By Patricia Finn
The holidays are over, but January is still “cooking season.”
November was even scarier because it is the official start of what I call The Kitchen Season. Housewives know what I am talking about. November and December we baked and cooked our sweet little selves silly in order to provide love from the kitchen. A feast in November to be followed by holiday baking and Christmas dinner. Frankly, I loved it. With a “leave me alone, I’m in the kitchen” attitude I rolled up my sleeves and covered myself with flour.
Now in January, I find I miss cookbooks. Cookbooks have joined the list of items that are now online. The cookbook online experience does not save me any time. I head down a rabbit trail of countless options, passwords and clicks. I prefer the old school method of selecting a cookbook, using the Table of Contents and finding the right recipe. All I want is a list of ingredients and directions! The only negative to using a real cookbook is that the pages get very messy. (If you invest in a cookbook stand, take my advice and get one with the essential splatter guard.)
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In my kitchen heyday, I relied on two cookbooks (yes, just two): the “Fannie Farmer Boston School of Cooking” cookbook and “The Pleasures of Your Processor” – that food processor cookbook carried me through my 21 years of full-time house-wifery. Everything I ever wanted to make was in these two books and it would take a lifetime to make everything in them.
Now, when I want to find a recipe, I spend more time online than cooking. Googling the name of a dish, for example chicken marsala, I soon learn that half of Europe has chicken marsala recipes. If I click on one assuming that the next page will be the recipe… it isn’t. I need first to enter my email, password, mother’s maiden name and zip code. (In less than three minutes I would have found the recipe in a cookbook.)
The online recipe experience is not all negative. I am impressed by the mouth-watering photo parade of perfected dishes. I can think of no better proof that we have reached the pinnacle of career specialization than food photography. How does someone become a professional food photographer? Who chooses food? Does the food photographer arrange what is on the plates or just the lighting? (Idle minds want to know.)
Our world is complex, and we are a species of specialists. Applying specialization to food, let’s look at one food category: desserts. First, choose between cookies, puddings, pies, or cakes – just to name a few – and then a subcategory such as wedding and special occasion cakes, fruit or cream pies. Philosophers no longer need to gaze at the night sky to contemplate the vastness of the universe. Infinity can easily be found with one online dessert search.
