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Your Friend, the Kitchen
If Americans are feeling frustrated about food, who can blame us? It's not just the bugs in the burger or the hormones in Chinese seafood -- or even the skyrocketing prices. It's that most of us feel powerless to fix things. We may be a nation of do-it-yourselfers when it comes to deck repair or tax returns, but even as our industrial food system grows less reliable, our reliance on that system has never been higher.
What's to be done? Growing our own isn't a solid option anymore. Beyond the occasional backyard garden, few of us have the capacity to produce our own food. But until the last few decades, most Americans still exercised a lot of control over the quality and cost of the food entering our home: We cooked almost every day. We bought ingredients and turned them into meals; we planned menus and stocked pantries, all of which required thinking about, and being connected to, our food.
Today, despite a mania for cookbooks, celebrity chefs and 24-hour programming on the Food Network, cooking is a dying art. According to the Department of Agriculture, half of our food dollars are spent on items cooked outside the home, and almost half of the meals served in the average U.S. household lack even a single from-scratch item.
Marketing surveys blame our crowded schedules, our "time poverty": The average American can spare just 30 minutes a day for the kitchen. But the sad truth is, many of us no longer know what that room is for. Cooking is an acquired skill, with specific tools and steps, helped by practice. Yet because so many of the roughly 100 million consumers born since the 1970s grew up in households where cooking was already passe, it's a skill we never learned.
Yet if we're serious about reclaiming control of our food -- and if we're tired of waiting for Washington to fix things for us -- the kitchen is where we have to start.
Declaring independence from the industrial food chain won't be easy, not least because it means rewriting one of America's most successful economic stories. Between 1900 and 1970, as consumers increasingly outsourced cooking to food companies, our daily kitchen time dropped from four hours to one. And if the food industry profited handsomely, consumers did too. We might have gotten less independent, but our food got safer, more varied and, above all, more convenient, freeing up hours to spend on education, leisure and, of course, earning extra income.
But by the 1970s and '80s, we had discovered some darker truths about this trade-off. Large-scale, high-speed manufacturing not only damages the nutritional quality of food, it makes it harder to control food-borne illnesses. And for all the benefits of convenience, the ability to eat anything at any time bore no small connection to our expanding waistlines.
And now we've found that "added value," the very core of the modern food business, isn't such a good deal either. A model based on selling ever more convenience requires either that consumers keep getting richer or that food keeps getting cheaper -- conditions that are, suddenly, no longer assured.
Food companies are trying to keep the natives calm. They're cutting costs by replacing expensive ingredients, such as butter in cookies and crackers or cocoa butter in chocolates, with cheaper ones, such as hydrogenated vegetable oils. They're combing the planet for cheaper suppliers (although the Chinese food scandal points up the limits of that strategy). And some are considering bringing out less-expensive products to appease budget-conscious consumers.
But mainly, food companies are doing what they've always done, quietly passing on cost increases to us because, as far as they can see, we've got nowhere else to go.
They have a point. As a culture, we're so divorced from our food that we're not only cooking less, we often can't even recognize food when we see it. More and more of us accept warehouse-ripened fruit as real; we favor refined flours to whole-grain; we reject meats that aren't fattened on grain and pumped with artificial juice and flavor enhancers. For that matter, many of us have been eating synthetic flavors so long that we prefer them to the real thing. Benzaldehyde, or artificial cherry, is at least as popular today as real cherry flavor. And until the food industry withdrew diacetyl over concerns that it caused lung disease, the chemical had largely become "butter" for consumers of microwave popcorn.
But adversity is the mother of invention. If we've lost our kitchen skills and our connection to food, both can be regained. Schools are bringing back home economics classes. Cooking classes are gaining in popularity, and some cookbook publishers are simplifying recipes to help novices find their way.
Yes, we've heard about kitchen renaissances before. But this one comes with a potent incentive: When done thoughtfully, home-cooked food is not just healthier, safer and better tasting but much cheaper than the factory version.
Granted, there's still our time poverty. Hungry as we may be for change, we're still juggling work, family and errands. But let's be honest. We may be a busy nation, but the same "average" American who has just 30 minutes for the kitchen is somehow finding 240 minutes each day to watch TV. Some of that programming may even involve a celebrity chef. But if we're going to give food the priority it deserves, we'll need to spend a little less time watching someone else do the cooking.
Paul Roberts is the author of the new book, "The End of Food."
Copyright 2008 Los Angeles Times
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28 Comments so far
Show AllFunny, I've been trying to tell my wife the same thing... we've got time for lots of other stuff, it's a matter of priorities. It's the most important thing to me about home life.. at least one mean (usually dinner) during the week cooked at home and enjoyed together with the kids. We're getting better. One thing I find interesting is that while as a nation we cook less, if you watch any home improvement show they constantly talk about how the kitchen is the most important room in the house and the place to spend your money because it has the best ROI. So you have to wonder, what the heck is everyone doing with those awesome kitchens if they're not cooking? Is it just to show off or is it just more enjoyable to consume your take-out and microwave meals in a $50K gourmet kitchen that you don't know your way around?
I am constantly amazed in France what wonderful meals people turn out and most have the most basic tools, stove, pots and pans, a knife, food processor...
And meals are still considered important...but then when I buy food, it is from my local green grocer and the veggies and fruit came from down the road, the sausages are made by Alain, the goats cheese from the local farm where we also buy our goats. Our chickens come from Pierre's farm.
How lucky I am.
To continue...when I buy sausage it is from Alain who processes it himself. Jean-Michel makes my mayonaise. Most of my veggies and fruits are grown locally. I get the chickens from Pierre. My goat cheese is made by Marike and Leo and we sometimes buy the kids they couldn't keep as meat. I am truly blessed. If I have to buy food from commercial chains, I know the French have kept it GM and hormone free.
Personally I Love to cook and I've been doing it for quite a few years now. I find it amazing that so many people prefer pre cooked processed crap but I guess that's what they want in life as in the kitchen. The only unfortunate side effect of gourmet cooking is that one tends to put on a little weight but as the old saying goes, "Never trust a skinny chef". I look forward with excitement to trying new recipes and customizing old ones. And by the way my wife loves the results... at least usually she does.
The ultimate processed food consumers, dogs, are much better off eating fresh food as well. I found out that the well known "doggy" smell actually is not intrinsic to them at all but comes entirely from the manufactured food they eat. If you feed a dog fresh food it never smells bad, even when it's wet. If processed food makes dogs stink, imagine what it's doing to us. It's time we all buy food components and fix meals ourselves again.
I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about trying to see a "silver lining" in this whole recession thing. I would like to see our culture take an objective look at our excessive convenience-oriented lifestyles. Wouldn't it be great if we spent less time watching TV or surfing the 'net in our rooms and spent more time growing some food in backyard gardens, making meals together in the kitchen and eating together at home? It seems like a change that might be hard for many people, at first. But the benefit could well be healthier families - both in terms of physical health as well as emotional health. I grew up in a family where we always had vegetable gardens, mom always was making something in the kitchen and taught us kids how to cook, and we almost always had dinner together. It seems that modern life has encouraged us to be strangers not only with our relationship with our food sources, but also with our families. I welcome a greater sense of mindfulness in our culture.
Cooking is such a great thing to do with your kids, no matter what age. While you're busy washing, chopping, etc. you can chat about school, work, whatever. It's very true, it is much better to cook your own.
Between 1900 and 1970 ---- food got safer --- that is questionable. It seems the food industry has proven themselves from the very start to produce a less safe product then when one has control of the ingredients oneself. That is why one should make their own pot pie or such rathen than to buy the things ready made.
On the expense issue, it is hard to get the 40-and-under set to realize that $3 spend on three $1 items of fast food ready made will only go a short way in keeping the tummy full and the quality of that food will be very questionable, whereas $3 spent on the basics and cooked up into something will go much farther and feed more people at the same time, plus the peace of mind that the food really is safe to eat is priceless/timeless. I have known single mothers leave themselves and their children hungry rather than jump that fear-of-cooking-from-scratch barrier and cook that flour, butter, baking powder and water into biscuits. Maybe something will change and they can keep on this way, but it seems to me, there is a rude awakening coming and some hard lessons. In the end though,they will be glad that got up the gumption, and, whether it turns out a delicious meal or burnt offerings, they jumped in and made food from scratch and it gets easier each time.
And, as far as watching TV OR cooking, just do both. TV is so dumbed down, there are very few programs where one could not have that little low energy kitchen TV set on and be cooking something up in the kitchen while keeping track of the latest episode of some program.
One handy hint I have found is when you do cook something, right then before you get sick of it, put a container of it in the freezer for another day when you do not have time to cook or the needed ingredients. So, what if the dog gets it two months later, sometimes it is great to find that little container in the freezer of already preparred food that you know is safe because you made it yourself from scratch.
Probably the best result of cooking from 'scratch' is that even though it takes longer to prepare the presentation of a well planned, healthy, balanced meal the process of sharing the experience at the evening meal with a family together has a phsycological benefit of togetherness, or am I just being old fashioned in assuming that occassionaly families do have time to spend together.
I have cooked since I was tall enough to reach the counter. When I went to college I stayed in dorms for only a year because of the terrible food. I moved off campus to have a kitchen and though I was constantly strapped for time I always made time to cook decent food for myself. When my husband and I remodeled our home we put in a huge kitchen and I cook constantly. Three meals a day, all from scratch. Our food garden provides vegetables, the organic market provides fruit and the vegetables I can't grow for us. It would never occur to me to buy pre-cooked food, convenience food, or, worst of all, fast food. Cooking is simple and can be distilled into a relatively small number of principles. Once those principles are mastered, you can handle almost any dish easily. And the results are worth it. It need not be time-consuming. I spend no more than half an hour on breakfast, the same on lunch, and an hour on dinner. I work full-time, though admmittedly I work out of my home so I have no commute. And, we have no children, so that saves quite a bit on time (I imagine, anyway).
The advantage of doing your own cooking this way is that you can go almost completely organic, you can cut all those god-awful chemicals out of your diet, no more saturated fats (except the ones you choose, like fresh organic butter), and the food tastes really, really good. Once you eat this way, you couldn't go back to junk food if you tried.
Is three or four hours of TV really that important?
ljs-had a conversation about a month ago with someone over the "high" cost of produce. I pointed out that a bag of potatoes is cheaper, pound for pound, than a bag of potato chips. I've found that when I do have a craving for salty chips, I either have a baked potato or I bake up some cut tortillas and enjoy. Even a sliced carrot/radish with salt takes that craving away.
I belong to that 40 and under group and can say few of our friends cook as we do-they hate it.
But my girls, in addition to their core courses in school, WANTED to take a Foods class (cooking) because they saw us doing it and because they had been making themselves food since they were preschoolers making PB and J.
My sister has one of those gourmet kitchens. Her meals consist of cheez whiz on vegetables and frozen premade food. Blech.
My wife and I both work 40+ hrs per week. Cooking started to become a daily chore and we began eating out more. We noticed the negatives almost immediately to both our pocketbooks and our waistlines.
We came up with a concept we call "Cook once...eat all week". Basically we plan all our meals and do the shopping on Saturday. On Sunday, we wake up and cook it all. We plan the menu in a way that utilizes a given food over several different meals. the only thing to do during the week is assemble and re-heat the dish. This is not one dish re-heated and eaten for several days.
Take for example chicken breasts. I will season, grill and dice up several on Sunday. Those will be made into Wraps w/humus, sandwiches and ckn tacos. It's simple fast fun and healthy.
The average American spends 240 minutes every day watching TV. Yarch! That's seventy-two thousand million people minutes that could be spent productively each day. You gotta get that time back! And not just for cooking.
I just had a weird weekend at my home on Salt Spring Island, BC. Walking to the lake with friends when we saw a deer killed by a car. We stood over it while the life went out of it's eyes. We wondered what to do and realized the respectful thing would not be to roll it into the ditch, but to have a feast. We phoned native friends for advice and then made a gory and transforming day of respectfully skinning and butchering and roasting and eating our first deer. Talk about getting in touch with your food. It was a moving ritual that I think many of us didn't realize we craved until it happened. A kind of a grace that you say all of the way through the day and then through dinner in your heart, 'thank you for this food and my life. Thank you for this food and your life. Thank you for this life and this food."
The supermarket meat counter looks very very different to us now. Our own bodies look different. We're meat too after all. The same glorious and slimy mechanisms that we pulled hot from that carcass are packed away in our fragile ribcages as well.
It makes it easier for me to make the shift away from eating so much meat. And not because it's disgusting - because it's sacred.
Oh and also, just as an aside; I am the greatest cook the world has ever known!!
I cook almost every day for dinner, and often take leftovers to work for lunch. It is a lot of work, since I work mostly with fresh ingredients that I buy at the Farmer's Market on Saturday.
However, I cannot imagine living like some people do -- eating at a restaurant most evenings. Making one night a week family cook-at-home night seems weird to me -- for me, making one night a week order-in night is more than enough.
I also work 40+ hours a week and sometimes it is very difficult to come up with something new and fresh every night. Luckily, my partner likes the old favorites.
I calculated it the other day -- my homemade pizza is one of the most cost-effective meals we have. I buy flour in bulk, make my own crust, and use organic pizza sauce from the store. I do buy expensive cheese, but other than that it's usually onions, broccoli, jalapeno and olives. It feeds two people for two meals.
I sometimes go all out and create an expensive dish -- my veggie lasange costs about 50 dollars and takes two solid hours of work -- but then, it feeds twelve people.
I, too, cook ahead -- I cook one chicken in the crock pot and then shred the meat, and it becomes chicken salad, chicken pot pie, and chicken enchiladas.
I was fretting the other day, talking to my friend about marketable skills. Since I spend almost all day on the internet as my job, I said, "I'm afraid I won't be worth anything if our current unsustainable electronic infrastructure goes down," and she said, "But you can cook! Not many people do that any more." It really threw me for a loop -- since it's so easy and such a natural part of my life, I figured everyone would be doing it.
I make my living from my writing and art photography, which means I spend a lot of time either traveling or working in front of a computer. I have 22 fruit trees and a small garden in my back yard. For breaks, I go outside and garden for a few minutes.
I live in a tiny village at the foot of the great eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the California desert. We have 350 days of sunshine a year and ample water from the melting snows of the Sierra.
We don't have fast food in my village except for a Subway at one of the gas stations. We have a small French restaurant that caters to the ski crowd that passes through town. So I have to cook if I want to eat.
I buy mostly organic foods and don't eat red meat. I love the fresh organic fruit from my orchard and the season has started as our first sweet cherries have been ripe for about a week and apricots look to be about a week away.
It really is a good life.
My husband used to spend no more than an hour each day at his garden plot in the community garden and grew a sizable amount of our food.
So it's really not as hard as the following suggests.
"Growing our own isn't a solid option anymore. Beyond the occasional backyard garden, few of us have the capacity to produce our own food."
Also, tree-ripened fruit has a completely different nutritional load and taste than the inferior stuff in grocery stores. And, it can be enjoyed without a lot of cooking skill:)
I love to cook and I'm very good at it but I'll sit down to a feast of tree-ripened fruits anyday even over my own pasta!
Another accessory any good cook will need is tupperware, as preserving excess and using it later is vital. Another easy cost effective thing to do is raise your own spices in window pots. Italian parsley, thyme, and sage all do well with sun and water in a strawberry pot. Rosemary grows like a weed and all one need do with garlic is put it in the ground. Bay trees need only a 2 & 1/2 gallon pot and water every other day. If you're really ambitious, dwarf lemon trees provide lemons in a 20 gallon container. All that is needed is the will and giving a damn.
It amazes me how few people know how or want to cook. A pretty basic skill for survival. I have a large garden and cook many meals from scratch. Meat is only used in small amounts to flavor the mostly vegetable dishes I make.
It is simple to put a few baked potatoes in the oven and make a fresh salad- a deliciuos dinner with little effort. Another easy and quick way to prepare vegggies is to use a ceramic type shallow pan and coat cut up veggies (potatoes, carrots, peppers, onions,herbs etc)lightly in olive oil. Cook on high heat (400) with attention to adding more tender ingredients towards the end. Deliciuos!!!
Unfortunately I was never so successful in teaching my now grown kids the finer points. They both say the thing they miss most is mom's cooking!
I think the people of the world are genetically divided between eaters and feeders. There seems to be some primodial need that is met for feeders (cooks) to satisfy the eaters. And the eaters of course feel special that the feeders lavish their skill on them. And it's a simbiotic relationship. We need each other to satisfy this inner craving. At least that has been my experience.
I happen to be a feeder. It's not just that I like to cook, I love to satisfy this most basic need for nourishment and bringing people together to enjoy the food and company. My reward is the satisfaction and compliments from the eaters.
Being a feeder does not seem to be a learned thing. At least in my case. My mother cooked from scratch but never involved me in meal preparation, so I never learned to cook really. But being very poor for most of my life, learning was a neccessity. There were no alternatives that would fit into the budget. Over time I figured out that I was a feeder and that cooking for others satified a deeper need than just eating.
In most cultures, food preparation and sharing meals is part of a way of life. It holds families, friends, and communities together in so many ways. In America we lost a lot more than just our health when we lost meal preparation in our every day lives. But we certainly can rediscover the wonderful benefits of breaking bread together again.
I use edible wild plants ( by Perterson Field guide) It saves a ton of money from coffee to salad etc. Pick one up.
I do 95% of the cooking in the house and enjoy it. I am taking a culinary course at the local college . My son is a CHEF so he is just a call away for help.
Scratch slow food always tastes better than premade fast food. I don't think it's so much that people prefer processed food, it's that they've never had scratch food.
I think I was about 9 or 10 before I ever had homemade bread. And it tasted wonderful with just some butter on it.
The author sez...
"We may be a busy nation, but the same "average" American who has just 30 minutes for the kitchen is somehow finding 240 minutes each day to watch TV."
Well, that's because they're tired and worn down. If we had a society that treated workers better, a society were people wouldn't have to work 80 hours a week to keep their heads above water, maybe people would have the time to appreciate finer, healthier foods.
Thank God for good 'ol Mom. :) She can cook like nobody's business.
Rebel Farmer,
You expressed it well.
Folks who cannot grow their own food for a variety of reasons (no space, physical disabilities, no time, etc) have other options. We have a small garden but rely on our food cooperative to purchase eggs, chickens, beef, and everything else we do not grow, from local organic farmers. You can also locate a health food store and check out the bulletin board for food buying groups or folks selling their produce. Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) is big now – you purchase a share in the crop of a farmer (usually organic) and pay up front for a basket of delightful, healthy produce delivered each week during the growing season. Community gardens are a wonderful way to join your neighbors in celebrating the growing and harvesting of good food – and if you don't care to grow it yourself, I bet a lot of folks who have plots will sell their extra bounty to neighbors. Here are some links to get you started….
Find locally grown produce, anywhere in the country! Just enter your zip code or use our interactive maps to locate farmers markets, family farms… www.localharvest.org
Directory of certified organic, biodynamic and permaculture farmers and CSA(Community Supported Agriculture. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, seeds, plants, ...
www.ecobusinesslinks.com/community_supported_agriculture.htm
The ACGA is an organization of professionals, volunteers and supporters of community greening in urban and rural communities.
www.communitygarden.org/
Slow cookers take minutes to get ready the night before and in less time than a coffee in morning have it ready and start cooking. Make extra soups, stews and spaghetti sauce then freeze them for a quick ready meal. Make extra when fresh veggie etc are in season.
People who say they don't have time are not making that little efford. If you are not sure how to cook then buy a slow cooker or soup cook book. If you can read then you can be a cook it isn't rocket science.
Say, do any of you folks know of a good, old fashioned, basic recipes from scratch cookbook?
I do not want any exotic rescipes, just the basic ones using old fashioned ingredients.
Doll-check out your local thrift stores and buy any OLD Betty Crocker cookbooks. In the ones I have, there is no mention of brand names and everything is from scratch and tasty.
Eating habits change when you're broke. They mention $3 for 3 $1 'somethings'. Feed yourself for 3 days on $3. You learn how to make things that stretch and you will get thinner. Half the world does and is. Bon apetite.
Doll- another couple to try are the "Fannie Farmer Cookbook" and "Joy of Cooking." Both have good recipes as well as hints on basics. I have both and found them for little at used bookstores.