The New TV Dinner

This morning I got to try my hand at making our granola (for Urban Gleaners sister company Tracy’s Small-Batch). Okay, so maybe ‘making’ is a bit of an exaggeration. I stirred ingredients together. Still- I helped! It made me think of a recent New York Times article by Michael Pollan called Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch . Americans now spend less time cooking for themselves (an average of 27 minutes per day) than they do watching the superstar chefs of the Food Network cook on television.

In particular, I was intrigued with this article’s comparison between older cooking shows, namely Julia Child’s The French Chef and the gambit of cooking television that exists today. Pollan describes the educational and practical nature of Julia Child’s show. Meals were made from scratch and some shows even addressed basic cooking skills (e.g. knife selection and maintenance). Mistakes were made live, yet they could never trump Julia’s wit, conviction, and pure joy of being in the kitchen. For Julia, cooking really did take on a “what-the-hell attitude.”

How does this compare to cooking shows today? Chefs are often competing against one another to make extravagant dishes from mystery and/or nonsensical ingredients in thirty minutes, all under the critical watch of the host and audience. At the end of which an expert panel picks apart all the elements of the dish looking for the slightest hint of a flaw. Even shows that appear instructional tend to emphasize speed and presentation over knowledge and fun. For example, most of the tart, pie, and quiche recipes I’ve found on the Food Network website include this ingredient: “1 unroll-and-bake refrigerated 9-inch pie crust (recommended: Pillsbury).” Really? These are recipes that call for ingredients like pancetta, mascarpone, and gruyere, but shy away from referring the cook to using more relatable ingredients like flour, salt, water, sugar, and butter. Where’s Julia to tell us to have the courage of our convictions?

This brings me to the next major point in the article. The Food Network doesn’t advocate cooking, it advocates consuming. Perhaps this is why a large portion of the shows don’t even include cooking. We get shows where we simply watch other people eat. Why watch Guy Fieri put away all manner of burger, taco, po’boy, pizza, or fried what-have-you in places you may never go if you don’t learn how to make it? Cooking is a spectacle. Even in restaurants, many kitchens are spilling out on to the dining room floor where diners can admire the chopping, grilling, and sautéing. Given the speed at which these skills takes place in professional kitchens (not to mention the ones in which you risk having Gordon Ramsey scream at you), it becomes easy to forget that there is nothing super-human about cooking and friends and family are much more forgiving. Home cooking has become novelty, a species endangered by the theatrical nature of showtime cooking.

So let’s all agree to give something a try. I promise making granola at work won’t be the thing I count, but it was a wonderful experience. Turning the oats, coconut, almonds, flax seeds, walnuts, brown sugar, and spices over and over until equally distributed. Turning in the wet ingredients until everything has a shiny veneer. All the while cinnamon scents the air, I’ve got the Four Tops going on the record player, and Andrea (our one and only granola-maker extraordinaire) and I chat and laugh. I finished my task with a feeling of accomplishment, comradery, and just a little more confidence. Let’s turning cooking into a political act, a grab at our own engagement in our food system. I’ve got to try this at home!

Urban Gleaners’ Program Coordinator Intern
Lauren Wirtis