Gourmet All the Way!

For about two years now, I've been collecting back issues of Gourmet. At first it was just an issue here and there. Then I bought five years off eBay from 1961 through 1965. These magazines served me well. My favorite thing this last two summers has been to go to Ravinia, sit on the lawn with a pick-nick, a glass of wine, and a forty year-old issue of Gourmet.

Well a few weeks ago I was looking at eBay and saw that a woman had put up for sale her whole collection of Gourmets. From 1965 all the way through the last issue. This just about killed me. I was intentionally NOT trying to make a complete set of Gourmet. I mean, our apartment is 697 square feet. Where am I supposed to store something like that? And what kind of right do I have to take up all of that space? Who needs all those magazines anyway? Turns out I do because I wrote the woman. She'd never sold anything on eBay before. Her mother-in-law had subscribed to the magazine and when she passed, this amazing woman kept renewing the subscription. I can see how that happened.  It would take a lot to stop subscribing after all those years. Perhaps like a monthly remembrance of her mother-in-law.

The catch was, I had to pick the magazines up in Kentucky! I just couldn't figure out how to make that happen, so I didn't even bid on them. But no one else did either. When the magazines were reposted Serena convinced me to buy them. The woman who was selling them offered to meet us in a town called Marion on the Illinois side of the boarder. This saved us two hours each way.

I was really nervous to meet her. I was afraid she would think me a dilettante. Or perhaps resentful that I was carrying away her past. But when we all rendezvoused in the parking lot of some highway-side chain hotel, all of my fears were dispelled. Her name is Terri! And she's an artist and a metal worker and someone who, if I'd met at an opening, I would have immediately loved. The whole experience was odd and intimate. I felt as if I were carrying away her memories, which I guess I was.

After almost a week of rearranging, cleaning, and tossing out, finally the magazines are installed in the dining room. This was at Serena's insistence. She maintains that after the time and expense of procuring these things, it would be foolish to stash them in the basement, or even under the bed. Of course, she is right.

I've got some duplicate years. Now I'm the one posting on eBay.

Ladies Invited

I was reading through a November, 1955 Gourmet and ran across this ad for Gourmet's Guest Club. This is actually an ad for a credit card offered to Gourmet subscribers. This was way back in the Diner's Club days. But what I find most interesting about this ad is that it is directed toward the "lady executive" who might feel uncomfortable, or more likely, her male luncheon guest might feel uncomfortable, with the woman paying. As it says in the ad, "No money on the table, no battling over the check."

This is particularly interesting because as I read through all these old restaurant ads it becomes clear that many restaurants restricted the hours in which women could dine. For example, The St. Regis on Fifth Avenue has an ad that reads, "ladies are invited after 4 o'clock." This says to me that ladies are definitely NOT invited before 4. So what do you think is going on there during lunchtime? Pissing contests? Dancing girls? No, I think what's going on there is business and drinks. Okay, and maybe cussing, but the point is that the whole idea is exclusionary and presented a real hurdle to business women.

When I first moved to Chicago I worked at the Chicago Sports Bar and Grill, a real shithole in the financial district of the Loop. I think they hired me because I was white. The place was right out of an old movie, electricians and contractors came in for lunch and drank until we closed at 8. Cops ate free and there was this one cop who, in uniform, would do this joke which involved him HANDING ME HIS GUN! and then dropping his pants. Once in a while this group of men in suits came in before we opened, like at 9:30 or something. I wasn't allowed to speak to them unless they spoke to me first. They gave me a 20 every time I brought them a round. As you can imagine, very lucrative. Anyway, there was this geezer who came in all the time and drank his lunch and told me about the good ole' days when the Berghoff (contentiously Chicago's oldest restaurant) had a men's only bar and women had to have their cocktails at a booth. That is, of course, until "those feminists ruined it."

So I was really impressed by this ad that came out almost 50 years before my tenure at The Chicago Sports Bar and Grill and how forward thinking they were, how sensitive to the difficulties of the needs of female executives. And it was an untapped market, of course. American Express bought them out, which I still think of as the credit card of the businessman.

Plum Sorbet

I don't know quite when it happened, but I have become extremely frugal around food. My fridge is filled with beautiful organic produce and dairy, high quality meat, homemade condiments and pickles, so it isn't exactly that I'm cheap. I just cannot bare to throw ANY food away. In fact, I never do. Tonight's leftovers are tomorrow's lunch. I save my chicken carcasses and vegetable scraps and make stock. Seriously, we don't throw anything away. But every now and again I am faced with a surplus of something. For example, last week in my produce box I got kale. Well it was like 95 degrees last week and the last thing I wanted was a hearty winter green. So I made kale pesto and froze it. Now some night when I'm tired and haven't planned anything for dinner, I can boil up some pasta and pull out the pesto and Viola! a lovely dinner.

The same thing with some plums. Serena was going to make plum pie (yummy!) but then we got busy and it didn't happen. Honestly, I'd forgotten all about the plums until I was digging through the fridge looking for a snack and there they were, only days from expiration. I had no idea what to do with them, that was until I picked up the next issue of Gourmet, August 1962. And what is on the cover? You guessed it, plum sorbet.

We've got a workhorse of an old Kitchen Aid that my friend Daniel gave us as a housewarming present. In fact it looks exactly like the Kitchen Aid advertisement in that same issue of Gourmet. A couple of years ago for Christmas I asked my mom for the ice cream attachment and now we make our own ice cream. It's really good and easy. As for the sorbet, I followed the recipe pretty closely. (Click on the picture to make the recipe bigger.) I only made a couple of changes. First, I used pasteurized egg whites because I was sure I'd be feeding this to guests. Secondly, following the advice of America's Test Kitchen, I added a bit of booze to the fruit so it wouldn't freeze solid. Good thing I have like a pint of that Luxardo left over.

The sorbet tasted great and my friends ate it up. I will certainly make this again, and will use it as a template for other sorbets. Good stuff.

Gourmet: The Magazine of Good Living

I have fallen down the freakin' rabbit hole. This food and nostalgia research project has been great fun and is yielding rocking essays, but once in a while I feel as if I am losing my grip on reality. A couple of months ago my friend Martha gave me a 1961 issue of Gourmet Magazine that someone had left at her restaurant (that I've mentioned before, where I used to work called The Sisters). Anyway, I was completely enthralled. Despite its stinky mustiness, I read every single page. Cover to cover. Including the ads. Immediately I got on eBay and bought a full five years: 1961-1965 including index.

Honest to god, I swore I wasn't going to blog about this. It was too easy. Too nostalgic. The magazine is rife with juicy tidbits. There could be a whole blog just about this.

I have now read all of '61 and of '62. The thing is, when you immerse yourself in the media and culture of a specific era some of it rubs off. We've heard this argument a million times about pornography and violence. Well, I hate to stand here in the camp of Andrea Dworkin, but after what must be two years of reading Culinary Arts Institute cookbooks, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961), and now two years worth of Gourmet, I find myself inured to the likes of aspic (see picture).

Other things are happening too. I decant my half and half into a glass container. Organ meats, which I loved as a child, are now regaining their appeal. We use only cloth napkins. And as I've mentioned aspic has started to look appealing. Perhaps it is too much Dick Van Dyke Show.

Oh, and did I mention that I bought all of 1948 in a single bound volume. Do I see an intervention?