http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/11/30/the-ugly-history-of-cooking Comments On: The Ugly History of Cooking by Charles Mudede en-us Copyright 2013 The Stranger. All rights reserved. This RSS file is offered to individuals, The Stranger readers, and non-commercial organizations only. Any commercial websites wishing to use this RSS file, please contact The Stranger. webmaster@thestranger.com (The Stranger Webmaster) Tue, 21 May 2013 00:00:01 -0700 Tue, 21 May 2013 16:45:00 -0700 Foundation http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss
If I'm being sincere, the problem is people, approximately half of whom are men.
Posted by McJulie]]> Mon, 03 Dec 2012 11:57:25 -0800 The Stranger Posted by anon1256]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 12:51:51 -0800 The Stranger
Middle class people still do need a kitchen. Home cooking is much less expensive than restaurants - because the cost of labour is nil.

Just like a spouse is much less expensive for a man than relying on a sex worker. As for females, not needing penetrative sex to get off makes a vibrator or one's fingers an even less expensive solution than a spouse.
Posted by sissoucat]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:08:40 -0800 The Stranger

Posted by DonServo]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 09:06:25 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Fishface]]> Sun, 02 Dec 2012 07:33:49 -0800 The Stranger
You can find equally nonsensical beliefs--with a fascist twist-- over at freerepublic.
Posted by ryanmm]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 13:40:49 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Sat, 01 Dec 2012 08:40:12 -0800 The Stranger Imagine if a restaurant like Coastal Kitchen was guaranteed a full house for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, 7 days a week. I live nearby, and while they do well, I'm guessing that would be 4-5 times the business they currently do.

Assuming the owners didn't simply pocket the extra profit (which they couldn't given the competition in an eat-out only world), they would lower their prices. Agreed?

Would that make their prices competitive with home cooking? If you factor in the hidden costs of home cooking I mentioned @61, I think we could be getting pretty close, although I admit I don't have this all worked out in a spreadsheet or anything.
Posted by seandr]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 20:15:02 -0800 The Stranger
Way back when, people just seemed to eat the crap that the industry churned out without asking a lot of questions. At least they did where I grew up. Food Inc (the movie) makes a pretty convincing case that better food is now available, and the reason for that is changes in consumer demand.

Also, one can find good, cheap food at chain restaurants today that simply didn't exist back then, when everything had to be a fucking hamburger and fries. Sub sandwiches and burritos are two fast foods that can be done cheaply, nutritionally, and tastily. Those chains have been steadily growing while McDonalds has struggled.

Personal anecdote - when my kids were younger, I'd sometimes take them to McDonald's Playland in Ballard on rainy days, and while they loved the playground, they told me quite bluntly that the food was shit (a point which was reinforced by the fact that I wouldn't order anything for myself - can't eat that crap anymore). When I was that age, eating McDonalds was heaven. Not sure if the food at McDonalds has changed, or we have, or both.

Posted by seandr]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:55:40 -0800 The Stranger
I think you missed my point.

There's only so much room for economies of scale when you're talking about GOOD food. On those rare occasions that I can see what's going on in the kitchen at my favorite restaurants, there are maybe three to five line cooks working at any one time, and these are fairly reasonably priced joints like Senor Moose and the new Meander's in White Center.

When you start getting into larger operations, you can divide the work up a little bit more, by having separate stations for different items on the menu and by having more of an assembly line flow for chopping vegetables and the like, but you're still never going to make it so efficient that it's comparable in cost to home cooking, not unless you have a prepackaged, mass production ethic like McDonalds has, and that model is the very antithesis of good food. You'd be better off heating up a frozen lasagna at home.
Posted by keshmeshi]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:42:20 -0800 The Stranger Because of this, home cooking can always undercut independent restaurants

Good point. However, there are other costs to home cooking to consider besides the cost of goods:

* Time to shop, prepare the meal, clean up
* Cost of appliances (fridge, stove, dishwasher)
* Energy costs of running said appliances
* Costs of cookware and place settings
* Rent/mortgage for kitchen square footage, cabinetry, surfaces, plumbing, etc.

These costs will vary from home to home, but I'd guess that for a lot of people, an eat-out only world would make restaurant prices quite competitive with home cooking.

When I look at what we pay for meat at Whole Foods, I can't help but wonder if price differences are already smaller than people think (assuming you don't drink any wine, which is outrageously marked up by restaurants).
Posted by seandr]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:33:15 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Clayton]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 19:31:37 -0800 The Stranger Posted by thene]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:16:28 -0800 The Stranger Posted by anon1256]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 18:15:16 -0800 The Stranger For me, the ability to cook is tied in with my independence.

Yes, Charles' proposal makes me a bit queasy for a similar reason. If cooking becomes a specialty across our culture, we become dependent on the "food system" to fulfill a very basic human need - eating healthily. That system has certainly failed us in the past (e.g., I ate nothing but Lucky Charms and monster cereals for breakfast in the 70s).

One could argue, correctly I think, that the increased interest in the art of (home) cooking in the last two decades is at least partly responsible for the easy availability of healthy, natural foods that were all but impossible to find in the 70s.
Posted by seandr]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:04:02 -0800 The Stranger You are forgetting profit margin in your costing, which goes down in any business, including restaurants, as volume increases and becomes more reliable.

Also, I assert that a distribution system involving millions of individuals transporting food to their domiciles (and refrigerating it) is less energy efficient and more costly than a distribution system that delivers food in volume to a smaller number of neighborhood restaurants.

@keshmeshi:
Increased diner volume means more business for all restaurants, not just chains. Consider - if you and I dined out every single evening together, McDonalds wouldn't see a dime, but if I had anything to say about it, places like Spinasse, Ravish, Momiji, Sitka & Spruce, and Cafe Campagne certainly would.

Anyway, if people want to cook, they should cook. I just think this is an interesting thought experiment.
Posted by seandr]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:43:21 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Cabusi]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:49:02 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Matt from Denver]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:23:12 -0800 The Stranger
Communal kitchens in a building full of efficient apartments sounds fabulous. That's not what you advocated. You said people who cook at home are wasteful, inherently, and should just eat out all the time. (Let them eat cake...) Add in a poor argument that is...to put it mildly, horribly insulting, and very close to the suggestion that women who enjoy a historically feminine task are somehow bad feminists, and you piss people off.

Face it, you argued your point badly. It's ok, everyone burns the roast now and then.


Posted by sambiddlecom]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:01:46 -0800 The Stranger Posted by treacle]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:35:36 -0800 The Stranger
H'okay, to Charles now-elaborated point: " but here is my point: the institution of the kitchen corresponds with sedentarism. meaning, it is an agricultural institution. the kitchen [is a] rural form. and so, each house in the city is really duplicating a farmhouse in the country. we do not have pigs in the yard, but have big kitchens in the house. do you now see the bizarreness of this?"

" my purpose is to find the urban forms, which tend to be friendlier to the environment, and replace them with these older forms, which tend to do more damage than good."

1. No, I do not see the bizarreness of this. Wheels were invented tens of thousands of years ago, yet we still use wheels today. Chopsticks haven't changed in 5,000 years. People, urban people, are more alienated from one another today than they were even 100 years ago... this is better? Not really.

2. Sedentarianism: We are still living in a sedentary society, even more so that when we lived in a rural society.

3. Are airplanes (invented 100 y'ago) more urban than boats (invented ???? y'ago)? Does one do more damage than the other?

4. Modern agriculture does loads of damage to the environment: lowering of water tables, chemical fertilizers damaging soil and water microbial life, reliance on petrochemicals to distribute, irrigate, harvest and ship food; monocropping; GMOs.

IN SUM: Kitchens aren't going away any time soon, gender divisions in cooking and earning --one could easily argue-- have largely changed due to the equalities enabled by capitalism (although I suppose other economic systems could have produced the same thing), it is highly unfortunately that you chose to make rather inflammatory and specious arguments in favor of this anti-kitchen institution campaign, that was really distracting. Although I'm sure it raised your comment & hits count.

I'm out.
Posted by treacle]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:34:30 -0800 The Stranger Posted by Mr. X]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:12:22 -0800 The Stranger
Not all men - I do all of the cooking when I'm hanging out with my significant other (who generally orders out for herself and her kid during the week when I'm not around because neither of them cooks beyond microwaving frozen dinners and making top ramen).

Generalizations usually suck, and Charles' generalizations that purport to be deep philosophical thoughts suck even harder.

Tenants come and go, but buildings without adequate cooking facilities are forever. Fuck that shit.


Posted by Mr. X]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:11:16 -0800 The Stranger
Also "Americans and their hobbies!?" I seriously doubt that Americans are the only people on earth who fill their leisure time with useful but unnecessary tasks.
Posted by NoelleyB]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:09:23 -0800 The Stranger Posted by thelyamhound]]> Fri, 30 Nov 2012 14:08:46 -0800 The Stranger