Open Writing

Back in the gravy days of the early 2000’s, when some people in the US were spending money like there was no tomorrow, it wasn’t unusual for them to refit their kitchens every four years or so, to the tune of several thousand dollars. The German and Italian kitchen equipment manufacturers tapped into this fad and made darn sure that yesterday’s kitchen looked about as tacky as possible when compared to their today’s offerings.

So it was out with the “colonial” style, all wood cabinets and appliance fronts, vinyl tile floors and melamine counter tops, and in with the hardwood floors, sheer plastic cabinet doors and molded, one piece counter tops. If your kitchen was big enough, and it had better be, even at the expense of doing away with your dining room, an island “cooking station” with an overhead pan rack was absolutely de rigueur.

This set-up soon palled, however, and those crafty German and Italian arbiters of culinary style began a new round of full-page advertisements in the glossy magazines. This time around you just had to have granite counter tops, hand made, ceramic tile floors from Tuscany or Mexico, and black appliances, accented with brushed stainless steel. The “island cooking station” was apparently by this time passé, to be supplanted by a breakfast bar.

The style of the advertisements also evolved along the same time line. At the beginning of this century, every advertisement includes a woman, dressed in a couture dress, with high heels. She is immaculately groomed, and gazing with misty eyes at the cooking stove, even though there isn’t a trace of steam, or other evidence of anything cooking. Children are verboten in this setting.

That scene eventually transitioned into one where the kitchen this time contains both a man and a woman, and now the lady of the house is wearing designer jeans and a $400 blouse, but is still with the six-inch heels. Her jewelry is straight from Tiffany, albeit rented for the day by the ad. producer. Sometimes the man is cooking, and his partner’s misty eyes are now not on the stove, but on him.

By contrast, today’s advertisements show no signs of human occupation. You could almost imagine an “End of the World” scenario outside the house, and therein lies the irony of all this overdone focus on culinary decor – hardly anyone cooks anymore. Now, the only, essential kitchen appliance is a microwave oven to re-heat the take-out Chinese, the pizza or the TV dinner. Many apartment buildings in Manhattan have a take-out restaurant right inside the entrance so you don’t need even a microwave!

This odd turn of events has been accompanied by another strange social phenomenon, the proliferation of cooking shows on TV. The format was pioneered by those redoubtable ladies, Julia Child in the US and Fanny Flagg in the UK. American TV now has a network devoted to cooking shows of every description. There are approximately 126 productions, covering just about every cuisine from Asian to Cordon Bleu, and with any twist the creator’s imagination could come up with.

There are dueling chefs, iron chefs, world traveling chefs, glamorous chefs, homely chefs – the inventiveness of TV producers has no bounds. The Food Network boasts an audience of 84 million viewers, and I would bet money that only a couple of thousand of them actually cook. My wife is no exception. She regularly watches two cooking shows a day that I’m aware of. But then, cooking show junkies are like alcoholics; they become very devious about their habit, so the actual total may be more.

To be fair, my wife does cook, occasionally; most often it’s a dish that I have prepared and frozen! Once in a great while she actually copies down recipes from a TV show and stashes them among the several dozen cookbooks she brought to the marriage. Comparisons are odious, but I have managed to get by pretty well with just two – “The Joy of Cooking,” and “The Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book.”

Joking aside, my wife is a good cook, just not very highly motivated. Her great specialties are dishes from the Jewish repertoire. Unfortunately there aren’t too many Jewish dishes that I relish. I don’t feel bad about this because, in case you haven’t noticed, Jewish restaurants are not to be found on every street corner, like say, Chinese and Italian, so there’s a message in there somewhere.

Her is brisket is terrific – probably one of the Jews’ best-kept secrets; likewise her corned beef. Gefilte fish is OK, once in a while, but the recipes for kugle and challah would have been buried under the shifting desert sands in ancient times if left to me. There’s only one way to explain the Jews’ devotion to unpalatable food; a deep and genetic commitment to gastric discomfort.

As a postscript to this story of kitchenalia, I read the other day that there have sprung up thriving businesses that recycle cast-off kitchen fittings and furniture. So, if you’re not too proud, you can pick up an unused granite counter top, or a set of last year’s appliances for a fraction of their original cost, so then you don’t have to feel guilty when you don’t cook.

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