Lost Art, or Over-Generalization?

July 25, 2018

The food columnist in the paper is worried that people are losing the art of cooking. His fears aren’t helped by an article published in the Harvard Business Review that said that fewer people say they like cooking than they did several years ago; and by a post on some website by a young woman in New York City who spends a ton of money on restaurants; and by a celebrity chef who says that Millennials, Gen X’ers and Gen Z’ers want good food and want it fast, so they aren’t cooking as much.

I e-mailed him to say that I thought that people would be more interested in cooking if recipes actually had ingredients that they recognized; that once people start having families, they’ll probably start cooking again, or they’ll go broke; and that people who immigrate to the U. S. will probably bring the home-cooking mentality with them, so that cooking will hang on a while longer. He was very nice about it, but remained unconvinced.

I also question the blanket assumption that all Millennials, Gen X’ers and Gen Z’ers are restaurant-hounds. But I’ve saved that for another post.

February 27, 2019

The columnist wrote today about cooking real food, with ingredients you have on hand. I like to think that I had a hand in it.