert the year's worth of magazines into it, and then you could flip through a whole year in that one binder. I don't know where that ever ended up. It would be fun to flip through it again.

I thought the recipes were quite interesting...our supper club did a meal trying out many of them...and my claim to fame is in this issue...the Omaha Cooking Club that is featured near the back with a teeny tiny small picture and the Parsnip Cake recipe is my group...well I started it with Jennifer many years ago...

I wonder how that was considered educational enough to have at the school?

My screen name then was the same as it is now, and I said something about this Baked Ziti Recipe: www.myrecipes.com/recipe/baked-ziti-with-vegetables-mushrooms It was something along the lines of the best baked ziti I'd ever had. Alas, I did not keep the magazine, and I have no idea where that red folio thing ended up. When you move several times over the course of a few years you kind of take it for granted that things go missing and are never found again.

So you just discovered your name and comment in the magazine by accident? That must've been a nice surprise. Do you still make this recipe?



If you really want the issue as a souvenir, you can still buy it here, but it'll cost you 10 bucks (before shipping):

backissues.com/issue/Cooking-Light-March-2001

Incidentally, I remember that one of their issues around that time had a beet cake (kind of like a carrot cake), but I don't know if that was the exact issue or not.  Anyway, I made the cake eventually, and it was quite good. 



I believe it.   Hopefully your moving days won't last forever.

ETA:  Oh, I just realized that the issue in question couldn't be March 2001, because once you made your comment on the BB, it would've taken a few months before CL was able to publish it in the magazine.  In any case, if you remember the exact issue, you still might be able to buy it at that site I posted above.