March 23, 2013

• Some thoughts from an "old school" cook

  I love to cook. If you know me, that is not news. Over the years I have learned quite a bit about the chemistry of cooking. Nothing that any "old school" cook doesn't know, but important stuff, nonetheless. Not that I still don't have a lot to learn. I do. Like most things, the more you get into it, the more you realize the depth of information that is still there to learn.

  And so, I'm always cooking, or reading about cooking, or browsing #recipes.  I probably subscribe to a half dozen online recipe sites that send new recipes every day. There is a trend that I'm sure you've noticed -- you might even like it, but I'm not a fan. And that is that the "ingredients" listed in so many of today's recipes are not ingredients at all, but convenience foods, canned foods, or boxed mixes.

  I just now read two recipes for coffee cakes that sounded scrumptious, and looked great in the pictures. The first two ingredients in one was "1 yellow cake mix, and 1 pkg. vanilla pudding." The other recipe started with "16-18 frozen dinner rolls, and 1 box butterscotch pudding mix". I am sure that the recipes work, are super easy, and I'm sure that the coffee cakes tastes good. I have nothing against making cooking simple, either, but there are three things that bother me about those kind of recipes -- the kind that are so typical now.

  One... You don't actually learn how ingredients interact... you don't really learn how to cook. You just learn to open boxes and cans, and flavoring packets, and you learn, I guess, to follow directions. How many cooks now ever make soup without using canned or boxed stock? It is so easy to simmer leftover bones to make homemade stock -- without all the sodium in the boxed and canned alternatives, yet it is a simple technique that is all but lost now. Such a shame. 

  The second thing that bothers me about those kind of recipes: Cooking this way is more expensive than cooking from scratch. If a day comes when we all have to tighten our belts, we may well have a generation of mothers who don't know what to do with a bag of dried pinto beans -- who haven't a clue how to make biscuits or bread from scratch. I suspect even now that most people with low incomes still spend a high percentage of their food dollars on convenience foods. These mothers probably don't know that their food dollar could go twice as far if they prepared their meals from scratch.

  The third thing that bothers me is the chemicals used in the prepared food and mixes. With all the stabilizers and flavor enhancers and other chemicals, we really don't know what we are feeding ourselves or our families when we use mixes and other convenience foods. As an example, did you know that Jiffy corn muffin mix, aside from containing pyrophosphate and other chemicals, has hydrogenated lard in it? Lard! Yet it is so easy to make delicious corn muffins from scratch using vegetable oil and no chemicals. We Americans eat way more salt than is good for us, and convenience foods are certainly one of the reasons.

  I realize it is a trend that is probably not going to change for a while, and I even must admit that I'm tempted to try that coffee cake with the yellow cake mix and vanilla pudding, but it would be great someday to check my recipe email and not see a single recipe that lists a convenience food in the ingredients.

  • 9:03 pm
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