Posted on 05/12/2013 7:38:23 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Pay People to Cook at Home By KRISTIN WARTMAN
THE home-cooked family meal is often lauded as the solution for problems ranging from obesity to deteriorating health to a decline in civility and morals. Using whole foods to prepare meals without additives and chemicals is the holy grail for today’s advocates of better eating.
But how do we get there? For many of us, whether we are full-time workers or full-time parents, this home-cooked meal is a fantasy removed from the reality of everyday life. And so Americans continue to rely on highly processed and refined foods that are harmful to their health.
Those who argue that our salvation lies in meals cooked at home seem unable to answer two key questions: where can people find the money to buy fresh foods, and how can they find the time to cook them? The failure to answer these questions plays into the hands of the food industry, which exploits the healthy-food movement’s lack of connection to average Americans. It makes it easier for the industry to sell its products as real American food, with real American sensibilities — namely, affordability and convenience.
I believe the solution to getting people into the kitchen exists in a long-forgotten proposal. In the 1960s and ’70s, when American feminists were fighting to get women out of the house and into the workplace, there was another feminist arguing for something else. Selma James, a labor organizer from Brooklyn, pushed the idea of wages for housework. Ms. James, who worked in a factory as a young woman and later became a housewife and a mother, argued that household work was essential to the American economy and wondered why women weren’t being paid for it.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This isn’t about feminism, or laziness, or some plot to destroy America and make everybody fat.
It’s about how everyone, men and women, has chosen to order the economy in modern America, not fifties America. Women. Have. Jobs.
If you’re not willing to give up your wife’s paycheck — you know, the one that makes the jet ski payments — then keep your mouth when you see a McDonald’s bag.
People who can’t do math at all are inordinately fond of saying, “Do the math!” Well, this is an easy one. It’s simple clock math. There are no hours left in a day for a woman who works, commutes, and cares for children to shop for food and cook it.
How does no one else get that? DO THE CLOCK MATH.
I totally agree with you. When our kids were growing up, we lived in the Seattle area and had 60 minute commutes each way (due to housing costs), and still managed to do the things you mentioned.
What I have found out about our closest kids is that they are too concerned about themselves to have time to halfway even care for their kids. Sometimes the grandchildren come over for a day and have dark circles under their eyes, are sick, or hungry as heck.
And these grandchildren come from a family that can well afford to do otherwise, since I employ their dad and he is making an excellent income.
Our closest son (the one I employ) and daughter-in-law have not even made an effort this year to even mention Happy Mothers Day to their mom.
Sad state of affairs....
As I have posted here, my wife and I, after commuting 1 hour each way to and from work, had time to bus kids to their extra curricular activities, and still had time for home cooked meals.
Fresh or unprocessed food is cheaper.
Buying wholesome, non packaged foods (including fresh cut/ground meats) can be a little more expensive at least where I live.
The additional cost is negligible when you take into account that we almost never eat out anymore. When my boy's sports teams were in season, we did drive thru way too often.
Now that we have a family commitment to eating better, it's almost impossible to eat out since we won't eat what they serve.
I'd rather have a homemade BLT than fast food any day, especially with an organic tomato.
If anyone else is wondering why all the fuss about organic vegetables, eat a sandwich made with a really good tomato. I'm at the point that I'll do without a tomato than suffer a bland hot-house hybrid.
Life's too short to eat poorly.
I’m grilling some of those on-sale in the 5 lb. bag chicken breasts over oak, and making sautéed fresh zucchini and onions with fresh basil and lemon pepper for dinner this evening. Cost of the meal-maybe $2.00. I don’t have any idea how much it would cost in a restaurant in the city.
Where I live, everyone, men and women, works nine or ten hours days, with an hour commute to and from work.
Everyone is getting home around eight o’clock, eight-thirty.
Even if you’ve shopped during the weekend, who starts cooking, exhausted, at eight thirty?
Sure, cooking can be fun... on the weekends. When there’s no pressure to just get something on the table because everyone is starving. But during the workweek? It’s just one more exhausting time suck making life a nearly-impossible grind. Especially for moms with little children.
I’m not mad at anyone who drives through McDonald’s. I don’t understand how you did it.
And I don’t think it’s “a plot” or due to “laziness.” Americans (with jobs) have never worked harder.
The unusually cool spring here has slowed the growth of my tomato plants and other veggies. I’ve been getting organic ones from California at the farmers’ market 20 miles from here, but they still lack that fresh picked taste from being in a refrigerated truck for shipping.
I go to a meat market that sells free ranged beef and pork, too, if no nearby rancher is slaughtering and selling meat right then-after having eaten fresh/organic food, the caged/feed lot stuff is like eating wood pulp...
Does raising the lid on the pizza delivery box count?
The only whole items I've ever seen are lettuce, tomato, and apples. Wait, once they gave the kids a mango. They didn't know what it was, and they certainly didn't eat it.
Whatever your feelings are about the free/reduced lunch programs (or public school in general), set those aside for now... the only reliable meal that some of these kids have is the meal at school, and we're feeding them garbage. I remember my school lunches as a kid. They were delicious, fresh, and nutritious. Our lunch ladies cooked, they didn't just reheat; it was as though your grandmother was making your lunch.
I’ve heard from neighbors with kids who go to the public school that they won’t subject them to the school lunches, because they don’t have enough fresh veggies and are short on protein-they pack their kids’ lunches. The nearby private school is supposedly better-small lunchroom, and the employees actually cook-and offer a variety of fresh fruit-most kids still brown bag it, though. My kid hated school lunches at her private school-I always packed her lunch-she said the meat was overcooked and the veggies limp. No vitamins or other useful nutrients left there...
Thank you!
I have so many friends who do not cook. I cannot imagine living the way they live. Most of their meals are take out food. It is not rocket surgery....it is cooking for heaven’s sakes. Some people are just lazy.
My wife and I both cook at home almost every night while working 10 hour days and taking care of an elderly family member. Cheaper, and better tasting than eating out.
Sure, cooking can be fun... on the weekends. When there’s no pressure to just get something on the table because everyone is starving. But during the workweek? It’s just one more exhausting time suck making life a nearly-impossible grind. Especially for moms with little children.
Then the operative phrase is ‘on the weekends’.
If one cooks on the weekend simply increase the recipes necessary for weekday dining. For instance when I’m preparing lasagna, I make enough meat/veggies sauce in a large electric roaster. Then it’s just an assembly line technique to assemble 3/4 lasagnas, one for an upcoming meal, 2/3 for freezing. Another example, the electric roaster allows me to make 38 cabbage rolls (with spare ribs/Kielbasa) for numerous freezer containers.
Frozen meals and/or utilizing slow cookers can be tremendous time savers. In the morning place a ham/roast/chicken in the slow cooker ready for the evening's meal. Dinner can be augmented with previously prepared casseroles/side dishes.
I don’t know if there are ‘home cooking’ businesses in your area, (my area has four). On Saturdays you go into one of these ‘home cooking’ businesses , decide on the varied menus, pick out the necessary ingredients, cook (staff will assist if necessary) for a morning/afternoon. The staff then packages/flash freezes your meals. You then have enough for your family’s two week meals.
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