| I must be an anomaly. I actually learned how to cook from Food Network. During two months in between my first post-college job and my second, I watched Food Network nearly nonstop... and then actually cooked the meals I saw prepared on TV. My favorite was Alton Brown, who taught me the science behind our food so I could better use ingredients when I cooked with recipes I found (even if I hadn't watched Mario Batali or Emeril cook them on TV first) or even recipes I improvised on my own. If you watch enough Food Network, you'll learn to spot patterns in how foods are cooked. Bring the water to a boil and salt it before you put the pasta in. Begin any soup by sauteing onions until translucent, then add garlic and other aromatics (celery, carrots). But according to Michael Pollan's latest article, I'm weird.
Americans love to watch other people cook, but we aren't so keen on cooking ourselves. And then there's the dumbing down of the verb "to cook." My first time living on my own after college, I asked my room mates if they cooked and one said "I just eat cereal, but Lindsey cooks." Later, while I was making a chickpea curry for myself (yes, from scratch... real scratch, not a Trader Joes mix), Lindsey saw me and remarked "Oh, you're REALLY cooking!" I wondered about it because I thought she supposedly cooked too - until I found out that her definition of cooking was removing the bag of French fries from the freezer and putting some on a cookie sheet in the oven. Oh boy.
Pollan includes a quote in his article from a food mrketing expert who thinks the trend towards convenience foods is irreversible:
"Here's an analogy," Balzer said. "A hundred years ago, chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anybody who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well, that's exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren: something people used to do when they had no other choice. Get over it."
Pollan somewhat brilliantly compares how cooking show watchers of decades past actually learned how to cook from Julia Child whereas now, nobody learns jack squat from watching Iron Chef. And Food Network does give its stars an excellent platform to market their stuff.
But is this really the end of cooking? The same weekend Pollan's article was published, my city held urban homesteading workshops that were so popular people were crowded in the doorways, struggling to hear. We learned how to make hot sauce, kimchi and sauerkraut, cheese, and wheat flour - all from scratch. Real scratch, as Pollan would call it. Maybe there IS hope after all. |
