Whatever Happened to Cooking?
I’ve been reading my mother’s diary from 1943-1944. America was at war, and there was no gasoline, but my parents were comfortable in Corvallis, Oregon. My father was too old to serve, so in addition to his other work (the early, early days of public radio) and teaching at Oregon State College (now OSU), he taught physics and electrical engineering to soldiers at nearby Camp Adair.
My mother writes about canning fruit and jam, making catsup, and baking ham. They bought chicken and beef in bulk, chopped it up themselves, and stored it in a rented locker. My parents only went to Wagner’s – a popular downtown restaurant – a few times a year. Take out and frozen food was non-existent. They rode bicycles, spent evenings reading and with friends, and were involved in their church.
If you’ve read Michael Pollan’s book, “In Defense of Food,” or my article in the Seattle Times for which I interviewed him, you know that one part of his manifesto is: don’t eat anything your great grandmother wouldn’t recognize. My next article for the Seattle Times will be about what our ancestors did eat. One thing most of us know: they cooked, and we don’t, not much anyway.
According to the Canadian magazine “Adbusters,” in 1934 families in the UK spent 2.5 hours each day cooking. By 1954, cooking time was down to one hour. By 2010, it is estimated the British will be cooking eight minutes a day. I can’t find comparable figures for us in America, but I’ll keep looking.
We do know that Americans are working more, sleeping less, watching more TV, taking fewer vacations, are more obese, don’t join bowling teams anymore, and are giving up golf. We want to eat at home, but not take the time to cook.
Whatever happened to cooking?
A journey into the world of "real food" with Seattle-based journalist Rebecca Morris
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7 comments:
Hi Rebecca - I just read your Seattle Times article. Good luck on your eating local adventure. I am trying to do some of that myself. A friend and I joined a local CSA so it looks like I will be spending time learning to cook vegetables this summer. I'll be following your journey and hopefully learning a little along the way.
Tim
Rebecca, was your mother a housewife like mine was? Don't we cook less in part because we women, who used to do most of the family cooking, have other jobs now, and therefore less time? Husbands cook more now than my dad ever did, but they mostly have jobs, too.
That is an obvious answer, I know, and it's also not a complete answer to the question of why we don't eat real food. Another part of the answer may be that we and our mothers became enamored of the idea of an easier life. I remember my mother embracing instant meals and convenience foods just as she did the vacuum cleaner, a washing machine without a wringer, a dryer, and permanent-press clothes. Speaking as a person who learned to iron cotton dress shirts at a young age, I still appreciate many of the time-saving innovations of the last century. I now think a lot of the convenience food was probably a mistake, although I think freezing is probably preferable to canning as a method of food preservation.
I have managed to walk back from eating a lot of crappy convenience food, but I don't know how I'm going to move on to eating real food that is not just ungarnished lumps of protein and carbohydrate without taking time for cooking away from the time I spend on other worthwhile things like my work.
I so agree with blogger moose. The busier our lives get, the easier it is to try to relegate the self-care time of cooking your own food to an unnecessary element of modern life. I was raised eating primarily home cooked chinese food. I didn't really even know what take out Chinese food was like until I went to college, and I didn't like it (too salty, too greasy, poor quality food, doused in soy sauce or hot spices).
I consider cooking part of my own "therapy" and creativity. I still enjoy arranging food on the plate before I serve it, and I insist on people tasting it before they reach for additional ingredients. My husband is French, and as is his custom, he habitually reaches for dijon mustard if there is anything meaty on his plate. I let him know that he was disrupting my therapeutic process by not tasting his food first -- can you imagine, Chinese food immediately dunked into a tablespoon of mustard?? My ancestors would roll in their graves.
The best way to support cooking is to value it, and then to buffer time for it, and ultimately to have people enjoy it with you. Eating is a very social activity. People recovering in hospitals from various illnesses complain of poorer appetites when they have no one to eat with.
I'd like to add... I think that the first wave (and perhaps second wave?) of feminists rejected such "housewifely" things as cooking from scratch, seeing them as emblematic of the whole "Angel in the House" thing... I know that I sometimes feel a twinge of GUILT (go figure?!) for being so blissful when I'm in the kitchen, wearing a silly apron and covered in flour! I sometimes feel sort of... I don't know... like I should be editing something or teaching someone something. ;-)
But I guess I should save that for my therapist, huh...!
The point, though, is that for a long time, cooking was something women did because they HAD to. Now, we seem to be able to come back around to doing it because we WANT to. I want to!
Some of us cook. And I'm surprised by the numbers in your story, although I believe them. It's a hassle sometimes coming up with a meal that's quick, healthy and doesn't take all night to cook and the cleaning after?! We hate the cleaning! My husband cooks a lot, and I thought liberated couples balanced all that by now, but even today we'll have guests over that think it's a novelty that he cooks more than I and he's not a professional chef! I thought Food TV would get everyone into the kitchen. We are always inspired by Food TV and watch bits and pieces over a month and when an interesting, healthy or moderately healthy dish appears my husband tries to replicate it. Sometimes we actually go to foodtv.com or other sites for inspiration. Lots of times we use our family standbys & try to keep them healthy and interesting. We do think it's a pain to cook a meal after a long day at work, but we do it because we think it's worth the effort. Sometimes we try to cook ahead, but that plan always fails because we end up doing the stuff that we couldn't do during the weeknights when we were busy cooking and cleaning!
Not everyone has given up cooking! I found your statistics really disappointing. I am a stay-at-home mom to two young children and I do take the time to cook for our family three times per day for three main reasons. It's economical, it's healthier than eating out or eating convenience foods, and I think it sets a good example for my kids. I am constantly shocked by families I see on TV who eat out 3x/day with their kids (or do drive-thru, take out, etc.) I think cooking is a great creative outlet, it provides a great opportunity to interact with your children and/or your spouse while you cook together, and best of all you have complete control over what goes into your meals!
I'm all for looking for creative ways to shorten the time it takes to put a healthy, real food meal on the table but I think you can do that without resorting to purely prepared foods (ie, freezing, utilizing leftovers, buying pre-shredded cheese or lettuce, etc.)
I don't cook like my mom did. She always served meat, salad, vegies, bread or potatoes and dessert. I'm a "one-dish wonder" and we rarely have dessert.
It's funny that this topic has come up, I was just thinking the other night about how I used to love to sit in the kitchen doing my homework while she bustled around in the kitchen getting dinner ready. My dad would get home and the two of them would take a half an hour or so to chat and touch base while dinner was cooking.
My family doesn't do that. We don't have the time. For now I'm a stay-at-home parent with 3 kids under 12. Between my husband's work schedule (he gets home anywhere between 4 and 7) and the kids' activities it's all I can do to toss something reasonably nutritious together with 30 minutes notice. In general I think families are SO much busier, and it starts when kids are younger, than they were 20 years ago. Real food can be the mainstay of a household's cuisine, but it's not always as convenient as tossing some boxed mac and cheese together. It's all about choices.
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