{"id":2477,"date":"2009-08-03T10:15:44","date_gmt":"2009-08-03T17:15:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/?p=2477"},"modified":"2009-08-03T10:15:44","modified_gmt":"2009-08-03T17:15:44","slug":"michael-pollan-on-cooking-in-america-or-lack-thereof","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/03\/michael-pollan-on-cooking-in-america-or-lack-thereof\/","title":{"rendered":"Michael Pollan on cooking in America (or lack thereof)"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/center><\/a><\/p>\n

For the record, I *love* to cook, as evidenced by the photo above. Just made some flippin’ fantastic pizza last night, too. Still, this article is pretty thought-provoking. -CF<\/p>\n

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch
\nby Michael Pollan
\nThe New York Times Magazine<\/a><\/em>
\nAugust 2, 2009<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s what I don\u2019t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For the rise of Julia Child as a figure of cultural consequence \u2014 along with Alice Waters and Mario Batali and Martha Stewart and Emeril Lagasse and whoever is crowned the next Food Network star \u2014 has, paradoxically, coincided with the rise of fast food, home-meal replacements and the decline and fall of everyday home cooking.<\/p>\n

That decline has several causes: women working outside the home; food companies persuading Americans to let them do the cooking; and advances in technology that made it easier for them to do so. Cooking is no longer obligatory, and for many people, women especially, that has been a blessing. But perhaps a mixed blessing, to judge by the culture\u2019s continuing, if not deepening, fascination with the subject. It has been easier for us to give up cooking than it has been to give up talking about it \u2014 and watching it.<\/p>\n

Today the average American spends a mere 27 minutes a day on food preparation (another four minutes cleaning up); that\u2019s less than half the time that we spent cooking and cleaning up when Julia arrived on our television screens. It\u2019s also less than half the time it takes to watch a single episode of \u201cTop Chef\u201d or \u201cChopped\u201d or \u201cThe Next Food Network Star.\u201d What this suggests is that a great many Americans are spending considerably more time watching images of cooking on television than they are cooking themselves \u2014 an increasingly archaic activity they will tell you they no longer have the time for. <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the record, I *love* to cook, as evidenced by the photo above. Just made some flippin’ fantastic pizza last night, too. Still, this article is pretty thought-provoking. -CF Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch by Michael Pollan The New York Times Magazine August 2, 2009 But here\u2019s what I don\u2019t get: How is it that we are so eager to watch other people browning beef cubes on screen but so much less eager to brown them ourselves? For…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64,103],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-food","category-journalism","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4uks-DX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2477\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cyrusfarivar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}