mountaineergirl - my dental hygienist is the one that really noticed and pointed it out to me. She also told me about another client who developed really bad plaque after starting to consume energy drinks.
I had no idea that there was a correlation between diet and teeth,except for sugar, that is.

Sallysue, interesting to note that last summer, Peg Bracken's "I Hate to Cook Book" was reissued after 50 years, and three years after Mrs. Bracken's death at age 89.

The NY Times review below called Mrs. Bracken "a precursor to Sandra Lee and Rachael Ray"...

Becky

Here is a link that might be useful: New edition of

Reading this thread reminded me of this comic strip.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Funny comic - I guess I'm straddling 1954 and today because we just had that Sunday dinner a couple of weeks ago.

Marcolo, I understand that The Atlantic is using others' research. My point is merely that survey results don't show a true picture because of limited demographics of participants.

Well, the random page turner at Amazon sent me to a page that says that some cooks buy cookbooks with the same motive that an ugly woman keeps buying hats. Thanks a lot.

(This link might be more profitable, BeckySharp. Doing some crafts these days, hmmm? )

Here is a link that might be useful: I Hate to Cook Book on Amazon

I think I'm going to tell my family that I'm "just plain cute to have around the house," and they'll make their own supper. Yeah, that'll work.

Back to the hijacking :)

Kellied, if you think about it, you are aware of lots of other correlations between diet and oral health besides that of sugar/decay. You know all about scurvy and lack of vit C for example. And we all know that overall health manifests itself in the mouth (one reason we need a medical history at the dentist office). I was just surprised that there were such quick results from eating foods made from scratch.

Jessica - thanks for the link, and as I said, we've known for years that eating healthy means better overall health, therefore better oral health. That less processed foods (with less carbs/sugar), and more fresh foods (hard and crunchy) are necessary for our oral health. I would not have been surprised by seeing someone with less swollen/bleeding gum tissue as a result of a healthier diet, but to see less tartar build-up surprised me.

So are we saying only frozen pizza will cause more plaque build-up than a home made one? and Can I still order delivered pizza and count that as home made??? :)

Ha! I love the comic strip, and am proud to say that I own very few cook books since I get most of my recipes online!

I was flipping channels last night and lingered on a (bad) sitcom to admire the kitchen. Sub-zero fridge, professional range, potfiller, soapstone, etc. I didn't notice that any cooking was taking place in that kitchen. Between shows like that and movies like "Something's gotta give" and "It's complicated", I think we get exposed to so much kitchen porn that a normal, functional-but-not-high-end kitchen starts looking sub-standard.

Even if I never cooked, I would still want a drop-dead gorgeous kitchen if I could afford it. There's plenty of non-functional beautiful things in the world, and a lot of current industrial design really can be appreciated as works of art even if never used for their intended purposes.

florantha, thanks : ).

Sorry everyone, the link below is the one I meant to send. The perils of sharing a laptop with a craft-minded child...

I think mcmjilly is right about the exposure -- add in design blogs, magazines, and the Food Channel, and the expectation level, I think, is much higher than it used to be.

Becky

Here is a link that might be useful: NY Times review of new edition of

I wonder whether there's some part of the home that getting fewer budget dollars? If Americans are spending more on kitchens, then are they spending less on things like living room drapes or landscaping or getting new wall-to-wall carpeting or buying a new car every year?

I think spending time in the kitchen seems like a luxury to people who work full time. Maybe that's at the root of the move towards more and more luxurious kitchens. When people don't have the time to indulge in a hobby, they might compensate by buying expensive accesories.

I think people like the idea of a kitchen being the center of the house where the family and friends linger over fabulous meals. It's the type of lifestyle people aspire to have. They don't always get there, but building the proper setting probably seems like a step that will make it happen.

mcmjilly, I think you have hit on something...If we have the place and the stuff maybe we'll also be able to grow fab personalities and hang with fab personalities and so on. Is there wishful thinking here, the idea that possessions equals our perceived worth, both in involvement with others and in status?

You also say that there aren't hobbies, that in a way the kitchen (or kitchen stuff) becomes the hobby. Hmmm. Anyone here on the GW have a high-end kitchen but no hobby? Anyone with a modest kitchen and a hobby or two?

As for me and my house, if we get one more hobby we'll have to move to a set of pole barns with hermetic cabinets, a well-stocked mechanic's garage, workspace for sewing machines and notions and flytying, winter storage space for multiple old cars, high-speed internet access, lots of bookshelves, a full kitchen with formal dining room, and a few pieces of furniture and silver worthy of Thos. Jefferson. And a garden and a stream or lake and plenty of room for hunting dogs to be trained. (It's probably a good thing that we can't afford another addition.)

marcolo says, "The article is based on factual data, not anecdote or speculation. Americans are indeed cooking much less than they used to, and spending way more on their kitchens at the same time."

"I know many, many people with high end kitchens who simply cannot cook at all. It's a realtor selling point, not a tool."

Ok, but WRT to your first point, we can ask two questions about the quality of the data. First, is the average a good average? And second, if they're reporting mean or median average values, what sort of variation might we see in the data? Some folks might cook much more than average.

We also need to keep in mind that it's not all apples-to-apples. I did some cooking over the weekend that made very good time-saving use of the cuisinart, but still used the knife, the range, good ingredients, and, I hope, some care. A dozen people reported very good results. Take away some of my conveniences and one meal alone would have taken at least a couple hours more of my time.

Both my grandmothers cooked every meal, every day. I do not, and neither does my wife. During the week, breakfast is quick and easy. I don't come home for lunch and neither do the kids. She'll make dinner maybe 3 nights. I'll make dinner 1. The other is take-out or something else pre-made. On the weekend I cook rather more than that, but sometimes we go out. Do I need what I have in the kitchen? No -- not even sure what it would mean to say "yes." Do I make good use of it? I think so. So I cook a good deal fewer hours per week than either grandmother, and maybe fewer than my mom, who worked as a school teacher and didn't spend a ton of time cooking during the week either. Can we tell from any of that who among us was most skillful in the kitchen?

WRT your second point, sure, but now we're back to anecdote. People have all sorts of motivations for buying all sorts of things. It gets amped up because, economic problems notwithstanding, most folks are MUCH wealthier than they were in the 20s. Porsche? There are die-hard enthusiasts who take their cars to the track on a regular basis. And there are people who buy for status. Or because they've wanted a porsche since their teens or college days. Because they like the story or the fantasy or what have you. Or because they're just plain fun to drive, even if you don't have serious chops behind the wheel (some, not all, are actually fairly easy to drive). Likewise, sure, there are folks buying ten thousand dollar ranges who cannot cook, but that doesn't define the market. Reasons to buy fancy kitchen appliances may be complex for any given consumer and certainly might vary quite a bit across consumers. People buy things because they can afford them (I hope) and because they want them. Some folks want them, at least in large part, for their function.

Just in case it's not been touched on in 34 posts :), I enjoyed reading this, but it IS heavily biased by its readership, not exactly representative of the country as a whole even though there are a lot of citations meant to suggest it is. Of course readers relate best to what people "like" them are doing, and stories of silliness and hypocrisy are so much more fun than paeans to sensible choices.

It's really not a true indicator of need that people today use the kitchen less than their grandmas did. Those poor things had to use them waaay too much! Do you realize that at this time last century 90% of all households grew at least some of their own food? And of course a very significant portion of those a lot more than just some. Food that HAD to be processed on its own schedule, whether they wanted to spend many, many hours in the hottest part of the year canning or not.

The fact is, most people still need and use their kitchens a lot. Even a frozen dinner junky like my DIL uses her island for her toddlers to crawl around on while they cut canned cookie dough into dinosaurs.

Also, most people do not embark on remodeling to impress their neighbors, even if they hope the end product will, or mortgage their homes to pay for the mistake of the decade. Most do have enough discretionary income to allow them to buy an occasional $40 garlic press, should they choose, without needing any motive other than self indulgence. Most do hop up and down with delight on getting a new or remodeled kitchen and fondle their new counters excitedly, even to the point of unseemliness. Chopping veggies is not the only way, of course, to break them in--also a rite not performed for the benefit of the neighbors, although magazine readers might enjoy its mention. :)

While the thread poses an interesting question, I see people are much more interested in justifying their own renovations on an emotional level rather than understanding national trends. That's fine, so I need to bow out before I have to read any more feelings about numbers!

Hmmm... I don't see a lot of emotion in this thread. I think most of us are discussing possible reasons for the trend. Either that, or we're discussing oral hygiene.

We're retired Boomers, but most of our friends are Millennials. They have pretty high-stress jobs although they all make a good living.

Some like to cook, some don't. But all of them are Costco and Trader Joe fanatics. And yes, they do buy a noticeable percentage of ready-made or convenience foods even though they all try to eat healthily. It's a time thing, and for anyone to say, "Oh, nobody's as busy as my mother was," is unfair. Our mother could get by on 3 hrs of sleep a night, on a regular basis, but none of her kids inherited that trait, I can assure you.

I'm reminded of the scene in "Julie and Julia" where she makes Beef Bourguignon for her friends. I can tell you that every Millennial I know loved that scene and was intrigued by it, because they've seldom if ever had a homemade beef stew.

My sister's so into health food and flexitarianism, my niece and nephew (who now have kids of their own) are more familiar with crunchy chicken gizzards and raw red bell pepper salads than they are with classic French cooking, or even any traditional 'comfort food'. I know she's never made a meatloaf or even a steak, and mashed potatoes only under duress when the kids insisted they want it for Thankgiving turkey.

Mind you, she does certain things very well, but I've noticed her kids had a real interest in cooking many more dishes. But although their repertoire is wider, it doesn't include recipes that take a long time. They just don't have schedules to spend three or four hours in the kitchen on a regular basis.

Marcolo, really, if you're gone, you're gone, but it's not just feelings about numbers. Some perfectly good questions have been raised about some very slender numbers. More than that, the connection between the bare-bones statistics in the Atlantic article and the story that the article tells is unclear, as is the connection to your own informal observation. What's really the point in matching a crude statistic about average hours in the kitchen with an idealized observation about viking ranges that are wholly unused? I reckon that the median consumer doesn't buy a Viking range or anything like it (and I'm not touting nor rationalizing Viking -- never actually bought one of their products, don't own stock in the company, just don't care about their sales).

Of course there are people who buy fancy ranges or ovens who don't do much cooking, or who do some cooking but suck at it. So? I'm just not sure what that has to do with the trend you mentioned or any particular person's decision to buy a particular appliance. Do you have some analysis of the statistics to offer -- something that's not being discussed?

This is an interesting article that has a fair amount of truth. I think the overlaying theme is that Americans, as a whole, are cooking less than they used to. Then that category is subsetted into the kitchen renovators.

I am amazed, at work, when I hear how little people cook. I am astounded at how often, after kid's athletic events/practices, I hear about families going out to dinner rather than home to eat. A lovely omelet would take far less time and be much more nutritious than having some stranger serve you slop at a sit down restaurant. A fresh marinara sauce is a snap to create. I have endured many a frumpy child as I had to deny them the thrill of joining their cohorts at a local eatery. A home cooked meal with fresh ingredients doesn't have to be super time consuming.

As far as the high end kitchen discussion is concerned, I have a dear friend that had a custom build high end home. She put in a kick-a#@ kitchen and we all joke with her that her ginormous counter space is just to lay out pizza boxes! But then again, if you have a high end home, the current expectation is to have that sort of kitchen. It may change to the Star Trek/Jetson version of ordering something from Central Command, but, in our culinary evolution, this is where we are now.

On a personal note, I do enjoy cooking. There is something gratifying about providing delicious sustenance to my people. Ultimately, you are what you eat. I am not clear on why Americans have gotten so sucked into processed, preformed, precooked foodstuffs. A fresh meal doesn't have to take a lot of time and it's time much better spent than watching the glut of reality boob tube detritus.

(Florantha, mark DH & and I as folks with multiple hobbies.) Anyway, a little rambling of a post, but provoking thoughts by all of you!

We have friends who built their dream home about ten years ago and did the whole Viking Sub-Zero kitchen. When they were finished they invited about eight of us over for dinner and had the food catered. They tried to hide this, I think because maybe they knew people would think "You have a Viking stove, twin Sub-Zeros, an outdoor kitchen too - and you had *someone else* cook us chicken and a salad!?"? And yes, when they admitted it was catered that is exactly what everyone joked about. At the time, I'll admit it bothered me because I love to cook and thought I should have that kitchen instead :-) BUT, they were in an upscale neighborhood and built an upscale home. To skimp on the kitchen would have been odd now that I think about it. And knowing what I know now I don't want their Viking kitchen :-) So I do think it makes sense for some people to spend on their kitchens when they don't cook. I am, however, a little surprised to find less people are cooking. I thought the whole Food Network, Top Chef, etc., interest meant *more* people were cooking. I guess not?! On the flip side, I have such a love of the French Ranges that it's not normal. They have smaller ovens, which actually doesn't totally fit my cooking style. In designing our new home I sound completely irrational in regards to what I will do to get a Lacanche Sully into that kitchen. My friends don't get this. We're in the Boston area so they think Sully is some old Irish friend I'm trying to find a place for in our home ;-) My Mom on the other hand does not cook a lick and thinks that range is an absolute must just because she likes the way it looks. So, I guess I agree with those that say a kitchen is just ike buying a car, or decorating your home. If you don't cook, that doesn't mean you should have a crappy kitchen. And besides, the more people create nice kitchens the more nice pictures I'll have to look at :-)

chris11895 - You make a very good point about high end homes and high end kitchens. I have a low end home and while the kitchen needs a total tearout and redo, there is no way I was going to spend the money for a highend kitchen in that home when for a tenth of the cost I could have better than I did and totally usable. Making choices like that over the years is what enabled me to retire before I was 50. It does come down to what is more important to you.

What struck me about the article, and I suppose it is a feeling, is the arms race that is kitchen design today. The size of some kitchens boggles my mind, but when I contemplate the "Margarita Machine" in the article, or the sheer number of appliances available today, it makes sense that we need storage for them all.

For myself, I don't like to cook. Peg Bracken really was my hero. That said, I have extra appliances in the basement that were purchased for special events (the chocolate fountain, the massive electric roaster, the quesadilla maker (cannot believe I just admitted to that one)) and can see that if I had a large kitchen full of cupboards and drawers, they would have a home in which to live their quiet lives. As it is, they will sit in the basement for a few more years until I foist them off on Goodwill or a relative.

My goal with my new - still small - space is to eat more simply; figure out how to avoid buying such wasteful things in the future; and to perhaps increase my cooking time to the 5.5 hours weekly average :)

ae2ga, There are surveys and there are surveys. You can call any questionnaire a "survey", and they're used as selling tools and all. The same mathematics that is derived through the scientific process and requires the use of so-called "Imaginary" numbers to describe the orbit of Uranus (I think...or Neptune?) in relation to the rest of the solar system, can equally demonstrate the reality and validity of using a properly designed and implemented survey and getting results with a high, and predictable, degree of accuracy. It has been proven, consistently, to be so. The problem is that it has to be done right, and a lot of people who think they know how make a mess of it. Of all sources, I trust the USDA to have pretty good researchers and don't really doubt the results cited in the article.

One thing to remember when you're looking at surveys of large populations is that few people are acquainted with people from a truly broad cross section of the populace. Even if every single person you know, as well as yourself, would have answered the question very very differently from the norm, that just means that your group are in the minority, not that the survey is wrong.

I think, however, in interpreting the article, we have to remember a lot of the scratch convenience foods available to the "busy" cooks/heads of household today. If they have the money for the fancy cutlery, they also have the money to spend on letting someone else do part of the prep for them. A large and growing segment of the supermarket, aimed at these people, are the cut vegetables ready to steam or stir fry. They come in mixed sets, enough to feed a family of four. There's the washed and bagged mixed lettuce for salad. Even if you rewash at home, the prep time is way reduced from if you start with a garden head. There are the marinated fillets in the butcher department, and the kebob skewers all made up, or even just grab and go packages of cut up stew meat, that just needs to be dumped in the crockpot, not cut down from a chuck roast with a bone.

Last night I cooked the asparagus 10 minutes before the company was due because I have an if-you-have-to-ask-you-can't-afford-it steam oven. It's not "decorative" like a Lacanche, but rinse-rinse, snap-snap-snap, pop it in, 6 minutes, run under cool water in the perforated pan, pop into warming drawer, only takes ten minutes. Making asparagus for company used to take an hour.

With my new, well laid out, kitchen, I "cook" breakfasts and lunches much more often than I used to. The powerful and fast Induction helps, but just having everything near each other and eliminating the hiking is what has really sped things up. All of a sudden, I'm making omelettes, pasta, and redecorated leftovers on a whim, and taking less time than making sandwiches.

I also will just bake a cake on a whim. A couple of decades ago I baked by necessity, and only had my good right arm for the mixing. With a KA mixer and an accurate oven, the "cooking" time for a scratch cake is about 20 minutes, including clean-up. Not counting the time in the oven and cooling. With an accurate oven, one can set the time, and the cake is ready to take out when it rings. No turning, adjusting, testing, retesting, reretesting, etc. Open, test, remove, done.

I have a friend who is a great cook, but can't manage to pull together proper meals on a daily basis, and especially with a teenage boy who will locust through the groceries making planning hard, I do understand. She's probably more typical of the USDA survey than I, but she doesn't have the aspirational kitchen the article talks of. She doesn't have time for that either.

Myself, I do have a high end kitchen, but not one that is meant to impress. I do have a number of gadgets that were chosen for function, though some aren't all they're cracked up to be. I did recognize myself in the article, in some ways. But I don't think it was really talking about serious cooks or the TKO. There are an awful lot of people who cook regularly but don't think about it much. I hear them wondering if there's a new way to make chicken. I invent new ways to make chicken all the time!! I don't have a lot of cookbooks compared to a lot of people, but I haven't made every good sounding recipe in the ones I have yet. There are tens of thousands of chicken recipes on the internet, though there are probably only thousands of unique ones.

Therefore, someone who is looking for a sixth way to prepare chicken is someone who doesn't spend a lot of time mulling over what to make. She makes what she knows, and can whip her dishes out by rote, so it doesn't take her a lot of time in the kitchen. Half an hour to an hour to make dinner 4 nights per week (inc. making sack lunches), one dinner at a restaurant, one dinner at someone else's house, one night of zapped leftovers or soup or cereal or whatever takes less than 10 minutes. Add the remaining 2 hours to when she's hosting the folks or friends, plus weekend lunches, and get your own breakfasts, and you do have an "average" household where mom spends about five and a half hours cooking weekly, and still has homemade meals for the family.

Today with all the open concept houses, the kitchen can almost always been seen from the family room, and quite often from the dining room and even the living room. So of course it has to be gorgeous. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the kitchens of yesteryear were mostly separate rooms. Maybe that is one small reason why they were more functional then, and more decorative now.

Plus, we have really become a culture of what looks good (often over what IS good). Not to knock beautiful kitchens or homes. I love them. But I myself can trace getting more "spoiled" in this respect to the real estate/"grand home" bubble. When my decorator told me about 7-8 years ago that I had to have granite, and how much it cost, I rebelled. No way did I need that, was not going to pay such a price, formica with a beautiful wood edge was just fine and beautiful enough. Now, I wouldn't consider having anything but granite, marble, or the like.

IMO a lot of it is just fashion that we became able to afford, which is wonderful if we can afford it.

Thanks for posting this, I love everybody's comments and think it's a very thinking person's thread.

***Half an hour to an hour to make dinner 4 nights per week (inc. making sack lunches), one dinner at a restaurant, one dinner at someone else's house, one night of zapped leftovers or soup or cereal or whatever takes less than 10 minutes. Add the remaining 2 hours to when she's hosting the folks or friends, plus weekend lunches, and get your own breakfasts, and you do have an "average" household where mom spends about five and a half hours cooking weekly, and still has homemade meals for the family. ****

This is a good point; I guess I think so because it's similar to what I do. :-) I probably spend a little more time than that, but very close.

I like cooking. I usually have enough time. But I don't like doing it every single night. I don't like eating out every single night, either, or doing ANYTHING every single night. It actually isn't the cooking I mind so much as the planning: I like food, but I really don't like thinking about food. Reading a cookbook for entertainment ... no way.

Anyway, that is an additional viewpoint. The ADHD side? lol. So, like most families (I think), we have a wide variety of ways we eat -- I believe I'd shrivel up from boredom, otherwise. And as others have said, our grandmothers didn't have any choice, for better or for worse.

If I were part of the survey, I'd definitely be dragging down the female average. I spend less than 5 hours a week cooking for sure. I used to be really into cooking a couple decades ago (even made my own seitan starting from wheat berries) but completely lost interest in the day-to-day cooking art and labor (well, the actual doing part anyway, I love the researchy part, like looking up how to make authentic Doro Wot and where to get ingredients).

If I weren't part of my current family unit, I'd be in the eat-out-nearly every meal demographic (though I typically order 3 to 4 times as much I need and take the rest home for leftovers, and hardly ever fast food).

Now, our cook is at the other end of the spectrum, out at the 99th percentile (likely) for men, he spends 7 to 20 hours week cooking. He's been at since he was a teenager when his aunts from Mexico taught him to make tortillas.

I'm a total cooking enabler, encouraging and facilitating the obsession. "Hey, I got this gadget for the Big Green Egg that will maintain stable temps for hours and put up a web monitoring page with alarms so we (and by that I mean 'you') can do a 20 hour slow cooked pork shoulder and not worry about it overnight". "I'm signing us up for the pastured egg CSA, do you want one dozen or two?". "Our favorite farm is having a workshop on slaughtering chickens, let's go!" "Hey, someone on GW mentioned if we got the motor for the ravioli roller, we wouldn't have to worry about the clamp and then we (um, you) could make ravioli more often." And about an hour later, I noticed he was browsing on amazon for them.

Hey, it's like eating out every meal, but cheaper, and I get a ring side seat in the kitchen when I want it. And if cook wants to add a Gaggenau oven to our already over-applianced small kitchen layout, for darn sure I support it.

Now, I am in charge of the fermentation, dehydration, and coffee tasks -- I'm best at things with easy set up and then just wait for them to be done: mead, krauts, cashew-sauce dipped kale (dried, for snacks), roasting green coffee beans, etc. They hardly add any hours to my weekly cooking average, though.

zartemis, I'm curious about your dehydration tasks. My new range has a dehydration function and I'm itching to know what I'm supposed to dehydrate in it!

This is such an interesting thread.

>>We're in the Boston area so they think Sully is some old Irish friend I'm trying to find a place for in our home>>

LOL! I'd love a Lacanche Rully but it would be so out of place in our home/neighborhood, whereas a stainless steel Big Corporate Name range would impress the heck out of most buyers.

Maybe in other areas where there aren't so many restaurant choices, one can confidently say, "healthy food is better at home and a snap to prepare." In the SF Bay Area, where there are literally tens of thousands of restaurants at all price points and of almost every ethnic variety, that isn't an absolute.

This is especially true when you count in commute times. One of our close friends counts herself lucky if she makes it home in less than 50 min., each way, every working day. Usually she assumes it will take 1-1/2 hrs. each way. She's the breadwinner and they can't toss aside her salary, benefits, and pension for a shorter commute.

For example, if we are shopping in nearby El Cerrito and lose track of time to discover it's now 5p, a normal 11-min freeway ride back to the house just turned into 40 min., minimum. Why go home? We can go to an outstanding Vietnamese restaurant nearby, or zip into nearby Berkeley in less than 10 minutes for our choice of: phenomenal Northern Italian cooking at Riva Cucina (the Passatelli breadcrumb pasta is heavenly!) or a stupendous vegan charcuterie at Gather that is so good, even my meat-loving DH admitted he loved it. Or the superb tombo tuna sliders at Five.

Even better, DH and I can have exactly what we want. He loves pasta, for example, whereas I'm more likely to go for something non-gluten. No leftovers to deal with, no shopping for last minute ingredients, no clean-up. I can tell the waitstaff we're in a hurry and we'll be out in less than a hour. By that time the commute has eased and I can get us home in less than 15 minutes.

All of this is food that is so much more complex and interesting than anything I create - and honestly, I am a very good cook. But the aforementioned dishes are way beyond home cooking, they are fine cuisine at their very best that require ingredients you won't find at the local supermarket.

These are restaurants we eat at regularly (and a lot more besides; we go out a lot). Yet although excellent, they're still not the places DH and I classify as the 'top tier' when we want to celebrate something special.

We eat at home when we want to, but when we want to go out and eat, we don't feel we're depriving ourselves in any way by not cooking at home.

A range/oven would work for small amounts of dehydration: it takes hours and helps to have lots of trays but would probably be fine for small amounts or if you can rig up a tray system.

I use one-o-these:

{{gwi:1779007}}

If you do the kale chips and like 'em, you'll want to have lots of trays.

Here's how I do kale chips:

I grind up cashews into cashew butter, then mix in some soy sauce, some spices (sometimes a little cayenne for kick), sometimes some sesame seeds, whatever seems good. Thin with water; it should be soupy, no more than tomato soup thick? Thinner than split pea soup. Wash the kale, shake off excess water, dip it in the sauce so it's lightly coated (doesn't have to be perfect, uncoated parts are OK). Lay it out and dry till crispy. I usually do it between 115 and 130 F, but you could probably go higher and even bake 'em. Takes 6 to 18 hours, longer is OK too.

Kale becomes thin and crispy and is basically a carrier for the flavored cashew. Will go fast.

I sometimes use other nut butters, almond, say. The joy of NOT cooking, indeed!

I don't think it's so much the survey that's the problem---it's what the author is trying to read into it. It's pretty well documented that Americans eat fewer meals at home and spend less time in the kitchen, and we know (generally) that this is driven by the increasingly large number of dual-income households and women who work outside the home. Prepared foods have also been on the rise since the 1960s---Trader Joe's has made their name on many of the "scratch convenience foods" that plllog describes (which I presume are not counted as cooking from scratch in a survey like this one, since a step has been skipped). We eat a lot of "semi-prepared" food in our house, too---fresh ravioli from the pasta store, chicken pie from the farmers' market. Not junk food, but also not food that I would have time or energy to make from scratch on an average weeknight.

The fact that Americans are spending more on larger kitchens, and more on gadgetry, is also pretty well-documented. (Again, though, we know some of the reasons---rise of consumerism since the 1960s; dramatic increase in not just kitchen size but overall home size and cost in that same period; increase in household incomes---see also dual-income families; shifts in popular culture with cable and the food shows and the internet; etc.) The gadgetry part isn't really new---Williams-Sonoma has been tapping into that market since the 1950s, for instance, and I can think of a dozen specialty appliances and gadgets my parents owned in the 80s that got used all of once before being relegated to the back of a cabinet. Cooking is just particularly trendy right now, with the local food movement going strong, so it sells well.

Where I think the author's made a leap is to assume that fewer meals at home + more money spent on kitchens/gadgetry = people with high-end kitchens and gadgets who don't cook. There's nothing in the data that says this; that's just her anecdotal experience. The data really don't tell us much at all about how people cook when they do eat at home, except for the ingredients bit. I could just as easily argue that based on my own (equally anecdotal) experience, her conclusion isn't true at all. Many people I know have a KitchenAid and a food processor, too---but most use them somewhat regularly. And while it's the norm in my urban neighborhood for families to eat out often (we eat out 2-3 meals a week, almost always with other couples or families in social settings, and always at neighborhood restaurants, often places that we can walk to), I also know that most of those families cook from scratch when they are home. So that's just a loop of personal experiences---nothing that you can actually infer from the studies themselves (which I do find really interesting---just not as they relate to the conclusion the author is trying to draw). It would probably be eye-opening to do a study of how and whether people used their higher-end kitchens in the real (i.e., not GW!) world to see, though.

@jkom51, you must live near us, since we hit up all those spots too. Just at Gather last week...mmm! I could also believe that the Bay Area has restaurants and patrons who are a bit more cognizant of food sourcing and ingredients than many other parts of the country---it's routine to list the suppliers of your meat and vegetables on the menu, for instance---so no doubt that biases my views on whether eating out is healthier than eating in (for our household, it's about a wash, I think, except for the fact that we don't cook meat at home, and do eat meat when we're out--but we are also choosy about where and what we eat out, and what we cook at home; the same wouldn't hold if my meals out were all at McDonald's, as they are for some). I'm sure the fact that we can walk to lots of restaurants and to several grocery stores makes a big difference in our cooking and shopping habits, too.

@mcmjilly, I haven't tried it since we don't have a dehydrator, but supposedly persimmons are really good dehydrated!

Just for clarification, there is a ton of regional variation. I live in a small town. We do not have access here to delightful cuisine like artemis & jkbrown. I also live in one of the fattest unhealthiest states. We have very standard chain restaurant choices here, so I didn't intend to denigrate anyone's decision to eat out. (I am astounded at how full the Golden Corral & Buffalo Wild Wings parking lots are every day of the week!)

I don't like to cook every day either. In preparation for busy work weeks, I will often plan 3 meals for the week, shop and cook all day for them. Then we can reheat during the week (which is why I really like my microwave.) I don't consider myself a highly tricked out gadgeter. My mom did buy me an automatic juicer that I haven't figured out how to incorporate into my cooking.

Thanks for the dehydration tips zartemis and artemis. There are plenty of persimmons in these parts, so I'll have to try to dehydrate a few.

I also live in the Bay Area, and though we don't eat out very much, I agree with all the reasons for eating out stated above. I like to eat out when I crave something (like xiao long bao) that I'm unlikely to prepare at home. Eating out seems like one of the few good values in the Bay Area.

Oh, mcmjilly, xiao long bao is one of our favorite things! Maybe not so healthy, but we periodically make the drive out to SF's Richmond district to eat at Shanghai Dumpling King on Balboa St. DH's family is from Hong Kong/Shanghai so we adore some of those foods.

Searching for a good source in the EBay but haven't found a reliable one yet. Our fav in Albany closed up two years ago and no good replacement yet :(

Yes, we are lucky to live in the SF Bay Area. There are disadvantages, but if you're a foodie, there are few better places! We ate at Bouchon and Bistro Jeanty last month, and just returned from Monterey/Carmel where we hit Bouchee for the third time, and found a new love, Fifi's. Can you tell we like French food, LOL?

Have a gift certificate to use at Prospect in SF. We adored their veal chop - magnificent! Prefer sibling Boulevard's decor and quieter DR, but we were absolutely wowed by Chef Ravi Kapur's cooking and are looking forward to a return visit.

Doonie, your post was more appropriate than you know. My MIL (who lives with us) is happiest at...Olive Garden! She isn't really comfortable with us dragging her off to restaurants where the foreign words and fancy descriptions confuse her and she has no idea how farro differs from quinoa or polenta. Sometimes we leave her at home with her TV dinner (she hates cooking, always had maids growing up) because we know she isn't going to enjoy the kind of food we're going out to eat.

Isn't the line about keeping sweaters in the oven from "Sex in the City"?

There may be a bit of folk wisdom/fake data here.
____________

It's not just the kitchen industry and laziness...

* women in the workplace cannot be June Cleaver unless they make great sacrifices in other parts of their lives, which they are unlikely to want to sacrifice because they are hard-won modern freedoms
* we do indeed drive long distances even for simple things as well as for work; the old self-contained small town does not satisfy our rural people; our city people are expected to drive where the roads go, not vice versa (ever try to drive east to west across Atlanta?) This indeed adds up to tremendous time spent in automobiles that could be spent elsewhere.
* the foods of the past should not be romanticized--my mother made lunch box meals for my father each workday but I'm not sure the sandwich meat and white bread were doing him any favors
* advertising has a tremendous effect on many American lives; a variety of models of alternative concepts is just not "out there" unless you seek it out. The cooking shows that actually teach (instead of posing entertainments with winners and losers) suffer from the ongoing assumption that public t.v is boring.
* preprepared foods or semi-prepared foods are so ubiquitous that mainstream recipe sources like Better Homes require grocery store items that a "scratch" cook would never consider buying (anyone else give up sending in recipes to them because the ingredients are just too commercial?)
* training our families to use smaller plates, choose fewer carbs and fats, drink plain water, slow down, cut the salt, etc etc etc is not easy. It requires a whole lot of other things including good parenting skills. The whole blinkin' culture is working against good sense--any wonder home design is not always sensible?
* the nation is alienated from the sources of its foods, including gardens and farms; foods are to be acquired and consumed, not gathered and put into what works with them; stores participate in only a limited seasonal round that is heavy on the plates and napkins and candies and decorated cookies and less on the foods that previously were only available once a year
* the "Greatest Generation" embraced things I disapprove, like disposable plastic, convenience foods, styrofoam, tv dinners, Jello, and hamburgers with mandatory french fries baskets. Growing up in the Depression, they were liberated when sugar became ubiquitous and they've had a terrifically hard time eating things that seemingly invoke the deprived 30s. Many gave up canning and freezing as soon as their incomes expanded. My mother's cohort trained my Boomer generation to cook and today's Boomer grandparents have a large influence on the diets of many small children now. Here have a cookie. Young people sometimes crave better homecooking models but are not sure where to seek them out
* children have inordinate power as design factors for kitchens, esp for special furniture and appliances
* There is so much stuff in our world that a room with old stuff, less matchy stuff, scratched or dented stuff, or obviously repaired and/or repurposed stuff is considered sub-par.
* food (and kitchens?) is big businesses that needs to continue attracting customers and they have psychology and physiology experts who advise them how to manipulate us to open our wallets and hand over our cash and our brains

What's my point? I dunno. I need a cookie.

I used to live in a 1920's apartment with a kitchen that had seen little updating since then. It had almost no counterspace - just a little landing area near the sink. The range was a huge spectacular thing that I had to light with a match. There were multiple ovens/warming compartments but each one was tiny. I still managed to cook some great meals in that kitchen. I'm glad I had the experience because I think I understand what it might have been like for previous generations. BUT... I'd never go back! Part of the reason why I spend less time in the kitchen than my grandmother is because I have some conveniences she didn't. Microwave! Dishwasher! Fridge! Countertops! Electric mixer! Chickens that aren't still alive!

Also, look at all the great things women are doing when they aren't in the kitchen - things my grandmother wasn't allowed to do.

Like everything, it's all a matter of balance. Some conveniences are good for us, and some aren't.

Florantha, great points, as always:)

Florantha,
Very insightful points. I would add that greater disposable incomes have allowed people to buy a lot of kitchen appliances and gadgets that no reasonable cook would ever use anyway.

Another factor in the mix is diet and modern awareness of the impact of foods on health. My husband is a diabetic and although I love cakes and cookies and find it fun to bake them, but unless I'm giving them away at work or a family function, I don't make them at all because they aren't in his diet. In the 1950's, if the foods they were eating were causing health issues, noone knew. So some of the huge 7 course dinners of that day, although 'fun' to bake, are replaced with small dinners that are healthier or at least an attempt at healthier.

"The same can be said of the trend toward the "professional" look in kitchens. I grew up in a restaurant kitchen. I cannot imagine wanting to go back and spend more time in it. It was hot, messy, stressful and physically dangerous. Only those who have never worked in a restaurant are in a position to fantasize about it."

No one installing the cheap poorly insulated ovens used in commercial kitchens (most are not even listed for residential installation since they are rarely zero clearance).

Commercial kitchens are the way they are based on economics.
More room in the kitchen is less room in the restaurant for customers.

If you cook having some of the tools makes the job easier.

You do not see heavy copper pans in commercial kitchens either.
When your full time job is standing at the stove cooking the same thing repeatedly they are not needed. You can watch the thin stainless pans constantly to make sure things do not burn.

I think the trend is probably pretty far from uniform across the country.
There are a lot of folks in 'fly-over land.'

That's right. My grandmother boiled vegetables with lard until they were mush. It's a lot healthier to give veggies a quick steam or eat them raw.

>>It's a lot healthier to give veggies a quick steam or eat them raw.>>

That only works until you lose your teeth. And I mean that sincerely. Both my mother and my MIL, although very healthy people who focus on a healthy diet, have bad teeth and need their veggies soft. My sister inherited the same problem, as did her children. They pay a lot of attention to dental hygiene, but that's a recent phenomenon, which explains why previous generations were big on cooking EVERYTHING until it was soft and tender.

Only slightly OT, I was scrolling through the high-end homes for sale in WSJournal's photo gallery, when I came upon this beauty. Now, I know that many European kitchens are designed to be 'portable'....but it just struck me as funny that there's cabinets as a placeholder where a massive 60" range should be, LOL.

When I first saw the photo, I was thinking, "oooh, nice ceiling." Then it was "wow, not much lighting." And then it hit me, "Wait, there's a hood, but where's the stove??"

Description: Catalan Masia
04/19/11 Price: $2,800,000
Location: Spain
This restored 16th-century Spanish farmhouse in Banyoles, Girona, has been updated with bioclimatic walls and a natural ventilation system, as well as modern, Balinese-inspired interiors.

{{gwi:1779009}}

hey! I finally read that article. I have TWO aebelskiver pans -- but I'm not high-end, just Danish.

I saw an aebelskiver pan at a thrift shop for $1, but I passed on it because I didn't have the space to store it. Now I have the space and wish I'd bought it!

ROTFL!!!! Peanut, that's priceless!!

Wow, is it just me...or is that a really cold looking kitchen, at the top of the article? No wonder they don't want to cook very long in there. Nothing against white and stainless steel, but some wood, a little color, something?

We live 30 minutes from take out, so we cook and bake...a lot. That being said, I don't have high end appliances and don't really plan to get any, either. While I 'love' the idea of an Aga, it's too hot here in the summer and the new ones just don't appeal to me as much as the original.

I love to cook and bake, but my idea of wonderful would be two ovens! :)

Thanks to the OP for posting the link. I found myself agreeing with most of this article.

(Except, may be the case of the woman using her oven to store sweaters may be folk data. But, I can imagine a NYC'er who does not cook do it!)

I've often thought that what I do with my kitchen is no match to what my mother does in her kitchen when she is well into her 60's. And I have memories of my mother working daily for hours when we were young. Yet, I have far more gadgets than her, and I dream up a big kitchen that she never did. If I ever asked her what her wish was for a kitchen, I'm sure she'd not have any - for her, what she has is enough to accomplish what she wants to.

OTOH, I buy gadgets like crazy, not because I think of myself as a great cook; but I want to achieve most by spending least bit of my time in the kitchen. An average gadget in my kitchen is used less than 20% of the time, but when it is used, it cuts down my prep time by more than 50%! (btw, percentages are anecdotal).

I cook fair bit although am no match to what my mom or MIL did in their haydays. But I need a bigger kitchen NOT so that I can cook more; I need it so that I feel better hanging out there while I'm cooking, AND invite family and friends there too; so that I enjoy the time I spend there anyway. In addition, it does not hurt either, that kitchens sell the houses.

So -- while there is definitely a segment who only designs high end kitchens for display, there is a population who uses them for real cooking.

Did my grandma or mom deserve my dream designer kitchen more than me? Absolutely. But that does not mean that I should not dream of it.

The old Dane who served DH and me (young marrieds) an aebelskiver breakfast on the morning of the moon walk did not use a knitting needle to turn the rounds. I've been told that's the way he should have done it.

Well, that explains why my little dough spheres are elliptoids. Maybe he launched my odd-orbit cooking career. Never got any better at aebelskivers but they taste fine. We were in a humble lake cabin with the best (cough cough) kitchen on that bay. [puns intended, no need to respond with any more]

I'm happier with plett (sp?) pans. Saw those used recently in another cabin in the woods. With an Ikea kitchen. Swedes.

All the kitchens I've had as an adult have been smaller than my parent's and much, much smaller than my grandparents'. But both grandparents lived on farms in the midwest and one had 11 kids. I remember visiting the farm as a kid and my eyes growing wide with wonder the first time I walked into that huge kitchen -- multiple ranges alone one wall, and across a wide chasm, an L-shaped banquette that held at least 15 people. Our 'little' 6 person family (at the time) didn't even fill half the banquette. I wish I had pictures of it.

The OP asked why I would spend so much money on a place where I spend so little time.

First, if it hadn't fallen apart, I would not have considered it. The kitchen is fifty years old, the bathroom leaked into the ceiling, the cupboards have various damage, and the scratched linoleum has chrome edges that take too long to clean. The clutter on the counter is a fire hazard (mail next to toaster oven)which can be improved by layout and more counter space (nagging is ineffectual). So the old kitchen is worn, cramped and dirty.

Second, we had a rise in income, and a decline in health. Looking out twenty years, we will be staying home more. I honestly would have preferred to buy myself a porsche, but I'd rather sit in a pretty new kitchen than shift in DC traffic. I had thought about law school, but I need to be home. I now commute with DH, and it turns out that's all the upgrade the car needed to become enjoyable. So no BMW. I dream about buying a horse or two, but that's not compatible with my job, and they don't respond well to health swings (can't ignore them for a month). So given a preference for staying home, and the question of what can I improve to enjoy it more, a better kitchen is a natural.

I wonder if the national demographic shift to elderly living affected the USDA results. My new kitchen will be better for old eyes, backs, and knees. And there's the speed oven too.

I love (will pay for) the idea of flexible cooking - that supports full holiday dinners, scratch stir fry, or frozen pizza, as needed. There is a trophy aspect, especially to the appliances. I want my kitchen to say I am a successful professional. I want to impress my mother. I also want the new kitchen to last fifty years.

So even if I only really cook a few times a month, and DH twice that (for now), I want to make it easy for us to cook whenever we want/can, and have a beautiful room that makes us feel good.

Thanks for making me review my reasoning and choices.

>>have a beautiful room that makes us feel good>>

And really, that's what counts!

I often used to tell people, "I work to support my hobbies." We'd all laugh, but really, it's true. Now we're retired, and our income STILL goes to support our hobbies.