times don't add up plus some ranting

[lauradi7dw]

I'm generally a fan of writer Michael Pollen, but I think in this case (from an article in yesterday's NYT magazine) he's making up statistics:
>>Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation (another four minutes cleaning up); that’s less than half the time that we spent cooking and cleaning up when Julia [Child] arrived on our television screens. It’s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of “Top Chef” or “Chopped” or “The Next Food Network Star.”<<

First of all, what's an average American? If there are two adults and a child in a household,
does that make the household total be 81 minutes on food prep? You could pour milk onto cereal, add nuts and a banana and a hot beverage, pack a lunch bag, and still have an hour allotted to make supper at that rate. I don't think my mother spent that much time cooking in 1963, when Julia Child first hit the airwaves. Could a three person household really clean up from a day's food in 12 minutes? I don't have much personal experience with dishwashers, but that seems pretty unlikely to me, especially if you include dusting crumbs off the table and wiping down the counter tops and taking out the compost (or whatever people do who don't have a compost bin).
It's a long article, and I found it interesting, but I disagree with a lot of it.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1
I keep being irritated by people who talk about what "our grandmothers" did or didn't do. I'm boomer age. Grandmothers of boomers would have been mid-50s or older when the big waves of instant rice and canned stuff and box mixes and TV dinners hit. Many of them would have been cooking for decades at that time and I'd bet at least some large percentage of those women were happy to grab any cooking substitute they could find. Many people really don't enjoy food preparation. I cook almost every day but it's because I have to do so in order to eat food that's vegetarian/fresh/local/etc. I don't buy fast food except for pizza, but it's mostly because fast food tends not to resemble food, and I really like to eat. I don't buy pre-sliced vegetables, for the most part, but one of the many good things about buying organic produce is that you don't need to peel it. Any slicing, peeling, or chopping that can be avoided is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. (until Arthur complained about it a couple of years ago, my opinion was that steaming whole leaves of Kale without removing the stems or shredding up the leaves was the best way to deal with them - the fact that it's awkward to use your fork in that case is irrelevant).

A quotation I liked, although I'm not convinced it's true:
“Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short, and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want — just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.” - Food marketing researcher Harry Balzer

I am planning to see "Julie and Julia" when it hits theaters next weekend, even though I don't care for most French food.

Comments

[miraclaire.livejournal.com]

My grandmother (at least, at the point in the life that I was observing her) spent maybe 45 minutes on dinner every night. My dad, on the other hand, easily spends 2 hours most nights cooking/preparing dinner. James and I use a lot of frozen veggies because they make prep SO much faster, but otherwise do most things from scratch (and James has been doing most of the cooking lately, but I think it's generally something around an hour of time spent making dinner).

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

My father's mother worked in a factory much of her life. When my father was little his aunt lived with them, and did most of the cooking. There are weird family dynamics from my childhood, but I only remember being in his mother's kitchen a few times and have no idea what she cooked for herself when she lived alone. She definitely felt that what one served guests during a visit was sweet things, but that doesn't give any indication about meal prep.
My mother's mother made a lot of stuff from scratch but also liked canned soup and mixes for things, including corn bread mix. One thing that existed in the south but I think possibly not outside is self-rising flour. It is bleached white flour with the baking powder and baking soda mixed in, to be used making biscuits. My grandmother used Red Band brand, but Martha White flour was more famous in some contexts, because it was one of the long-time sponsors of the Grand Ole Opry. It's one step on the scratch to self-rising flour to Bisquick to frozen biscuit dough in a roll continuum. (My grandmother also felt that it was easier to spread butter when it was mostly melted, so her butter was almost always rancid because she left it unrefrigerated).

[(Anonymous)]

Michael Pollen annoys me and I found that article to be extremely sexist. After his French fry remark I'm not sure how much cooking he actually does; French fries are really easy to make especially if you have a mandolin slicer. If not, it's a lot of chopping and then, the best part, you get to go away for a while and do something more interesting.

[lauradi7.livejournal.com]

But if they're french fries you have to deal with deep frying, and cleaning up after oil spattering and stuff. We made hush puppies once in about 1982, and have never deep fried anything since.

[(Anonymous)]

They didn't have splatter screens way back then?
My mom uses a deep fryer to make them, and she bought one for me as well which I haven't used yet. I've never made a huge mess deep frying things in a pot in dorm, though, but I've also never made hush puppies.
I could never cook the way my grandmother cooked. She never cooked rice when my mom was growing up because rice was too "ethnic". Also I hate her cooking. Why do people glorify grandmothers as good cooks?

~Amy