The Culture in Kitchens

 I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed this. I laughed all the way through it. Electronic autism indeed. Someday our thumbs will surpass our brains in size. Oh dear, I think it is already happening-

Why lazy garbage. Arugula-eating liberal elite also brought about the end of home-cooking? I think you've been smoking some of that feminist bong resin.  

Don't conservatives get sick of these absurd scapegoats: videogames, feminism, careerism, Hillary Clinton?  

You'll point the finger at everything but the most obvious: capitalism and corporate profits. Hawking salt, fat and sugar is incredibly profitable, and the average worker is run so ragged and paid so poorly that fast food becomes the obvious retreat.

There could've been an interesting story in here about the anthropology of food, but as usual with conservatives all roads lead back to the erosion of 'traditional values'. Yawn.

 Great article. But the economics are a little screwy. If you want fine quality chicken - i.e. one grown without hormones and antibiotics, and raised in a factory farm, it's not going to cost 99 cents a pound. For a 41/2 pound chicken I pay $22. (It's kosher and imported from Canada - but even a high-quality domestic bird won't be cheap.) We get two meals from it for the three of us - our adult son is staying with us for a few months, and the remnants make an excellent chicken salad lunch for him and me. We figure that it costs us a couple of hundred dollars a week for the kind of meals I cook - and I make my own pasta, my own ricotta cheese, and season food with my own home-grown herbs. 
We could live on much less if we have to - and we had to, when we were young and broke and the children were small. But the problem is, to eat well on a really low budget, you have to cook in a pretty labor-intensive way. I work at home, which makes things easier. But I still find that to cook a really good meals takes at least an hour of intensive labor, and I am adept in the kitchen after all these years. No one who comes home from a full day of work to tired and impatient children can do what I do. I think that these problems are deeper and more intractable than you suggest. A compromise - using good quality store-bought pasta, for example - would help, but it's still going to cost money to make a decent meal, and it's still going to take time. 

First job was in a VT camp kitchen?  Any chance it was Camp Abnaki?

beckwatch wrote:

"the average worker is run so ragged and paid so poorly that fast food becomes the obvious retreat."

Nonsense.  Fast food isn't that cheap. I stop at McD's for coffee sometimes and I see that a meal with a sandwich, fries, and soda can cost as much as $6.  You can cook a decent meal at home for much less than that.  As for being "run so ragged, '  ah, well, with the direction the unemployment rate is heading, we should all be grateful to Obama for solving the problem of work-related stress.  However, even before Obama kindly freed so many Americans from the daily grind, Americans sure seemed to have plenty of time to watch "Jersey Shore" and "Honey Boo Boo."   Priorities, people.

Yes, heaven knows it's anathema to a liberal to suggest that the social changes they cherish so deeply might have had any detrimental effects whatsoever.  Heresy, heresy!!

Even (horrors!!) Perdue chicken, dried pasta, frozen veggies, and beef from a cow who was not treated better than Liz Taylor at the fat farm is preferable to  a steady diet of Big Macs and KFC.  And one can in fact whip up a healthy meal fairly quickly if one does some advance menu planning and cooking. I'm a pretty good cook, but I don't try to be the Barefoot Contessa every time I step in the kitchen.  While I'm willing to pay a little bit more for wild, as compared to farmed salmon, the fact that my family is together, sharing stories about their day, laughing and talking, is a bit more important than whether the pasta  is homemade or not, or if the chicken costs $22 and comes from Canada.

Mr. Donovan has touched a nerve in his interesting essay. We are well into the second generation of culinary illiterates-without the most basic grasp of dealing with DIY food. I know of people raised on sandwiches who, as young adults, did not know how to eat a hot meal or how to use a utensil. In the supermarket, their sad little grocery baskets have frozen dinners, cereal, and beer.  The mechanics of a chicken and rice dinner is beyond them - they simply don't know where to start.  It's almost poignant to see them at the meat counter....they look uncomprehendingly but longingly at all those cuts without the slightest clue what to do with them, and pick up the hamburger. It's so sad.

For serious reading on food I recommend labels.

Bargain buying by weight is misleading. Measuring by nutrition makes local farm-fresh products infinitely less expensive, more pleasurable and can reduce medical costs (at least it did for us). We have been buying local organic products for years while measuring the substantial savings. We eat tastier food, a more balanced diet or enjoyed it more. Chickens don't lose much weight to fat and steam. Beef has a great flavour. Real grains in real sourdough bread, pastas and pastries has a full range of textures and flavours far outstripping the alternatives. If you want miche with breakfast and a light, crusty baguette with lunch it can be made in advance (real grain breads freeze very well) and served with no more effort than industrial bread. Homemade nutritious breads costs about 15% more than the same made with factory flour but our appetites are satiated with less of everything (highly processed meats, fats and sugars included) creating an overall substantial savings. Cooking real food is definitely busier, may have to be an family affair and requires planning but for us it has become a very rewarding and exceptionally tasty hobby. It has cut into our time complaining about what isn't on television but we have learned to live with that.
 

Elizabeth, thanks for your generous comments.

Becky, consider "values" an abosolute that doesn't require an adjective like  "traditional." Bye-the-bye, I grew up in the east Bronx, not Wall Street.

Ned, the camp was Twin lakes, a few miles from Brandon. 

Thanks all for the feedback.

Outstanding. Thanks for sharing those thoughts. We have a very good relationship with our two sons based on anchoring home cooked meals and conversation. You are spot on about the mocking of such a basic family building block for political reasons and the unfortunate results produced all around us. 

I'm confused by your sentence that reads, "The penultimate virtue of cooking and dining at home is education." What are you saying? Since "penultimate" means "second-to-last," I thought you might also say what the ultimate, or last, virtue of home cooking is. What point are you trying to make by saying that education is the second-to-last virtue of home cooking?

 You sound angry that the world has moved on past the insular cultural bubble of 1952's starched white Stepford middle class. And -- blimey! -- the nerve of those women to go out and get an 'edumacation' fer themselves instead of spending all day in the kitchen making sure the King of the Castle has his fresh sandwich on demand.

Women! Those uppity party poopers had to wreck the racket of male insecurity for everyone. Now look -- the kids are checking their mobile devices while eating carry out pizza in the living room at 6 pm. The horror, the horror!

Keep in mind that commercial business serves consumer demand: McDonald's as we know it today, first appeared on the scene in 1955 and the so-called Golden Age of Television took place all the way through the 1950s and in 1953, TV dinners hit the market. So you're arguing against a cultural trend that's almost 6 decades old? Makes it kind of hard to moralize against what full-time employed but divorced women with have to make due with in 2012, isn't it?

Next you'll be standing on the sidewalk in your pajamas yelling at traffic.

Yes to this essay.

Long ago, a Dutch girl who stayed with our family for a while told me once that, at her home, the children always thanked the mother after the meal she'd prepared. Oh, I thought, a nice if quaint custom. Now, 50 years on, my 88-year-old boyfriend, born in Berliin, comes to me after every meal, never mind the soapy dishpan I'm dealing with, and gives a hug, a kiss & thanks. It isn't quaint, it's wonderful.

BG Thorpe, Blue Hill, Maine

Thank you for this excellent article that is both humorous and pointed. I especially enjoyed the references to education and the value of conversation during meal times. I do want to mention, however, that I disagree with your reference to "electronic autism" as a type of metaphor for excessive use of gadgets that replace meaningful discussions. 

Autism is a neurological disability that touches the lives of thousands of children and ultimately affects parents, teachers, and community leaders. In my view, your use of the term diminishes the challenges that are faced by those who are autistic and all those working diligently to help deal with the disability. 

In spite of my disagreement with your terminology, I did enjoy the article and believe you have identified a serious weakness in our electronically driven culture. 

This is a wonderful article and inspiring to all of us struggling to keep this kind of culture in our homes.  This proposal is also very egalitarian and unifying, as most people can afford simple meals together, and in fact, many recent immigrants are doing better on this front than longtime Americans.  However, I do recognize the "lifestyle" constraints that people working multiple jobs face in realizing even this simple but powerful cultural objective, and we need to reach out through churches and other community groups through activities that bring people to dine together with homecooked food. 

  A very interesting article! I've learned much and the dialogue generated in the comment section was informative, particularly the piece about the formation of our food consumption habits in 5Os, correlated with the television golden age. 

 Thoroughly loved reading this piece. I am in complete concurrence. Thank you for putting words to the suspicions I was unsure how to make public!

 I thoroughly enjoyed this article as it induced me into smiling a couple of times and I am still smiling as I type this. My already present gratitude for my mother's cooking has increased tenfold. Despite working fulltime, she has never, not once, left the pots and pans in our kitchen empty. I have been lucky enough to enter the house each day with the savory smell of delicious food embracing me. 

Thanks for the generous discussion and critique. And Mozz, I for one would never yearn for the fifties, as I spent the last half of that decade, and the first half of the next, in an orphanage. And I try never to confuse the passage of time with progress. I was simply trying to relate values and nutrition. On that note, a happy holidays to all NER writers and readers. 

1960s and not 1960's

Brought to you by Committee to Save the Apostrophe from Abuse

An entertaining and important rant, though I note solecisms like ".99 cents" when you mean "$0.99" or "99 cents"...

I feel the need to say that as a neighbor of mine, Mr. Donovan practices what he preaches and has given my children a leg up in the world of food appreciatation by teaching the art of delicious as well as civilized behavior which crosses all political lines and lands them safely in the world of civility. 

And I thank him.

Just sent this link off to my family.  Have lately been second guessing the jettisoning of my law career to do just this for the past 10 years, so thanks so much for such an entertaining justification.  I also think the over-scheduling of kids (sports, extracurriculars, and the rest) as part of the problem.  Just like all aspects of parenting, maintaining the home-cooked family meal takes a lot of discipline and commitment even for those so inclined and able to do it.

Thanks for this sensible and important reminder. But perhaps the most important reason for families to eat together at home in our modern age is because it strengthens family ties, keeps kids and parents talking to each other and understanding each other. 

 I like to keep an open mind on all things except spelling, grammer, and punctuation. So thanks Dave and Sam. The best education for a writer is a reader. 

 Thank you for tyour delightful and insightful article. I particularly enjoyed 'culture begins and ends on a plate' which goes in hand with my own 'you can know the whole world from your kitchen.'

I have only one quibble. That 99c chicken you mentioned sounds awfully like a chicken raised in a cage: In my country we're working to free animals from factories and to get people to pay more for food - because when you see cheap food you know a farmer - and more than likely an animal - is being screwed. 

Fantastic article and so true.  Boundaries and rules need to be established around dinnertime.  We all pitch in, its the time to engage with each other share our day, thoughts and dreams while not being interrupted by the outside world.  No cell phones, phone calls, tv or games. Even better if we can pick our veggies from our gardens, allow each other to have our hands and creativity involved in the nights menu. 

There is nothing worse than having dinner in silence and then have someone leave the table while others continue to inhale their food like they are completing a chore. So, as much as its great that its a home cooked meal we need to create an experience and relationship with both food and each other!  (Once again)

I've really enjoyed reading your text. It was wonderful, and surely reminded me all the things that we, as parents, must do to prevent our children from becoming lazy and obese. Coming from Greece, we have family dinners as tradition but nowdays very few of us remember to do so. 

Thanx a lot, keep up the good work.