Friday, November 21, 2008

In the Kitchen

The Today Show has been running segments on "green living," this week, with todaoy's emphasis on going green in the kitchen. Meredith Vierra confessed that she had actually gone shopping at her local market and had cooked dinner herself.

Wow.

I'm impressed.

She cooked dinner herself. And she enjoyed herself! She was so excited about it.

I suppose if I had the fame, fortune (and busy life) of Meredith Vierra, I would either hire someone to cook for me or eat all my meals out but it seems that more and more "cooking meals" is becoming a lost art. If you listen to Regis Philbin, it sounds like he and his wife eat all of their meals out. Watch commercials and it seems that many families pile into the car and make the rounds of fast food joints picking up food for dinner. KFC has even come up with a bucket with three different kinds of chicken so you can have one stop shopping for your family dinner, something to please everyone.

There is a commercial running right now -- I can't remember the company -- but it shows how having breakfast at home just one day a week can save the average family $900 a year.

With store shelves filled with a bazillion kinds of cereal, what family eats breakfast out every day???

More and more commercials show Normal Rockwell-type scenes with the family all sitting down to a "home cooked meal" which you took out of the freeze,r popped into the microwave, and served to raves from the eaters. Gosh! Mom cooked dinner!

I have been amused, and I think I've written about this before, that it used to be you could buy cookie dough in a roll. You cut it off the roll and put it on a cookie sheet to bake. Then they made it easier and cut it for you and stuck it in a bag and sold a bag of cookie dough lumps. NOW you can buy a tray with the cookies all laid out on it and you just open the package and pop it into the oven for wonderful "home baked" cookies.

We have a whole generation of kids who won't understand when I talk about "licking the beater."

It can't be that we are so busy in our lives that there is no time for making dinner. When I had five kids living at home and a full time job, and did transcription at night--and sometimes had a cake to decorate for a customer too, I still cooked dinner. And often we had foreign students here too. Dinner for up to 10 people. I wasn't making beef wellington, but I could whip up a casserole and side dishes when I came home from work and then work after everyone was finished eating.

Walt pointed out recently that when he was at his brother's house while Norm was in the hospital (he's home now and doing very well, thank goodness), he realized that Norm's wife doesn't do the cooking--Norm does the cooking in their house. His sister's husband does the cooking in their house. Ned is the cook in their house. Tom is the cook in his house, and Phil is the cook for Jeri.

Where did I go wrong? How come I'm still cooking? (Walt says I do the cooking because it's all I do around the house. I feel that's a bit of a stretch, but not much. He definitely does the lion's share of chores around here, but I'm not totally useless.)

It's amazing with the rise in popularity of The Food Network, and the popularity of shows like Top Chef and America's Next Food Star that it seems fewer people are actually cooking.

But then, one of the Food Network's popular shows is "Semi-homemade," where you take some store-bought stuff and mix it with some home-made stuff and come up with a new dish.

My problem is that I see a lot of stuff in the store that I would love to buy, stuff that doesn't take any preparation, that you can just pop in the microwave and cook...but then I realize how much cheaper it would be if I just made it from scratch and I rarely buy that stuff (and probably don't make it from scratch either). Heck, I rarely even bought baby food. I had my handy dandy non-electric, non-battery operated baby food grinder that pureed food right from your table (whether at home or even out in a restaurant) and the babies always liked that a lot more than the bland baby food.

With the cost of ready made food and the cost of fast food and the cost of meals in a restaurant, it amazes me that home cooking seems to be becoming a dying art.


On another subject, I spent an hour with Cayce, the dog trainer today. She really seemed to nail it as far as Nicki's "idiosyncracies" are and offered suggestions for how to help her learn how to use her senses better. I'm very encouraged.

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