And the Winner Is....

Back at the turn of the twenty-first century I used to subscribe to Martha Stewart Living. This was a couple of years before the whole ImClone case and the magazine was at its peak. Whatever it lacked in editorial content (much) it more than made up for in visual organization and appeal. The magazine was, in a word, really beautiful. In its obsession with cataloging detail it was also marvelously borderline pedantic, at times downright nineteenth-century encyclopedic. A single photograph might contain forty-five different samples of milk glass, grouped by form, each piece numbered, each number keyed to a date and location of production. No item of possible domestic employment was spared this treatment -- mixing bowls, wrapping paper, candlesticks, dish towels, scotch tape, soup ladles. And to top it off the recipes were reliably excellent.

I let my subscription lapse after a couple of years, and never saved any of the magazines since I don't believe in clutter and the recipes are all available online. But one issue I do keep. February 2000. It contains the recipe for Grammy's Chocolate Cookies, grand-prize winner of the Cookie of the Week Contest. And about ten other outstanding indispensable runner-ups. Or it is runners-up?

I do sometimes browse the magazine -- usually at an airport news stand -- but it doesn't look the same to me. Or maybe what once looked so new about the magazine now looks no longer new, and not in a particularly good way. Still it was a fun time while it lasted.

As for these cookies, they really are the best.