Who's Your Cook?

Americans, it seems, are crazy about the idea of cooking.  We have TV channels devoted entirely to food shows, we own designer cookware and shelves full of gorgeously photographed cookbooks (food porn).  We idolize hip young chefs as much as we revere old family recipes.  And while we watch or read about the preparation of some amazing dish, we are happily munching away on take-out broiled chicken or microwaveable pizza bites.  We love the idea of cooking, but we haven’t quite figured out how to include the activity of cooking in our daily lives.  We love the idea of cooking, but we embrace the reality of convenience.

A lot has been written about American’s decades-long love affair with convenience food.  Laura Shapiro, in Something from the Oven, chronicles how the prepared food industries gradually won over the hearts and minds (and tastebuds) of American families.  In Salt, Sugar, Fat Michael Moss explores the complicated relationship between the technology of developing prepared foods and the science of consumer marketing which convinces us that we really must have these products to make our lives better. 

Gradually more and more of the selection of recipes, the preparation, and the cooking of America’s food  took place in industrial kitchens, and the skills of many home cooks began to devolve into ‘just heat and eat.’  A farmer friend, who for more than 20 years has sold meats and produce at his local farmstand,  says that it’s the folks between the ages of 30 and 60 who just don’t seem to know much about cooking.  Those generations, the late Boomers, Gen Xers, and Millennials, are clueless about most cuts of meat and puzzled that different kinds of potatoes or apples have different uses.

It’s no surprise really.  Most of us grew up in a world where home cooked meals involved taking something out of a package and following the directions on the back.  Cooking from scratch seemed a kind of alchemy from another age, full of mysterious practices: mincing, filleting, sautéing, braising, reducing, deglazing.  Julia Child may have finessed these skills for us in her television studio kitchen, but except for special holiday meals, they were not a part of the average American family’s supper preparations.

There are some hopeful signs that the supremacy of convenience foods may be waning.  Sales of fresh food have increased, up 5.4% according to a recent article in Business Week.  Organic food sales, according to the USDA, show an even greater increase, up 11%.  Farmers markets are booming and the numbers just keep climbing.  So somebody out there must be in the kitchen at the ready with well sharpened knives, extra virgin olive oil, and a good heavy-bottomed sauté pan.  Bon appetit!