This was originally a response to Pru's post, but I realize that it's not exactly related, so I'll make it a new thread.

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There was a recent NYT Mag article by Michael Pollan about cooking in the home, and how it is dying. According to some poll or other that he quoted, Americans increasingly believe that "cooking" means... actually, let me just cut and paste it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html?_r=1&p agewanted=all

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I spent an enlightening if somewhat depressing hour on the phone with a veteran food-marketing researcher, Harry Balzer, who explained that “people call things ‘cooking’ today that would roll their grandmother in her grave — heating up a can of soup or microwaving a frozen pizza.” Balzer has been studying American eating habits since 1978; the NPD Group, the firm he works for, collects data from a pool of 2,000 food diaries to track American eating habits. Years ago Balzer noticed that the definition of cooking held by his respondents had grown so broad as to be meaningless, so the firm tightened up the meaning of “to cook” at least slightly to capture what was really going on in American kitchens. To cook from scratch, they decreed, means to prepare a main dish that requires some degree of “assembly of elements.” So microwaving a pizza doesn’t count as cooking, though washing a head of lettuce and pouring bottled dressing over it does. Under this dispensation, you’re also cooking when you spread mayonnaise on a slice of bread and pile on some cold cuts or a hamburger patty. (Currently the most popular meal in America, at both lunch and dinner, is a sandwich; the No. 1 accompanying beverage is a soda.) At least by Balzer’s none-too-exacting standard, Americans are still cooking up a storm — 58 percent of our evening meals qualify, though even that figure has been falling steadily since the 1980s.

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That guy goes on to suggest that cooking will die as a common activity:

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“Here’s an analogy,” Balzer said. “A hundred years ago, chicken for dinner meant going out and catching, killing, plucking and gutting a chicken. Do you know anybody who still does that? It would be considered crazy! Well, that’s exactly how cooking will seem to your grandchildren: something people used to do when they had no other choice. Get over it.”

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That projection seems pretty bleak, and if my own experiences are any indication, needlessly so. There are many people like me, people who cook essentially out of necessity. We do not necessarily enjoy it, we are not necessarily good at it, we just need to eat. And if a can of tinned soup doesn't cut it (and it doesn't), then we need to learn how to cook.

If I'm perfectly honest with myself, the stuff I usually make for myself has more in common with Rachael Ray than I'm willing to admit. I use sauces out of jars, instant curry powders, and the like. I do not know how to make a good curry from scratch. But on weekends I do try something new, from scratch, if only because my palate demands something interesting once in a while.

I think of the Harry Potter "stepping stone" argument, and I think it works for cooking. If people can get started doing rudimentary kitchen stuff, like browning meat, then from there they can learn to do the rest of it. I think I am an example of that.

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YOU'RE TEARING ME APART, LISA!