The last month or so has marked the end of so many eras in food. The losses of Sheila Lukins and Chanterelle are now followed by the demise of a great American food publication, Gourmet magazine. What its departure has in common with the previous two is how personal they feel. I never knew Sheila Lukins (and am well aware that the death of a person is very different than that of a restaurant or magazine), but her cookbooks and recipes were part of the wallpaper of my mother’s kitchen, and therefore my childhood. Chanterelle is not a place I visited with great frequency, but the labor-of-love quality of the place, and the commitment of its owners to the neighborhood and the culinary community, made it beloved. And now this.

I can try to wear my journalist hat and write about how the magazine influenced the way we eat, where it stood in the spectrum of other food coverage, but it’s not possible. Gourmet was something that I cherished, that I grew up with, that introduced me to food. It was a publication I held in the highest regard when I was just a reader, and one I aspired to match in excellence when I became a professional.

My mother, the strongest influence behind my love of food, was a subscriber to Gourmet and Bon Appétit since I was a very young. I remember Bon App having been my entry-level food magazine—I’d usually flip to the interview in the back of the book to see which celebrity they’d interviewed, and how they ate. When I grew older and became a bit hungrier for words, I gravitated toward Gourmet. The pages that once intimidated me—lots and lots of text, not that many pictures—became opportunities for long meditations on things I’d never tasted, wanted to taste or already enjoyed. I have to admit that once I got older and the look of the magazine changed—more pictures, less text—its hold on me loosened. But I still found the magazine poised, beautiful and inspiring, and it never ceased to make me want to cook. It is also one of the reasons why I decided to go into food writing. Gourmet was a pinnacle that represented what a life in culinary journalism could mean. As I cobbled together my career, it was always in the back of my mind.

Something else to consider—the journalist hat is on. What will young people today who love food aspire to? Cheaply won celebrity chefdom? Dumbed-down cable programming? Blogs that feed off of restaurant gossip rather than a love of food and the people behind it? There’s good stuff still out there—Saveur, The Art of Eating, Art Culinaire, the Edible magazines—and I hope the existing titles find a way to survive and flourish. I am also sure I am not alone in feeling bleak about what motivates some of the more popular food content these days. Let’s hope that the vacuum created by Gourmet is filled by people who crave quality, create original content and continue to explore the world around them through food. I think we can do it.