Two Celebrity Magazines

Everyday With Rachel Ray

Cooking With Paula Deen

I was excited when I heard, or read, that Rachel and Paula were both getting their own cooking magazines. In interest of full disclosure, I have already subscribed to Rachel's magazine, but I plan to cancel the subscription and not pay...shhhh, don't tell anyone.

Read On:

Everyday With Rachel Ray

I picked up Rachel's magazine at Borders, I was excited to finally see it. The magazine is a large glossy with Rachel's mug on the cover, she's wearing a shirt with one of her signature sayings "Yum-O." OK, kinda cute.

"74 Fool proof recipes"
"68 Cool gift ideas"
"Fast and Easy 30 Minute Meals"
"121 tips and tricks"

Those are some of the notes on the cover. A recent comment I made about Entertainment Weekly can be applied here. EW has recently started throwing on the cover "68 new reviews", 50 top this and 60 top that. I don't care. You won't get my attention by blowing a horn. You'll get my attention with appropriate content.

Pros:
*Full color glossy pages
*Easy to follow content pages with sub-headings: "Yum" "Ready, Set" "Cook" "Get Together" "Go Away"
*First recipe is for risotto
*Recipe Index
*Fairly enticing photos
*Recipes are easy to understand
*Seven days, Seven recipes pull-out card, with shopping list
*Take Out-In, story and recipes
*Do the math, expanding recipes for more guests
*Beer tasting
*Top spots in NYC

Cons:
*First recipe is for risotto for her dog. I'm all for loving your pets, but making Boo-sotto for your dog...? Come on.
*What's in Whoopi's Fridge? Celebrities have immaculate fridges because they have people do stuff for them...like cleaning, shopping, chewing...I don't care, she's not like me, nor are you Rachel. I have to shop on a budget, save scraps, etc. Come take a picture of my fridge!
*Take Out-In, has a guide for setting the mood...by buying themed clothes. NO.
*Travel stories. These make me sad because I can't afford to go, so I don't want to read about place like that. This was the #1 reason I didn't renew Gourmet a few years back...they fine living stuff made me feel broke all the time.
*Faves & Raves, don't care, most of it was worthless in my eyes.

Mostly the magazine is in line with Oprah and what was Rosie. Really a personality magazine. At times it was like watching Rachel's show, all ove rthe place. But then there are parts I liked. I'll watch for it on the newstands, but not compelled to subscribe. PS: many of the recipes in the magazine, that are Rachel's recipes, are already in her books or online.

Cooking with Paula Deen

We know I love me some Paul and make plenty of her recipes, but can't deal with her obsession with Mayo.

This magazine, once I spent some time with it, really should just be titled like it's founder: Southern Ladies Cooking. It's also a glossy, like Rachel's, but a little smaller.

Pros:
*a Q&A page, but it will need to be geared more towards food and less towards her and the restaurant and the web. Maybe some more about her hottie sons?
*Photo/story on her kitchen....drool worthy....even with it's country kitsch feel.
*800 million recipes for cookies.
*Theme recipe sections
*Recipe index
*Recipes are easy and have short ancedotes on most of them.

Cons:
*Wreath & Garland decorating-gawdy
*Gingerbread house story-tedious
*Not really geared towards me, more for our mothers and grandmothers.

The magazine is lovely, but I didn't feel that Paula's silly personality came through. Another I'll watch for on the newstand, but won't subscribe.

Both magazines come out every other month
Rachel: $3.99/issue (132 pages)
Paula: $4.99/issue (98 pages)

For my money, I'll stick with my favorite, and IMHO-the best food magazine, Fine Cooking.