From Amazon.com

Focused on "healthy living" rather than chronic dieting, Cooking Light is geared towards both the veteran cook who wants to "lighten up" and the novice determined to give up prepackaged "diet" meals. Each issue covers a different theme, from "superfast suppers" to "pretty, easy fruit pies," and includes features on food-related health trends; fast, healthy meals; and original recipes from readers. We especially like it when the editors rescue a reader's favorite, albeit fatty, recipe, giving it a healthy makeover, showing before-and-after stats on calories, fat, and cholesterol. The message is clear: you don't have to sacrifice the foods you love once you learn to "eat smart." --Daphne Durham ... Read more

Reviews (60)

Excellent recipes and I love the sections on Ethnic foods
I love Cooking Light. I love to cook, and to me all of Cooking Light's recipes are something a home cook dreams of. There are fancy recipes for impressing guests and there are good everyday recipes. One aspect of the magazine which I am really impressed with is the emphasis on AUTHENTIC ethnic cooking. I also subscribe to Bon Appetit, which also has good recipes, but they don't have too many ethnic dishes. I love the fact that Cooking Light has recognized that other cuisines can be healthy and delicious. Cooking Light doesn't tone down the spices or try to "Americanize" ethnic recipes too much.

I'm not a dessert person so I have not attempted to make any of the delicious looking desserts, but the ones that I have prepared for guests and potlucks have turned out to be very good.

Please subscribe to this magazine!

Good stuff
This magazine takes a new approach to light cooking. Not only is every issue packed full of recipes that list calories and fat content, but there are lifestyle and exercise tips too. Cooking Light is about a whole lifestyle and the magazine aims to bring you closer to that. One recipe I tried was chicken stuffed with brie and caramelized onions! It was wonderful and my husband had no idea it was LIGHT! I recommend it for everyday cooking, all recipes are easy to do and haven't been time consuming with easy to find ingredients, yet they still have a little flair.

Fun, Informative for Food and Health
While I no longer subscribe, I find myself borrowing friends' copies, because this is just a great magazine.
Not only are there informative articles about health, workout poses, product reviews, and the like, but the recipes really are great. I love the fact that they take a cherished family recipe (you know the kind, with 10,000 calories) and morph it into something far healthier yet still tasty. Also, these magazines stay relevant. I mine my old ones often for ideas to make my family's meals healthier. It's consistently a worthy read, with fine photos, and even better recipes.

Yummy
There are some really good recipes in this magazine. The only bad part are the ads on healthy living. I prefer healthy cooking.

Needs a name change
This is still an excellent magazine, but it should really be called something like "Living Light." The most recent issue (May 2004), for example, requires slogging through 122 pages of lifestyle articles and advertisements before there are any serious cooking articles or any recipes. The entire issue was 272 pages and claimed to contain 122 recipes, so there's still plenty there. But if you want serious cooking guidance and aren't interested in lifestyle articles like "Sports Bras" and "Admirable Abs," you might want to consider a magazine like Cooks Illustrated. ... Read more

From Amazon.com

Unlike most of its counterparts in the men's magazine ranks, Cigar Aficionado targets a classier, more cultivated man, the guy who'd rather smoke a Montecristo and savor the indulgence of a cherry-red '65 Mustang convertible than read about what Hollywood stars have to say while they eat lunch. It's the mature man's Esquire, a magazine that's more interested in yachts, rum, and golf than it is in this season's new fashions. As the name suggests, at the heart of the magazine is the cigar, with articles investigating everything from California smoking laws to Cuban politics. It's true that you don't have to smoke cigars to enjoy Cigar Aficionado, but Cigar Aficionado is a magazine that will try its very hardest to get you to enjoy cigars. --Jon Groebner ... Read more

Reviews (6)

A great book for a man to read on a sunday
This magizine with a cigar on a sunday afternoon by the pool,is one of those great delights. I look foward to esspically when then newest issue comes out .This mag is always filled with intersting facts and arcticles, and just plain cool stuff to read about .I would remcomend anybody read this magazine even if your are not a smoker .

Great man's mag!
Great mag!
So many of the mags for men just don't cut it with me. Think they are aimed at the 16-20 age group which I left a long time ago.
I have had many subcriptions to various mags over the years and this is one of the few that I still have even though I seldom smoke cigars anymore.

On the decline
When this mag started, it was the perfect (cigar) man's read. Delightful mix of politics, travel, but we always got a full plate of Cigar info.

In recent years, the mag has relied more on 'puffery' and doubled the amount of ads. It's still a decent read, but hardly what it used to be, and barely worth the (discounted) subscription price. I almost gave this a 3, but the very recent issues might be showing an uptrend.

tasteless
Here is a magazine written for characters out of Bonfire of the Vanities. It will appeal only to the smug, self centered and arrogant. Plus it's candy floss, although that isn't as bad for you as a cigar - since one cigar is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigs. If cigar smokers knew how badly they smell, this mag would have a much lower circulation. Alas, thanks to their addiction, they have little sense of smell left. Maybe CA could change the mag's name to Buffoon Monthly that would at least describe their readers more accurately.

Sugar Magazines
I think that sugar magazines are really great! they have millions of great things in them.I ENJOY them a lot ... Read more

Reviews (2)

Great magazine, make sure it's for you though
Good - This magazine will always show you the latest trends. You will get to know the names of the famous pastry chefs, their philosophies, their dessert likes and dislikes, and what inspires them. You will find out about the latest equipment. The magazine has beautiful photo coverage of world pastry competitions that you don't find elsewhere. You can learn a lot of ideas.

Bad - For the most part, I take ideas from this magazine, but do not use the recipes in the magazine. Most of the recipes seem to be plated desserts. A lot of them are are 'trendy', meaning they use things like chili, saffron, rosemary, and so on. Unless you make a lot of desserts, you may not want to be so experimental. The other thing is that they require lots of parts - a typical recipe might require a tuile, a coulis, two mousses, and a cake. Unless you do this on a production level, it is not worth it.

Overall - This is definitely an advanced magazine, more advanced than 'chocolatier'. If you don't know how much an egg yolk weighs in grams, it may be over your head. This can be both good and bad depending on your skill and enthusiasm for pastry making. I'm a good home pastry chef, but not a professional. So I like to read Pastry Arts and Design as people read fashion magazines - to learn and to enjoy, but not necessarily to do. If you're a professional, you may appreciate it more than me. If you're a beginning home baker, you may barely appreciate it at all.

Great for professionals, not practical for the home baker.
I am trained as a pastry chef and I love this magazine because it has a lot of information about the current pastry industry, and lots of ideas for new desserts - flavors and designs and such. It also contains a lot of information about what the trends are, what is "hot" at the moment, etc. I really enjoy the interviews and getting to see other people's work.
If you are a home baker, it might be fun to look through, but all of the recipes that are printed are really not practical unless you are an extremely serious baker. For example, in the November 2002 issue (this is just the issue I grabbed and the page I opened up to, I didn't go searching for a particularly difficult recipe) there is a recipe for a Rose Parfait. There are six different components you have to make before even putting the thing together - vanilla ice cream, raspberry sorbet, sliced almonds in syrup, almond meringue, rose parfait, and raspberry coulis. All together there are 21 different ingredients listed, including glucose powder, trimoline, stabilizer, mono-diglycerides - things the home kitchen does not normally stock. In addition, ingredients are listed only by weight, so you have to be able to weigh out .03 ounces of salt and 2.8 ounces of egg yolks.
However, if you are not interested in actually making these things, if you are very interested in pastry I would still get a subscription if you don't mind the cost. But first, check out a couple issues at the local library or buy them off the newsstand so you can make sure you really want to spend the $... ... Read more

Reviews (5)

Best magazine for desserts!
I received a subscription for this magazine from my brother, and had no idea what to expect. When my first issue came, I was instantly hooked. The photos were beautiful and I wanted to make everything in the magazine. There was an article on cookies and I ended up making 3 of them; they were all wonderful with interesting flavor combos--not the same boring recipes from Food & Wine or Bon Appetit. I continue to be excited by each issue and read it cover to cover. I recommend this magazine for anyone who loves to bake (and eat!).

disappointing magazine
My son is interested in cooking - he thinks he'd like to be a pastry chef. He loves chocolate, so we ordered this magazine. After several months, the first issue arrived, along with the news that they were switching to a 4 issue/year format. At that rate, the subscription costs more than buying off the shelf. On the positive side, some of the recipes look interesting, though we haven't tried any yet.

Poor delivery, poor material.
I agree with the other reviewer who says that the delivery is entirely unpredictable. I waited nearly a year after ordering to receive my first issue.

However, my big complaint is that I feel like I'm reading one big advertisement. There are very few recipes for the amount the magazine costs. Half of the magazine is filled with "new from..." or "useful new..." or "you should try new...". I personally don't find most of those gagets or chocolates or whatever interesting. I buy magazines for recipes. I got the subscription on the recommendation of a friend, but I was foolish to not preview a newsstand copy first.

One could spend the same amount of money on a good chocolate dessert cookbook and be occupied for much, much longer.

something for everyone who enjoys preparing sweets, perhaps
Chocolatier is useful because, unlike conventional cookbooks, it's showcases current trends in desserts as well as traditional favorites. Its illustrations are beautiful and representative of the final product; its recipes are concise and have obviously been tested.

I personally appreciate the first few pages that highlight new cookware and supplements such as organic ingredients, new kitchen tools, cookbooks, and blurbs on restaurants and chefs.

Occasionally, however, I find that the issue is a little elementary (such as baking with pre-packaged mixes, ice cream, broken up candy bars, etc). I don't find this particularly challenging, and I don't like the idea of finding commercially identifiable items in my creations, but I'm sure that less accomplished cooks appreciate the short-cuts. Also, I can see how this type of issue could be useful to cook with a child or someone who is just starting out and might feel more secure with a "complete" and already purchased ingredient.

Because the issues arrive every second month, their arrival can be something less than timely -- and it is the kind of magazine that one anticipates, so this can be frustrating. However, mind have always arrived, eventually.

Content stupendous: delivery disastrous
Every single thing I have made from this magazine has been delicious, sophisticated and fairly easy to make. I love receiving it.

I don't have many chances to love it though, because their distribution is appalling. I have to call every few months to make sure that yes, I still have a subscription, and yes, my current issue is just a few weeks or months late. Again. They claim to publish against a schedule, but the schedule seems to be "when we feel like it." They sent me a notice every month for the first year warning me that my subscription was about to run out, and they did in fact cut my subscription off about 8 months into it. The next year, my subscription DID run out, and no one notified me. I found out because I called to ask why I hadn't received anything from them in six months.

I also once requested a back issue, gave my credit card information, and was told I'd receive it within the month. Two years later, I haven't given up hope. You never know with these guys.

However, given how insanely bad their service is, it says something about the content that I am still willing to subscribe. If you're willing to do the work, this is a great dessert magazine to get. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Great Home Brewer Mag.
I love it and read it cover to cover every month. I am a avid home brewer and Liek the information they provide. It caters to the little guy doing extract batches on the stove top to people like me who do all grain in converted Keg systems.
I would not wait any longer sign up now.

allgrainbrews

Cheers!!
An excellent 'every-man' (or woman) mag about the fine art of homebrewing. I've been a homebrewer for over 20 years and have seen a lot of stuff come and go, yet I still get good ideas out of each issue (and not just recipes, although the Szamatulski's contributions are usually good). Typically, in the area of gadgets.

So you wanna learn to brew? Get one of Papazian's books, and a subscription to this magazine, and your off to a good start (Papazian's magazine 'Zymurgy' is good, too -- but can be a little overly 'techie' for my tastes)

I don't know what would make me give this a 5-star, it just seems like there's room for improvement. Although I can't put my finger on exactly what.

Cheers, y'all. Relax, don't worry -- have a homebrew.

bottoms up
Brew Your Own gets you off the corner in front of the liquor store begging strangers to buy you beer, and it sends you down into the corner of the basement where mom never goes to whip up your own brewskis. With some hops, yeast, water, and barley, along with a bucket and some tubes, you can keep yourself and your friends swimming in it--which, as Bob and Doug will tell you, is heaven.

But anyone with an interest in DIY inebriation needs this magazine. Going it alone will just guarantee you ten bad batches before you finally get something that doesn't peel your tonsils. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Great for the gardener and herb enthusiast
This magazine is focused mainly on offering information about herbs in their gardening and food aspects. This is a nice change from the many books to be found concerning the medicinal aspects of herbs. I enjoy growing herbs for spices along with the medicinal purposes, so this has been a valuable resource. One feature in this magazine that I have really valued is the section offering information on regional herb festivals and other organized events. I also particularly like the featured herb articles-- especially the one on lavender. There are many, many interesting advertisements as well.

Each issue has various herbal themes
Her Companion is focused on the raising and use of herbs. There are different magazines that focus on different aspects of herbs. This one mostly covers herbs a food and food supplements. The pictures are glossy and there are many slick ads for commercial herbs and items as containers for bottling your own. I have actually used this subscription to help design and build a small raised garden in the back yard.

Super Informative for the Herb Gardener
This is a super magazine for the beginning to advanced
herb gardener with the focus being on gardening and growing
herbs, as well as their culinary and craft oriented usages.
Less emphasis is placed on the new agey / medicinal usages
although basic medical uses are sometimes covered. In my opinion
this is one of the best, if not the best, herb mags available
now. I have learned many gardening tips and ideas through the
Herb Companion and recommend it wholeheartedly. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

Some like it hot!
Love this magazine. Whish it had more "how to do" articles though.

Everything for Chili-heads!
This is THE magazine for those who like it hot.

While there is plenty of coverage of the so-hot-it-will-burn-your-face-off items, the bulk of the magazine covers mouth watering cooking that will be sure to please at any level of heat. Each issue includes about 50-75 recipes, all of which are high quality, useful, and practical. A recipe index in the front of the magazine lists all the recipes by category.

Chili Pepper is printed on glossy paper and contains loads of beautiful photographs. In fact, the ads are also exceptionally beautiful and colorful, and in no way detract from the overall aesthetics of the magazine. Hot sauces, salsa, powders, kitchen gadgets, pepper plants, and a host of other things can be found in the ads.

This is a great gift for those who like to spice it up!

Interesting cooking magazine
CHILE PEPPER is one of the more interesting cooking magazines out there. The recipes tend to emphasize Cajun, Creole, and Carribean styles. Not all of the recipes include chile peppers or have a great deal of heat, but most recipes would likely appeal to chileheads. Having grown up in the Southwest, I love these types of recipes and have made several with excellent results. The stories are also interesting, focusing on restaurants and manufacturers involved in the chile pepper businesss, such as the folks at Tabasco. There are also many stories on various hot sauces. Recommended for people looking for something a little different or who like Lousiana or hot foods. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

You will want to keep them
Each Issue goes to the nth degree to carry to explore the uses and social history of herbs. The information is laid out in columns with interesting information and pictures in the margins. Most articles have references to where to find associated information of the subject. This is not just a good read; the magazine contains hands-on projects from soap making to Pharmacopoeia. The small amount of advertising is relevant to the world of herbs. ... Read more

Reviews (6)

for the intellectual food lover
I am a professional cook who has an expansive collection of cookbooks and food magazine subscriptions, and Gastronomica, without a doubt, is in a class by itself. It's a magazine that relishes all aspects of food culture, from indepth explorations of particular cuisines to quirky analyses of fun foods. Topics as diverse as coca-cola, Vietnamese pho, the parrot eaters, egg creams, irradiated foods, tea drinking, and the all-American butter cake are just a few of the always interesting, usually provocative, and oftentimes entertaining articles you'll read.
This offbeat, classy magazine is for the thinking food lover. What a treat!

The "New Yorker" of food
The "New Yorker" for food is often how I describe this magazine to colleagues and friends. The articles are well written, though occasionally idiosyncratic.It is one of two magazines I subscribe to (the other being the New Yorker.)If the alleys and byways of food are as interesting to you as the grand boulevards, then this magazine will appeal to you.It is not Gourmet or Martha Stewart (not that I have a problem with either of those titles, this magazine is just different), but if you enjoy food writing about varied topics from a slightly academic point of view this magazine would be a good choice.

a magazine for the reflective cook
Gastronomica is a thoughtful, inspirational magazine, filled
with insightful commentary on all aspects of food. The well-researched articles reflect the individual passion of its contributors; it is for the "thinking cook" who values substance over fluff.

the best
this is absolutely my favorite magazine of all time.if you want a magazine that caters to the lowest common denominator, readsomething else.

Intellectual gourmet
This is a fantastic magazine that's loaded with interesting articles.I think the better-known magazines about food and cooking aren't as enriching as this one.Each time I dip into it, I come away full of new ideas and knowledge.Of course, you pay a price for this high quality, and so you may want to seek out a single issue at an upmarket grocery store or bookstore before subscribing. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

Great Product!
I received my first issue ofSalt Free Life. I love it! The recipes are easy, delicious and most important, FLAVORFUL.Finally, a product I can enjoy AND one that will help me with my health problems! Thank you so much! ... Read more