CNN: Clueless in the Kitchen

[GoodGravy]

Food 101: Seeking Clues in the Kitchen - http://www.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/05/10/...

There's a food blogger or two mentioned in the article that can't cook. I was under the mistaken impression that if you loved food enough to seek out food beyond the ordinary, that you could probably cook a little too. Not that you'd have the skills to work as a line cook, but that you could at least look in your cupboard and throw something tasty together. Apparently, I was wrong. Maybe schools should start offering home economics again.

[queencru]

I know in my area, HS culinary classes are very popular among the students, but not all schools have the facilities to offer the course.

I think it's now harder for parents to teach their children how to cook. So many children are overscheduled in so many after-school activities that they eat when they get home and don't have time to learn any basic skills. When I was in school, if you wanted to go to college you could just be involved in one or two activities. Now kids feel like they need to be doing something every evening and weekend in order to be competitive, and that takes away time from learning how to cook or do basic tasks around the house.

I agree that a general basic skills class would be useful at the HS level- learn now to do basic cooking, mending, and repair work around the house. I think it's just not feasible to require everyone to take a full cooking course because it's cost prohibitive, but if you have a month unit in a semester or yearlong course, that would go a long way to help develop basic cooking skills.

[DGresh]

my son is a middle-schooler-- They have one period per day devoted to "specials" which gets rotated between art, "home and careers", technology, and health (one quarter per special). Home and careers covers things like laundry, sewing, career choice, and a bit of cooking, varying for which grade you're in at the time. But figuring that only 2 months or so a year is devoted to all four of those "home and career" things, not a lot of time to really learn much. I seem to recall when I was in middle school I had a whole period a day, all year long, devoted to cooking (girls only of course back in the early 70s).

[Mawrter]

My dh went to middle school at about the same time as you, and everyone was offered a "choice" of two: wood shop, metal shop, cooking and sewing. I say "choice" instead of _actual_choice_ because while some girls took shop, for boys to take cooking or sewing would have been social suicide then.

So my dh, who is quite decent in the kitchen thanks to his nonna and his devotion to chow, didn't take any form of home ec and is still curiously deficient in things I assumed are basics for all adults: can't sew a button; doesn't know about keeping handles tuned in on the stove but not over a burner; doesn't know about keeping sharp knives out of the soapy soaking water; is unclear about containing/removing raw meat "contamination", etc. I viewed all this with suspicion at first, thinking he was being "selectively stupid" to sucker me into doing his domestic crap for him, but no, he really didn't know (and would never fake incompetence anyhow), and however much I tell him, it's not the same as learning when you're a kid so it's ::part:: of you, yk?

[Chemicalkinetics]

Get him a book.

I learnt sewing buttons when I were a club scout, but then I forgot all about it for >15 years. A few years ago, I need to sew a few button, looked up on the web and picked it up.

Knife handling. Started learning about it between internet, books and practice.

I think a person can pick up most thing as long as the person is interested it in.

[cuccubear]

Home Ec was a requirement when I was in middle school (‘79-‘80) for both boys and girls, but that was thirty years ago. I fully believe that parents should inculcate their children with the benefits of preparing food at home, and if a Home Ec course requirement helps, that’s even better.

I wonder how much influence, if any, the school food lobby has on keeping a child dependent on the school for food and food education? Seems like parents are becoming more and more passive (and that is just a generalized, unsubstantiated opinion on my part, call it a gut feeling).

[DiveFan]

I don't think the mysterious 'school food lobby' has anything to do with it.
I have cousins and an SIL who are teachers that see the direct results of inadequate parenting and/or poverty - hungry kids do Not have much enthusiasm or even an attention span.
Tight food service budgets and learned preferences for fast food items compound the problem. We're rooting for Jamie Oliver and the like to improve school food, but ultimately it is up to the parents to provide proper nutrition for their children.
People need to suck it up, learn basic cooking skills and Plan farther ahead. Lower stress levels might be a bonus result. Prep some of the next days meals after dinner with the kids instead of watching the boob toob ...

[Chemicalkinetics]

Why do we have to put "suck it up" with "learn basic cooking skills" in the same sentence? You think we are talking about a military expedition.

[cuccubear]

"but ultimately it is up to the parents to provide proper nutrition for their children."

That's exactly right. I understand the role of the school educating children in the absence of same from their parents, and I’m glad they are a nutritious alternative to 7-11 or McDonald’s. I just hate to see something as basic as mealtime taken out of the home. I also realize that we’re not in 1975 anymore…things are different now. It’s lamentable.

[beachmouse]

I suspect multiple reasons for the home ec phase outs. In the 70s and 80s, it was probably a cost issue- home ec programs are relatively expensive to run both in terms of maintaining the kitchen classroom and costs of food, extra power for stoves and fridges, etc. By the time I was in high school in the 80s, there was a definite move to lump cooking activities into career programs at the district's vocational education center.

And then in the 90s, schools were suddenly being asked to greatly increase technology budgets, with the money having to come from somewhere, plus you were starting to see the push for greater accountability in core academic subjects that really revved up in the 00s. The state here has high stakes tests for math, science, reading, and writing. Consequently, the school districts spend a whole bunch more money on remediation in those subject areas, and they've got to pull the money out of the district budget from somewhere.

The 'somewhere' frequently being home economics since there is no state department of education requirement that every student in the state know how to make a birdhouse, roast a chicken, or darn a sock.

[pikawicca]

I am happy to report that our local high school offers 3 cooking classes, and is popular with boys, as well as girls. I visited one of the classes last year to research a column I was working on. I had a blast watching the kids bake cinnamon rolls, cleaning up the mess, then eating the product of their labors. Many of the kids told me that they were the main family cook!

[Chemicalkinetics]

Yes, but you (pikawicca) won't eat their product of labor, would you? :)

Ok, it is really sa that the kids are the main family cook. What the heck, the parents cannot cook? We need to reply on our kids to cook for us?

[GoodGravy]

Well, if home ec wasn't offered in the 80's when I was in HS, that'd mean parents today wouldn't have learned to cook in school. And even back then, guys weren't expected to learn how to cook from their parents and it was assumed girls would learn how to cook. Nowadays, if neither learned, they can't teach their kids to cook either. Then again, lots of skills that used to be passed down have gone by the wayside as society became more modern and industry took over those functions (splitting logs, carpentry, hunting, trapping, skinning, fishing, pickling, canning, etc.)

[Chemicalkinetics]

GoodGravy,

I agree, but it is still sad that kids have to cook for parents, isn't it?

What? The parents cannot pick up a cookbook and start learning? It is one thing to be a great cook, but just to be a ok home cook should not be that difficult. If the parents can figure out how to text on some cell phones and put pictures on facebook or whatever, then I am sure they can learn how to cook pork chops.

I think some skills will become less useful as our society evolves like sewing, splitting logs or hunting, but cooking? I don't think buying finished clothings, or chopped wood, or butched meat as degrading my lifestyle, but I do think eating out all the time or microwave frozen foods has negative impacts on my health and pleasure of life.

[mpjmph]

I started cooking dinner one night a week when I was in 6th grade. By high school I was the primary cook in the family. Not because my parents didn't know how to cook or didn't have the time, but because I enjoyed cooking and my mom did not. My mom and I planned menus and did the grocery shopping together, and I cooked dinner on weeknights.

[gastrotect]

I cooked quite a few family meals when I was in middle and high school. My brother and I lived with our mother and she would consistently work late or at least later than we were at school. She would often be quite tired when she arrived home and did not have the energy to cook every day. I loved cooking and had no problem firing up the kitchen without her there and going to work. It saved us all some time, it saved her some energy and it allowed me to avoid homework for awhile. Win-win all around. She is a great cook, but it's not always so simple as just doing it. If the kids know how to cook and like doing it, why not?

I will say, for my mom's part, I didn't learn to cook in school because she taught me to cook over the years from a young age. In middle school she taught me especially since she knew it would be valuable if I could cook while she was commuting from work. Once I got to Home Ec, I could already cook, so that class was a breeze. I went to middle school in the 90's and everyone (girls and boys) had to take both Home Ec and Woodshop in 8th grade.

[GoodGravy]

Lucky you, I don't think my school had a kitchen setup for offering home ec, or if they did, they'd gotten rid of it before I got there.

Sitting down every night to a home cooked meal today may require more planning and help than when women stayed at home. With single parent and two income families, there's less time for adults to cook, so putting the kids to work makes sense. Problem is, if the adults can't cook, they can't teach the kids to. There's ways to remedy that lack of knowledge, but the easy and convenient solution is to order out or buy pre-packaged meals like frozen pizzas and TV dinners. It takes actual will to learn cooking skills, more than is needed to place an order for delivery.

[gfr1111]

I didn't know that they had stopped offering the cooking portion of Home Economics (probably retitled something like "Domestic Comestible Engineering" in the 1970s). It was all girls in the 1960s when I went to high school, but by the time that I taught high school English in the 1970s, the enrollment was about one third boys. As one enthusiastic boy told me, first you got to eat what you made. Second, the class was still heavily female, both pluses in his opinion.

I got out of academia in the 1980s. I think it is a real shame, if food-related Home Economics went away.

[GoodGravy]

Home ec wasn't offered in my HS in the mid 80's, but wood shop and drafting still were. Maybe they thought HS kids and fire wasn't such a great idea?

[Chemicalkinetics]

Just second-ing GoodGravy. There was no home economic class in my high school or any high school in my county. I think it is great that girls are no longer expected to be housewives and women can be anything they want to. On one hand, I think it is a shame that cooking is no longer viewed as an important skill of life as schools no longer teach it. On the other hand, shouldn't parents able to teach their kids how to cook a simple meal?

We see a dramatic drop of people's ability to cook for themselves in the last 20-30 years. Every one eat out these days. What is even funnier is the pattern revealed in this economic recession. Originally, there was an expectation that people may start to cook more at home due to the economic constraint. Instead, many people simply eating cheaper, but still refuse to cook. They may go to a fast food restaurant instead of a regular restaurant for lunch. They may buy frozen microwave-able dinner instead of going to a white cloth table restaurant.

For instance, McDonald's business improved despite the recession:

http://www.allbusiness.com/company-ac...

[Chemicalkinetics]

Yeah, what you said is of some truth, but there are exceptions. You don't need to know how to make beer to be a beer critics and you don't have to be an engineer to be a race track driver. I am not much a programmer, but I can play video games :)

Though I do believe you need to be a scientist to be the director of a national research lab, just my thought.

I think we move away from the Home Economics classes because it was considered sexist -- assuming girls need to be housewife and all. That being said, with the current "eat out all the time" climate, may be we need to have home economics class again. Seriously, if the parents are not going to teach the kids how to cook, then may be the schools should. This time maybe both boys and girls have to take one seminar of home cooking.

Of course, it is pretty sad that the *parents* are not teaching a very essential skill of life. What kind of country we have become to rely on school to teach our own chidlren how to cook. There is something very sad about that.

[GoodGravy]

I can see how home ec used to be geared for girls (or future home makers), but nowadays, knowing how to stretch a food dollar and eat healthy with a given budget, run a household, etc., is still useful info. It's always been useful, but at some point, it was deemed unnecessary when you could pick up a ready to eat rotisserie chicken at the grocery store on the way home. Convenience trumped economy because you could toss the plastic and aluminum containers instead of doing dishes.

[coney with everything]

I'd add that my local grocery puts rotisserie chickens on sale for 4.99 which is cheaper than the raw bird!

And ITA that "home ec" for all is a good idea. And shop class/basic auto knowledge for all as well. I'm old enough to have been required, by state law, to take home ec in 7th grade while the boys took shop, but if you did a half semester of each for everyone in middle school, it would be a great thing.

[mpjmph]

I would suggest lumping it all together as one class. I never took formal classes in either category. My parents taught me how to cook, with a lot of input from my grandmother. My grandfather taught me a lot of general mechanics/repair skill. The "fix stuff" skill set is extremely valuable in the kitchen - sometimes I think I should bill my apartment manager every time I fix the garbage disposal on my own.

[Mawrter]

I went to middle school in the early 80s & had 2 years of those sorts of classes - boys and girls together, required for everyone. The first year was 1/4 cooking, 1/4 sewing, 1/4 wood shop, 1/4 metal shop. The second year was the same except metal shop was for only 1/8 of the year and the remaining 1/8 was mechanical drawing.

[c oliver]

I'm sure she won't mind my mentioning her name. rworange of the SF board rarely,rarely cooks but she's definitely a CH. Look at some of her lists and reviews. So, no, loving food definitely doesn't require that one know how to or enjoy cooking.

[Beach Chick]

LOL..I thought rworange was a guy!

[rworange]

Which gets tied into the feminism issue mentioned in the article.

My mother cooked. Mainly mediocre meals. For the most part I make mediocre meals if I am really cooking.

There is no Joy of Cooking for me. When the results are meh, the perfectionist in me doesn't want to bother.

I was influenced by the generation of feminists who said women coudl be anything men could be. I loved my computer career, maybe even more than food. I could spend way over 24 straight hours programming. If i spend more than 15 minutes in the kitchen, for the most part I am bored out of my mind.

When my mother got sick, it took me five years to learn how to roast the Thanksgiving turkey. Every Easter I had to pull out the cookbook to learn how to boil eggs.

My mother's generation was influenced by WWII and women entering the workforce. When my mother took a job as a waitress first and later an office worker, she scandalized the neighborhood. I remember my dad's friends telling them they would never let their wives work.

She loved getting out and making her own money. So she relied on the new convenience foods coming into the marketplace and didn't spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

My grandmother's generation ... those women could cook. However, that is what the did. Their whole life was devoted to taking care of the family.

If you do something enough, usually you get good at it.

So the generation of 20 or 30 somethings mentioned in the article are just the next generation where career rather than home is the focus.

Unless cooking is your passion, eating out offers a whole world I could not even imagine with cuisines it would take me too long to learn ... and then the initial results would be bad.

Right now I'm living in a small ... an understatement ... town in Guatemala. I keep saying it reminds me of the 50's. The women don't work outside the home. I don't think my stepdaughters even have dreams of a career other than marriage. We eat out only at my urging and that isn't often.

We went over to an aunt's house where she made a tamale made with potatoes called paches. The process involved starting with two live chickens and doing everything from scratch so to speak. It took the whole day to put together. By morhning they were all eaten . I would go insane leadiing this type of life.

There is also a sameness to home cooked meals.

All of that being siad, while I don't enjoy the actual process of cooking, I can put together some great meals. I am a great shopper. It is said of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse that she doesn't cook, she shops well.

I shop well and I can prepare simple things esquisately using a microwave ... anything that doesn't take too long. A meal for me could be line-caugt salmon from a farmers market vendor that sells to the top Bay Area restaurants. Microwave it wrapped fresh dill, lemon and grapeleaves and you have something. Pair it with purple and green asparagus, exotic lettuces, heriloom tomatoes, and wonderful dressing from some farmers market vendor.

I don't consider that cooking, but I love food and that is how I satisfy that itch when not eating out. I buy breads and baked goods that are produced by people with skills I could never posses made in equipment I could not possibly afford of find a place to keep.

Not that I don't get into my cooking jags. Something new will catch my attention like a shiny object waved in front of a baby.

Not your usual Hatch New Mexican green chile recipes … Hatch vodka, pie, kugel, mashed potatoes, calabacitas, etc
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/4343...

Even then, what I actually make is the simpler stuff ... and if I'm really honest, a lot of it is medicore.

It boils down to interest. Where is that cookbook about how to boil?

[Beach Chick]

Love that you don't like to cook..or have no interest.
I've just read you as a guy and I meant no disrespect to you at all.
I love your take on things..

BTW, if there isn't a cookbook on 'how to boil' there should be, and it's got your name all over it!

[flourgirl]

Sorry, rworange, I thought you were a guy too! :)

And women SHOULD be free to pursue their talents and not be tied to outdated expectations of what a woman's tradtional role should be. I have lots of women friends who don't enjoy cooking, and rarely do so. (Many times, it's the husbands in these cases who are responsible for much of the cooking in their houeseholds.)

That said, women should also be free to BE traditional if they want and not made to feel like a lesser person, or somehow less intelligent than their career-pursuing counterparts for choosing to do so. Some of us love being able to be "traditional" in the sense that we are available to our children, have the time to cook and bake, and do it well, and don't miss having a full-time career. (I do work for a small family business though - couldn't survive wthout it.)

[rworange]

I'm not offended at all. When I first started on Chowhound I used a guy's name, Stanley Stephen, because I had a girfriend who had a horrendous experience just by identifying herself as a woman on the internet

I always thought under that name someone would see through the way I wrote and guess I was a woman.

I guess coming to age at the end of stage one feminism there's a sort of male assertiveness that takes over. Some other very assertive posters on Chowhond I've always been surprised to see they are women.

Anyway, I am glad we are beyond the stage of superwomen who could have it all ... career and family ... or giving up the family for a career ... and women are no longer 'just housewives' and that choice is honored.

The point though is to have a real choice.

In terms of peparing food though, I still find that men, for the most part, are slow on the update in the kitchen. The bottom line is if the woman has a career, a lot of eating out and coonveniene food is the option rather than shared cooking responsibilities.

I'm not saying that is true of everyone, but it still seems the majority case.

[Chemicalkinetics]

"In terms of peparing food though, I still find that men, for the most part, are slow on the update in the kitchen"

What does that mean?

[rworange]

It means women still do most of the cooking.

[Chemicalkinetics]

Well, is that what it means? I thought you were saying that men for most part do not know the newest kitchen tools --"slow on the update in the kitchen"

I am afraid that you are wrong on this one. Many Americans eat out. I mean many, and most chefs in restaurants are men by a huge margin. Let it be a 5 stars restaurants or Taco Bell. Therefore, men do most of the cooking.

[rworange]

Women as chefs is relatively new. Women as line cooks is relatively new. Going back to the days of diners, it was the men as cooks and the women as waitresses. Sort of like the old tv show Alice. A woman French chef ... ha ... no chance of that in times gone by.

If there is more money to be made, men would get the job ... therefore men doing the higher paid cooking jobs.

As with all situations there are exceptions to the rules ... but not a lot

I am not disagreeing with you on many Americans eating out. I am sayint the reason for that is women with jobs don't have time to cook and men are not exactly sharing the kitchen work, so people eat out.

While more men cook at home than in the past, it is still the minority. Holiday meals like Christmas, Passover, etc. Just who exactly is cooking those meals? Your average guy isn't making Christmas cookies, you know.

[Chemicalkinetics]

rworange,

I am not sure about your experience, but when I were in college, more men cooked than women.

It isn't just about French chef. Have you ever seen a Chinese restaurant kitchen? I have not seen a female friend of mine who can handle a Chinese wok in full potential, whereas I have been men who can handle one though a few.

I disagree that women have a full time job does not have time to cook. I have a full time job and I cook and so do many of my coworkers males or females. In addition, eating out isn't exactly saving time. When I am on my regular schedule, I cook. When I have to work overtime like to 11:00PM, I come home and eat cereal or cook intinct noodle or some crap and then fall into my bed. I only go out to restaurants to eat if I actually have MORE time. The time to drive out, sit down, wait for food, not to mention chit-chat, is much longer than the time to cook at home. Americans do not eat out more often because we want to save time.

[flourgirl]

rw - I completely agree with you re: the assertive voice many women posters have. I love it. Being a pretty assertive woman myself. :)

"Anyway, I am glad we are beyond the stage of superwomen who could have it all ... career and family ... or giving up the family for a career ... and women are no longer 'just housewives' and that choice is honored."

Amen.

[Beach Chick]

I'm a chick drummer flourgirl..can't get more non-traditional than that!
Read my posts..you are popping off on something that I did not imply or say!

[flourgirl]

Beach Chick - I didn't mean in any way to imply any criticism of your post. And I LOVE chick drummers.

I should have replied to rw's post, not yours. I don't usually make that mistake, it just seemed a natural progression in the conversation. My reply wasn't meant as a criticism of rworange's post either. It was meant more to be taken as "isn't it great that women now have the freedom to be ANYTHING they want. Including chick drummers." :)

It's definitely one of the problems with posting on boards like this - you can't see the people's expressions as they are posting, nor can you hear their tone of voice. Leads to a lot of misunderstandings.

[Beach Chick]

; )

[betsydiver]

actually, i believe being a woman pastor may be a little more non-traditional than being a chick drummer (although i certainly respect the "musical heirarchy" as very gender related i grew up playing the trumpet while most of the girls were playing flute but now i love playing my djembe!

[pikawicca]

Hey, I don't know a more knee-jerk feminist than I am, and I love to cook. My dad was the baker in our house, so there was never a gender role assigned to the kitchen. My older brother is the cook in his family. If you love to eat, you can find your way to being a good cook

[Parigi]

Very interesting thread.
I have always accepted that one could love food without loving cooking, or learning how to.

1. Have great palette, can't cook
My late mum had a superior palette but couldn't cook. She tried to cook a few times; the result wasn't that good. Although we all sounded encouraging, she knew that wasn't it. When I think back, it fills me with sadness.

2. Can cook but does not like to
I know a lady who had actually gone to the Cordon Bleu school in Paris and does not enjoy food that much. You see, even learning to cook in the best circumstances does not necessarily give one the capacity for enjoyment.

In fact (1) the love of food, (2) a superior palette and (3) the skill of cooking can be 3 separate things. One can have just one, or two, without the other. Tragic, no?
The best - in terms of enjoyment - is of course when one can unite all 3.

3. Used to cook as a chore but now gets the pleasure
The second the children were grown and out of the house, my MIL who had not been that interested in cooking before and viewed it more or less as a chore got into cooking - and wine! - very seriously and blossomed into a great cook now. This is something she does - o so excellently - for her pleasure, which she had not had the opportunity to do before.

In our household, my husband does the cooking. He loves it and is good at it. I make sauces and dips and mayo and otherwise help him.

In short, there is no formula to life enjoyment.

4. Teach cooking, ok, but impart the pleasure of cooking?
As for the OP's idea of starting lessons in school, I think it may be a very good idea if all students are taught the basics, both boys and girls. If boys are taught that cooking is not a girl thing, it is liberating for all. As other posters have pointed out, many men have learned to cook excellently.
But our upbringing also influences us greatly. Many people grow up associating cooking with a tedious chore. Ideally the teaching should inspire people about the idea that not only the result but the process of making food is itself a pleasure. A classroom could be very conducive to this, as it necessarily entails collective effort. Cooking together is one easy way to have fun with cooking.

[Justpaula]

So did I....for a long, long time. :)