Posted on 08/19/2022 5:07:17 AM PDT by DoodleBob
Apparently, it’s now both regressive and elitist to do your own cooking. Taking a hobbyish pleasure in preparing a roast is not only insulting to the lower classes who can’t access the same tools, but even worse, it’s gender normative. How dare I, a woman, have opinions about protein content in flour or how many times a chicken breast should be flipped when cooked in a saucepan? It’s so housewife of me.
When a mid-sized anonymous Twitter account made the argument on Monday, concluding that the real revolution will not be in home kitchens but in restaurants, the person behind it was promptly rebuked by thousands of Twitter users from every wing of the political mansion.
Only a handful of radicals stood publicly by the tweet author. But note that even as they publicly disavow such an extreme example, an idea that home cooking is an upper-class luxury is still held in practice by many Americans.
That is especially true when it comes to farm-food culture and the backlash against it. The days of farmers’ markets being a leftist thing seem to be over. Homesteaders, homeschoolers, and the very online right (this writer included) have united behind the cause of returning to traditional diets and forms of food preparation, such as buying your meat from a local farm, growing your own vegetables, and even rendering your own fats. This has been bashed for being elitist and impossible, never mind the fact that several of these recommendations are more economical when done well—and much closer to how our grandparents lived just two generations ago, in the Great Depression.
The suggestion, of course, is that middle- and lower-class Americans can’t afford to eat healthfully, which almost always involves eating at home, and shouldn’t be expected to. So let them eat Little Debbies.
This is reflected in politics as well as pop-culture. Think about the last campaign ad you watched. If the candidate was an old-school Republican, after engaging in slow-motion tumbling with his kids on a lush green lawn, the politician likely joined his wife in the kitchen to bake homemade cookies. If she was a Democrat, meanwhile, she probably strolled into a bodega to get something premade. Joe Biden has made much of his presidential brand off ordering at an ice cream shop. These appeals to the common man imply something not just about the voter base each party has historically targeted with such ads, but the assumption present in both: homemade is an aspirational indulgence.
And indeed, as the Wall Street Journal reported Monday, compared to restaurant prices today, home cooking is a luxury. The inflationary gap between restaurants and grocery stores is now the widest it has been since the 1970s, which is why, despite labor shortages, longer wait times, and a 7.6 percent increase in prices, restaurants are faring better than grocery stores. As supermarket prices have increased 13.1 percent, and cooking your own food takes valuable time, more average Americans have found they can save money by paying someone else to do the work.
A friend of mine likes to say that every problem in the modern world can be boiled down to frozen peas. The bag of frozen peas is the epitome of our culture’s approach to food, in which efficiency, rather than health or enjoyment, is the highest good. The luxury of home cooking is not only the cost of the ingredients, which restaurants can buy in bulk and closer to the source, but also the time it takes to cook them. Our modern economy does not afford men, nor most women, the hours that good home cooking requires, since these hours must always come above and beyond those spent for pay. So instead, we eat out, or use shortcuts—frozen peas.
We should note that the people going to restaurants are solidly middle class, and they’re not just eating fast food. The Journal reports that Americans making $75,000 per year and above are choosing Chili’s over casseroles. They are eating cheap alternatives to home cooking, but they still choose a sit-down meal; this is not merely a McDonald’s drive-through phenomenon. Why does that matter? Because it suggests this decision is not about paying the lowest possible price. As long as middle-class Americans can afford to eat their dinner at a table, they will.
What is the matter with eating out more often, anyway? Taverns go back about as far as anything. But even if there weren’t differences in quality between home-cooked food and eating out—and there are—quality-of-life differences develop when the public house becomes your kitchen table. While most of us would laugh at the Twitter proposition that the real revolution is eating at Applebee's, a rejection of the home as the hub of the food economy is indeed a revolutionary idea.
We’ve used this recipe for eye round roast beef for years
https://thedomesticman.com/2012/01/10/perfect-eye-of-round-roast/
You sear it in the over at 500 degrees for a few minutes, then reduce heat to 170 and let it slow-cook in the oven for 2-3 hours (stick a remote-read meat thermometer in at the 2 hour mark to be sure of knowing when ready)
Yes, this is stupid. Some of the very best home-cooking I’ve had has come from ‘disadvantaged’ communities, city AND rural.
No, he HATES everything. “He WON’T eat it, he hates everything.”
The point was if he ate it then it must be good.
In Maryland we’ve been eating crabs apparently for centuries, because apparently Indians would eat it. Much superior to overrated lobster, too.
Hoping to eat more tomorrow in Annapolis!
For beef barely soup I use turnips instead of potatoes.
It's leftist mentality. Leftist mentality is always backwards thinking.
Not taken that way.
People think I’m snarky many times, but I’m just stating my opinion even if it includes negatives. It may be the better opinion, but just an opinion nonetheless. ;-D
But I love fried potatoes and cabbage.
And I love liver!!
Thanks, will look for them.
The best thing I have found for cooking is an INstant Pot.
LOVE the thing.
I’ll check this out, too.
These days, the vast majority are city folks.
A shocking percentage of them, especially the lower income levels, eat fast food and junk from convenience stores almost entirely.
Yes, lobster is insipid compared with crab.
*** Jobs are easier than being a stay at home mother.***
The feminist movement would love to disagree with you, but as a former stay at home mom, I would say you’re spot on. I never had one person offer to do the job(s) I did for no pay. Not to mention, I volunteered at church, the kids’ school, and in the community as a scout leader.
In my mind, that feminist-working mom movement was because women didn’t like taking care of their own kids, and all the work that entailed, including, but not limited to, preparing healthy meals for them.
I like sauerkraut, and liver too, if it’s cooked right. I don’t get to eat either very often, though, since my wife won’t eat liver in any form and will only eat sauerkraut on a Reuben sandwich.
Hash (canned or homemade), fried potatoes, and fried cabbage are all fine, though. The fried cabbage is actually steamed with some bacon grease, not really fried. It’s a New Year’s Day must-have along with black-eyed peas.
Or maybe just easier to let someone else make your choices and print them on a menu; how boring!
**Poor people in America tend to be fat.**
Fat people can be found in every class and race.
Without regular exercise, or a physically active job, the calorie intake must be lower. Prime examples: cops and truck drivers. My brother was a cop, and went from 180 to 270 in 22 years. I was a full-time truck driver for 20 years, and realized within 4 months (20# gain) that I had to change my diet or get more exercise (I did both). I managed to get back to a 175-185 range in a few weeks, and have stayed there ever since.
Thanks - I remember it better now that you mention it.
Many poor would do well to eat as I often do - cook a quick omelet, or hamburger, or stir-fry some sliced meat. Make a ham sandwich, heavy on the ham and light on the bread. Heck, a person can eat pretty good for less than what a fast food meal costs.
My wife and I can fry salmon for less than a trip to McDonalds.
True, but you have to go shopping for groceries....intelligently, to keep the cost down.
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