These unique and pretty Christmas cookies are from the December 2005 edition of Gourmet Magazine. Speaking of Gourmet, its final issue is this month, November 2009. After 68 years, like so many other publications, it is now a thing of the past. What led to Gourmet’s demise? Even with nearly 1 million subscribers, who looked forward to the fantastic articles, recipes, and pictures each month, the magazine fell victim to a decline in ad sales due to popular television food shows and online recipe sites, like its own Epicurious.com, taking up its former advertising revenue.  Upon the announcement, on October 5, 2009, The Wall Street Journal said it was “like a giant soufflé falling.”  I have to agree, Gourmet was the first food magazine I subscribed to, some 27 years ago.  I kept every one of those issues until just a couple of summers ago, when I donated some 300 issues of Gourmet and nearly 1000 issues of Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, Saveur, Cook’s Illustrated, Cooking Light, and Martha Stewart Living to the Culinary Program at Scottsdale Community College.  It took two trips in my SUV because of the extreme weight and mass! Gourmet was the granddaddy of them all and it will be sadly missed by foodies worldwide.
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