Gourmet editor and former Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl just got back from the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire where she was working on a non-food-related novel. Though Observer eat, drink, pray reporter Doree Shafrir notes Reichl's at-rest aesthetic is "vaguely goth," she doesn't ask how the food was up there. A shame really, because this is how author and former Colony resident Andrea Cohen described it in MacDowell's pamphlet on what to expect from the experience.