Gourmet Took Us To Italy For Lunch

Not literally, of course. But that is the beauty of a food magazine. The pleasure (some of it anyway) without the calories or the expense. Or, for that matter, the effort of cooking. I can't remember the article this illustrated, but I do remember not being sent to Pisa to work up sketches. Photographers are always being flown places and housed and fed. My schedule is more relaxing and my overhead is less onerous, but I doubt photographers envy me much. After working for Gourmet for many years I began to get calls from Bon Appetit, which was nice because the look at Gourmet was shifting away from illustration and Bon Appetit was very hip and West Coast. Both were published by Condé Nast, so I didn't worry about a conflict. Then I got a call from my person at Bon App, shocked and hurt that I'd done an illustration for Gourmet. Which reminds me of an anecdote about Anais Nin. In her fifties she had husbands on both coasts, who didn't know about each other. Life is full of innocent complications.