[HN Gopher] Julia Child's Kitchens
___________________________________________________________________
Julia Child's Kitchens
Author : tintinnabula
Score : 123 points
Date : 2024-09-16 23:54 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (placesjournal.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (placesjournal.org)
| Loughla wrote:
| The quote of hers, "If you're alone in the kitchen and you drop
| the lamb, you can always just pick it up. Who's going to know?"
| Is modified and used for anytime my family drops something.
|
| That woman was a cultural treasure.
| bluedino wrote:
| I call it concrete seasoning when I drop something off the
| grill
| dugmartin wrote:
| A friend in high school that worked at a steak house chain
| called it "floor spice". He said it was often intentionally
| applied when rude customers demanded their steak be cooked
| more. Never send back food.
| rfrey wrote:
| > Never send back food.
|
| I like my steak rare. But if someone doesn't, and the
| kitchen messes it up, the correct response is to either
| choke it down, or leave a $65 meal uneaten on your plate?
| qup wrote:
| The answer lies in how much you like the taste of floor
| spice.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Considering it is a teenager or young 20s person in the
| kitchen getting paid just above minimum wage and doesn't
| care about you at all ... yes?
| kamalamomala wrote:
| So you rather leave a bad rating for the business,
| affecting everyone working there by potentially turning
| customers away, because of someone's ("teenager", "young
| person", etc. pipapo) substandard work effort?
| randerson wrote:
| Or, just don't be a jerk when sending it back.
| bluedino wrote:
| The bad part about asking them to re-cook a steak
| (assuming it's over, and they have to start with a new
| one), is that you've had your bread, salad, appetizer,
| and by the time twenty minutes goes by and they bring you
| a new steak, everyone else is done eating, you're
| probably no longer hungry...so then you take your $65
| steak home to eat the next day.
| davkan wrote:
| The only meal i can remember sending back was a steak I
| ordered rare and got medium well. It was $45 and the only
| thing on my plate besides some asparagus.
|
| People make excuses about restaurants being afraid to
| cook meat rare. Don't let me order it then!
|
| Now I'll only order steak at a steakhouse.
| throwanem wrote:
| You said it yourself: "rude customers." You can send back
| food if there's a good enough reason, but no matter how
| good the reason, you can never be a dick about it.
| whtsthmttrmn wrote:
| Likewise even if the customer is a dick, you don't
| sabotage their food. Both sides are in the wrong.
| throwanem wrote:
| It happens when a customer decides it will happen, the
| only nuance being that choice isn't always recognized by
| the one who makes it.
|
| In theory there'd be grounds for sympathy here, but if we
| weep for the foolish, we'll be at it all day.
| whtsthmttrmn wrote:
| Very true, I agree. Not trying to claim the customer is
| always right (lol), just that when preparing someone's
| food I feel there should be a bit more turning the other
| cheek when dealing with rude customers. It certainly
| sucks, I've been there, but I don't think doing something
| to their food is a good response.
| throwanem wrote:
| Eh. It's been a minute since I worked even retail-
| adjacent, but nothing I've seen leads me to believe
| people have learned to behave themselves _better_ in the
| interim, and especially not after the pandemic.
|
| It'd be one thing if I could blame The Youth, I suppose.
| But mostly what I see is people my age and older, acting
| in ways my mother did not tolerate in me by the age of
| five, nor need; I had pretty well learned my manners by
| then.
|
| I could credit an argument from incapacity, although I
| would find it as frightening as compelling. Other than
| that, I see no excuse, and I also had to learn young the
| sovereign counterargument to a bully. To see it applied
| in so extremely indirect and gentle a fashion, and in
| cases where _some_ response evidently is due, outrages me
| not even slightly.
| chasd00 wrote:
| If a customer noticed and called a cook out for
| intentionally dropping their food on the floor and serving
| it to them i think that would be the death of the
| restaurant. Or at least cause the local health department
| to get very interested. What most likely happens is the
| customer doesn't even realize. If that's the case, then
| from the customer's perspective it didn't even happen so
| what's the point of doing it in the first place? You got
| revenge on no one.
| gowld wrote:
| Maybe they get sick later and don't know why.
|
| Or maybe it's a harmless way to vent frustration, and
| remind the cook that picky customers are ignorant pseudo-
| elitists.
| kamalamomala wrote:
| Your friend worked there to pay bills. Was hired to fulfill
| certain tasks, enabling that steakhouse to provide its
| advertised services to its clients. Adhering to certain
| quality standards, to sufficiently satisfy the client-
| business contract.
|
| Never provide substandard work. Your friend simply showed
| (or at least witnessed) bad work ethics.
| euroderf wrote:
| Five-minute rule.
| StayTrue wrote:
| Similar/related:
|
| https://www.hermanmiller.com/stories/why-magazine/home-ergon...
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I got into cooking via Youtube. Youtube cooks became a thing
| about fifteen years ago. People like Jamie Oliver started
| promoting first themselves and then others on Youtube and I sort
| of started watching that stuff to relax. The genius of this was
| that Jamie Oliver was of course famous but the people he promoted
| weren't. They were just ordinary people that pointed a camera at
| themselves while they were cooking stuff. Quite a few of them are
| still on Youtube and have successful channels now. And of course
| others have come along. There are many thousands of people
| regularly uploading stuff. These days if I want to learn how to
| make something, Youtube is the first place to look.
|
| It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that I could do
| some cooking myself. If you are a programmer (like me), my
| realization was that if I can follow instructions and implement
| some complex algorithm, cooking is a lot easier. And even the
| failures can be tasty.
|
| Julia Childs was basically doing the same thing as these Youtube
| chefs but about half a century earlier. You can find quite a bit
| of her shows on Youtube. But it's got a similar vibe to it: shot
| at home, very passionate about what she did, very relatable, etc.
| And it necessarily follows a similar format. She was funny, and
| no-nonsense. Very unglamorous too. And obviously very skilled.
| She was a middle aged woman by the time she got on TV. It was all
| about the food and her character.
|
| I can't say she was a huge influence for me because I never knew
| she existed until some Youtube chefs kept referring to her and I
| checked out some of her stuff.
|
| Anyway, I loved the bit of information about her WW II career as
| a high level intelligence officer. Only makes her more awesome.
| globular-toast wrote:
| Big difference being Child went to France to train as a cook
| and spent a long time there (she learnt French). There were
| techniques and recipes that simply weren't available to the
| English speaking world at the time. It's different nowadays,
| especially with English being so much more dominant. It's easy
| for us to find someone French doing a video in English. As of
| about 10 years ago there was still a bit more to learn if you
| learnt French, but the amount of stuff left is shrinking.
|
| For anyone who wants to learn to cook my advice is not to learn
| recipes but instead learn ingredients, tools and techniques.
| Good books like Child's _Mastering the Art of French Cooking_
| dedicate many pages to this before they get into recipes (this
| book incidentally sets out the ingredients better than any
| other cooking book or website I 've ever seen). Where YouTube
| shines is the techniques. Books do an admirable job of
| describing kneading, but nothing beats seeing someone do it.
| That's how we really learn this stuff, and must of us don't
| have a parent to learn from these days. So watch YouTube
| videos, but pay extra special attention to what they are doing,
| more so than what they are saying (you could have just read
| that part).
| maccard wrote:
| > For anyone who wants to learn to cook my advice is not to
| learn recipes but instead learn ingredients, tools and
| techniques. Good books like Child's Mastering the Art of
| French Cooking dedicate many pages to this before they get
| into recipes
|
| Hard, hard disagree here. Learn some recipes, enjoy eating
| some food that you've cooked for yourself. Cook some recipes
| you like for 6 months and _then_ start learning the
| techniques and fundamentals.
| globular-toast wrote:
| I didn't say don't read or follow recipes like some kind of
| culinary monk. Using recipes is as important to a cook as
| reading programs is to a programmer. But the focus, if you
| want to _learn_ to cook, should be on ingredients, tools
| and techniques. For a start, you will not enjoy making
| _any_ recipe without a good knife. What 's more, your
| execution will be terrible if you don't know what "finely
| diced onion" is supposed to be or how to make it, or how
| much "salt to taste" is. You won't enjoy it and will
| forever think restaurant/takeaway food is better than your
| own creations.
|
| Recipes are always written at a particular level of
| abstraction. Most won't tell you how to dice an onion, but
| many will tell you explicitly how to make a roux, without
| saying the word roux. Learning the basics means you can
| skim and assimilate recipes at a much higher level. Plenty
| of people can _follow_ recipes but few can _learn_ a recipe
| from first principles as there are far too many details. To
| _learn_ a recipe you need to first learn the basics, then
| you find a recipe is rather easy to learn. Then once you
| can do that you have the power to tweak them or substitute
| ingredients etc. as necessary and /or desired.
| tpm wrote:
| I will try to give an example: you find a recipe you like
| at first glance and try to cook it. It's from East Asia and
| contains tofu, so you buy tofu, and if you live in Central
| Europe like me there is good chance the tofu will be
| completely different to what should the tofu in that recipe
| be like. Same for the rice (and other ingredients). The
| result will not be ideal, to say the least, because while
| the recipe might have been good and you may followed it
| correctly, the fundamentals weren't there.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Improvisation is an art in itself. Tofu is easy, try
| recreating something like Osaka-style okonomiyaki with
| European ingredients, now that is a challenge!
| slightwinder wrote:
| You learn a recipe to eat. And you learn fundamentals and
| techniques to cook.
|
| Learning a recipe doesn't give you much in terms of
| cooking-skills. But with skills, you can create or adapt
| any recipe to your own demand.
| mhuffman wrote:
| So yes and no in my opinion. First, almost all recipes are
| written from being cooked in gas stoves and ovens. However,
| many people have electric. That alone will cause you a
| problem. Second, tweaking or hacking a little bit of a
| recipe is a great way to learn what techniques and
| ingredients do while not breaking the bank. At some point,
| you will have learned ingredients, tools, and techniques
| and you can just "cook". You know, like your grandmother
| could just cook somehow. It was from practice and
| experience and she always had her own "secret" recipes.
| gowld wrote:
| Alton Brown's "I'm Just Here for the Food: Food + Heat =
| Cooking" is a fun intro too.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| You are not wrong. Watching people on Youtube go through the
| process is how I absorbed knowledge. The fun thing with
| people like Jamie Oliver is that he is very loose and
| imprecise. He doesn't use table spoons, cups, and what not to
| measure things out. I don't print out or read recipes, ever.
|
| It's all about techniques and ingredients.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| I'll glance at recipes to figure out how something is done,
| when I don't know how to do it. Usually stuff that's from
| different cuisines that I'm used to. It's hard to e.g.
| invent a recipe for borscht from first principles if all
| you know is that it's got beets in it.
|
| Most of my process is just cooking a dish (or an
| ingredient) over and over again until I've figured out to
| make it fantastic. It's a great way to become very flexible
| and learn how to work around missing ingredients.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > For anyone who wants to learn to cook my advice is not to
| learn recipes but instead learn ingredients, tools and
| techniques.
|
| For anyone who wants to learn ingredients, tools, and
| techniques, my advice is to start by learning recipes,
| preferably from a source that explains both rationale and
| variations ( _America 's Test Kitchen_ cookbooks are pretty
| good for this.)
| mauvehaus wrote:
| The ATK cookbooks are fantastic, not only for explaining
| how the recipe works, but also explaining some of the
| things they tried that didn't make the cut and why they
| thought they didn't work.
|
| They also did a cookbook devoted to recipes for two people
| a while back. Love that.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Also https://www.seriouseats.com/, they cover almost
| everything (including kitchen equipment) and offer great
| explanations in their How-Tos
| https://www.seriouseats.com/how-tos-5118034
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I have that cookbook! It's one of my absolute favorites,
| because my wife and I don't have anyone else in the
| house. And like you said, the explanations are gold.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| The old _Good Eats_ tv show was great for this too. You can
| find most of the episodes on YouTube.
|
| Another good source is the book Ratio, which is almost like
| a tutorial in how to come up with your own recipes
| cvoss wrote:
| > a source that explains both rationale and variations
|
| This is the key right here. Not all recipes are created
| equal. The terse ones are for people who already know what
| they're doing and just need a sketch to jog their memory.
| If that's not you, you need a thorough guide. But a guide
| that explains the why, beyond the how, is far more
| valuable.
|
| If you can't find such a resource, a good backup option is
| to search around for a variety of recipes for the same
| dish. By comparing them, you get an idea of what's
| critical, what's optional, what is safe to fudge, what you
| have to get right, etc.
|
| Knowing the why and what your end goal is also helps you
| adapt your methods to the tools you have on hand. Your
| stove and pots don't heat the same way your recipe author's
| stove and pots do. Your fruits aren't the same ripeness.
| "Cook on medium-high for 3 minutes" is not a very helpful
| instruction, because its precision is illusory.
| com2kid wrote:
| > The terse ones are for people who already know what
| they're doing and just need a sketch to jog their memory.
|
| The day I reached that level was a wonderful feeling.
|
| Some of my favorite cookbooks just outright skip steps or
| don't bother writing down important pieces of
| information. You should know what to do by now, so here
| is some general guidelines, go at it.
|
| Getting to that point took awhile though, and IMHO the
| key to doing it faster is to be mindful of all the steps
| that are taken while cooking. Understanding why there is
| a wet and a dry mixing bowl, understanding why sometimes
| there isn't. Understanding why glazes are used vs a
| marinade[1], and knowing why some things are cooked low
| and slow vs hot and fast, etc.
|
| [1] As an aside, I estimate that 90% of marinade recipes
| in the western world are pure trash - dry rubs are
| useless, marinades without an acidic ingredient in them
| are useless, and any marinades with an acid that suggests
| you need more than 8 hours is wrong on the math.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| IMO marinades are really fun to experiment with because
| you can just taste them. I cook a lot of veg proteins
| (tempeh, tofu, soya chunks, TVP, etc) and often marinade
| them. I'm pretty used to elaborate balances of salt, msg,
| acid, and other flavors. The way I test it out is just to
| stick a pinky in or use a tasting spoon and taste. You
| want your marinade to be heavily seasoned than what
| you're marinading of course. Acid is an essential
| component of a marinade.
| 0xfeba wrote:
| as someone who divorced and didn't want to be the 'mac and
| cheese dad', I found an older edition of "Williams Sonoma
| Cooking at Home" a really good beginner book. It goes over
| basic ingredients, seasonality, cooking methods, cooking
| tools, proper measuring, and complementary sides before
| hopping into recipes. I found all of these very valuable as
| _tons_ of recipes assume basic knowledge of it.
|
| A lot of the recipes are quite involved though so now I tend
| to go for simpler ones, or pick-and-choose.
| jstanley wrote:
| > It took me a ridiculously long time to realize that I could
| do some cooking myself.
|
| What were you eating before you had this realisation?
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| I was cooking but not very well. Or healthily.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Most folks eat microwaved food. Not cooking, just heating
| precooked meals.
| stephencanon wrote:
| I'm really curious about who "most folks" you refer to are;
| no one in my extended family does this normally, and I
| don't know of any friends or neighbors who do it either (we
| all microwave a snack here and there, sometimes a meal, but
| it's not how we habitually feed ourselves and our
| families).
| mywittyname wrote:
| When I was around 20, I lived exclusively on takeout. And not
| because I couldn't cook, I am and was a solid cook, it's that
| cooking for one is not that economical (specifically time-
| wise) and I could just eat places that would allow me to eat
| a days worth of food in one sitting, think lots of Indian
| buffets, which made feeding myself on takeout pretty cost
| effective.
|
| Before that, I lived on takeout because I worked in a
| restaurant and it was free to take home the food that was
| going in the trash at the end of the night.
| datpiff wrote:
| > Jamie Oliver started promoting first themselves and then
| others on Youtube
|
| He had multiple TV cooking shows before Youtube even launched
| midgetjones wrote:
| > The genius of this was that Jamie Oliver was of course
| famous
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The first couple of years of her TV career are fictionalized in
| the HBO series Julia, though a lot of it is based on her
| extensive written correspondence to others. Her editor and her
| friends were interesting in their own right, as well.
| UberFly wrote:
| Every story I read about Julia Child makes me admire her more and
| more. I also remember an NPR story about her creating shark
| repellent during WW2 to protect undersea mines.
| unwind wrote:
| That is an epic use of "protect" in a very unexpected way.
| Thanks.
| gowld wrote:
| It protects the sharks too!
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| > _"Mastery" was not direct imitation but an ability to vary and
| adapt to circumstances._
|
| compare Rombauer's epigraphic choice of Goethe:
|
| > _" That which thy fathers have bequeathed to thee, earn it anew
| if thou wouldst possess it."_
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Julia Child, promoted so her husband could be a more effective
| spy. Why does anyone give a damn about these astroturfed
| artificial celebrities now that we know the truth?
| christophilus wrote:
| It seems to be the nature of celebrity that it doesn't matter
| why someone is a celebrity. See the Kardashians among thousands
| of other examples. Anyway, Julia Childs was in fact great.
| burkaman wrote:
| This doesn't make any sense. Julia Child was a spy herself well
| before she was married, that's how she met her husband. Later
| in life the government decided he was a communist and
| interrogated him, and then Julia didn't become famous until
| after he retired from the government. Her first show aired a
| year after his retirement.
| jonstewart wrote:
| I encourage you to read a couple dozen cookbooks and then read
| Mastering the Art of French Cooking and then come back here and
| issue a mea culpa.
| stcroixx wrote:
| She didn't write her book alone. Her partners were amazing. The
| result speaks for itself really. Anyone would be a better cook
| having read it and learned the fundamentals. Bridges a gap
| between French and American culture that benefits an American
| reader. Several recipes are 'best-of' for me. I have too many
| chickens so quiche is a staple at my house and I've tried so
| many recipes, but her's are my go to always. Even the book
| itself is beautiful, right down to the layout and font.
| aklemm wrote:
| Just skimming so far, but this looks like a proper treatment of
| Child's work. Exciting! She was a genius.
| jonstewart wrote:
| I tried looking on youtube for any videos of the RISD Universal
| Design kitchens, but came up with a bunch of home renovation
| videos. Would love a link here if anyone can find them.
| swatche wrote:
| Not on YouTube, but here is a video I found in the RISD
| Archives showing the Min and Max kitchens:
| https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/archives_universalkitchen_vi...
| unfocused wrote:
| I highly recommend watching Jacques Pepin videos as well as Julia
| and Jacques.
|
| Jacques Pepin is alive and well and some of his recipes are just
| 2 to 3 ingredients and easy to make. And yes, he is highly
| technical but explains things so easily to regular people like
| me.
|
| My kids love this recipe:
| https://youtu.be/zjv_pAmiqhQ?si=63ppn2hCUBiQKiVG
| jjeaff wrote:
| Pepin is an excellent chef to learn from. Because most of his
| recipes focus on technique and simplicity rather than recipe
| and seasoning. One of the biggest mistakes that I think people
| make is just not cooking things to the correct doneness at the
| right temperatures and times. Often people think that a fancy
| mix of spices and seasonings is what is important. I grew up
| not liking chicken or pork or steak unless it was in something
| because I had never had perfectly cooked chicken, pork chops,
| or steaks it was always cooked to well done and so dry you
| needed steak sauce. My parents grew up in an era where everyone
| feared undercooked meat. especially pork. And it's such a shame
| because I grew up on a cattle ranch. We would butcher a cow for
| ourselves every year. Grass fed, but lean, and butcher to thin
| steaks because you can cook them to saw dust a lot quicker that
| way. Now, I get beef from the ranch after fattening and have it
| butchered to steaks at least an inch thick and I always cook
| with a thermometer and usually just salt. A well done vs medium
| rare steak is such a night and day difference. Same with pork
| and chicken, although I prefer them both a little closer to
| medium.
| downut wrote:
| Well done! I mean you got out of the fire and into the fat.
| Sorry. Oh, I so feel for those sacrificial cows, if they knew
| how their corporeal selves would be so disrespected.
|
| "I always cook with a thermometer" Not bad, not bad at all,
| but! I just hardwood grilled another Choice 1" thick steak
| cut from a full rib roast which was aged a week. Woulda done
| two weeks but I got hungry. I thought about the thermometer
| because I wanted perfect (for us 115F, burnt outside, warm
| inside) but the finger press worked perfect as a doneness
| detector. Fresh ground Telicherry pepper, salt, and a light
| marinade of Worcestershire Sauce made for a truly memorable
| meal. Had some today left over: pepper, salt, and little
| Worcestershire to moisten it all up. Outstanding. Still gonna
| go the full two weeks next time.
|
| Now let us talk fish. Or seafood in general. Somebody like
| Pepin knows how to do those too, and it's quite simple:
| intensely fresh, cooked to barely done, which is different
| for say salmon and tuna or an oyster vs. grouper and flounder
| or freshwater bass or a lobster. No need for fancy sauces or
| seasonings (blackening, I'm looking at you).
|
| When cooking for family the pork and chicken are still moist
| and tender, but with guests and modern sourcing they get the
| dry shoe and a great sauce unfortunately.
|
| I see a lot of people focusing on Julia's videos (and videos
| in general) but I don't think those were her major
| contribution. Translating the French culinary curriculum into
| US vernacular measurements and sourcing, via the books, was
| her contribution. I stand in awe at how good they are, so
| many decades later.
| imp0cat wrote:
| Seconded, I learned a lot from his simple crepe recipe -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_okk5pOLp4
| rssoconnor wrote:
| I mean this question sincerely: Is it normal to be handling raw
| chicken and then just stick your fingers into a bowl of salt
| like that?
|
| I know I am a pretty poor cook, and I get somewhat nervous
| handling raw meat, probably more than I should be. They say
| always use a separate cutting board and wash your hands with
| hot soapy water after handling raw meat. Then I see cooking
| clips like this one, with experts who have just one continuous
| cutting board with everything on it, and this guy isn't afraid
| to be touching is raw meat at all.
| beezlebroxxxxxx wrote:
| You probably shouldn't, but most bacteria can't survive on or
| in a very salty environment. Realistically, it's probably not
| incredibly dangerous or anything.
|
| > Then I see cooking clips like this one, with experts who
| have just one continuous cutting board with everything on it,
| and this guy isn't afraid to be touching is raw meat at all.
|
| If everything you're cutting is going to be cooked, then you
| don't really need to worry IMO. Anything like veggies for a
| salad, or stuff that won't be cooked, should be cut on a
| washed cutting board though.
|
| You have to be careful with videos of chefs cooking, because
| they often don't eat the exact thing that they're filming.
| The finished dish you see at the end or showed off might be
| cooked at a different time (usually beforehand) and in a far
| more sanitary way. What you're seeing is filmed that way for
| the sake of doing less dishes.
| downut wrote:
| "You have to be careful with videos of chefs cooking,
| because they often don't eat the exact thing that they're
| filming. The finished dish you see at the end or showed off
| might be cooked at a different time (usually beforehand)
| and in a far more sanitary way. What you're seeing is
| filmed that way for the sake of doing less dishes."
|
| I cannot emphasize this view enough: The problem with
| cooking videos is, "what did they edit?". If the video
| doesn't at least slide a little homage to the peon peeling
| the onions, can you trust it? If not, I don't!
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I didn't watch the video but what I usually do if I need to
| salt meat is to pour the salt separately into a bowl and salt
| as needed, then use that same salt on food that gets cooked
| with the meat while the rest goes into the trash. With
| experience you don't waste much. More often than not salting
| associated veggies uses it up and I need more for the
| veggies.
| gowld wrote:
| "She did not dumb things down but broke them down, creating entry
| points for American cooks in their home kitchens"
|
| This is an important lesson for educators, communicators, and
| colleagues.
|
| Too many people think that "accessible" and "approachable" or
| "simple" is "dumb" or "stupid", and that things have to be hard
| and complex to be good or smart.
| lvl155 wrote:
| I lived a couple of houses down from her Cambridge home. Was a
| big fan of hers growing up so it was a nice treat to shop at
| Savenor's as an adult.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I didn't know she was so influential with regards to kitchen
| design and universal or inclusive design. Wonderful article with
| a lot of depth and much food for thought for anyone interested in
| trying to find solutions for this problem space.
|
| Americans strikes me as being in crisis due to various social
| factors making _full-time wives and moms_ relatively rare. Our
| food culture, recipes, kitchens, home design etc etc are rooted
| in an implicit assumption that your wife or mom is doing the
| grocery shopping, cooking, keeping track of your health issues
| and dietary needs etc when this is no longer true for most
| people.
|
| There seems to be an endless stream of people complaining they
| either don't have time to cook or they are fat and broke from
| consuming takeout and an endless stream of companies trying to
| address the issue, such as meal delivery companies.
|
| I like Julia Child's skepticism about the effectiveness of
| productizing the space as the only or prime solution. It seems
| likely to me we need to rethink and rework our food culture so
| everyone can eat adequately, even if they don't have some
| privileged life with a high quality kitchen and full-time wife
| and mom taking care of all the nutritional concerns and logistics
| behind that, which are substantial.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| What would be the benefits? Sounds like we should prioritize
| family, as has been tradition for the entirety of human
| existence. The new approach of 'everyone has a house/dwelling
| and their own independent life apart from anyone' is the
| experiment.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Off the top of my head, in no particular order and probably
| not comprehensive:
|
| Improved health for people not living that way.
|
| More freedom to live as you choose. Heteronormative culture
| has long pressured young people to get married and have kids
| and told them from birth they are straight without giving
| them time to figure out for themselves what their sexual
| orientation is.
|
| Freedom to leave a marriage that isn't working because you no
| longer are a prisoner of the fact that your wife knows all
| your health issues and the dietary restrictions they dictate
| and cooks better than you, so she is essentially
| irreplaceable because that catalog of data about you isn't
| readily replaced by merely marrying a good cook -- assuming
| you can even arrange to remarry immediately and aren't forced
| to feed yourself (inadequately) for months or years while
| looking for a wife
|
| Fewer mental health issues from society no longer dictating
| to everyone "You will be straight, don't confuse us with the
| facts. You will fall in love with The One meant for you,
| never mind the overwhelming evidence this is the exception
| not the rule. You will fit your entire life around tasks
| society decided are yours at birth due to the bits between
| your legs."
|
| Less homophobia, less transphobia, less misogyny, more
| economic stability due to more personal flexibility.
| artificialLimbs wrote:
| I didn't know what 'heteronormative culture' was, so I went
| to look it up. I found this: "Heteronormativity is the
| concept that heterosexuality is the preferred or normal
| sexual orientation." It seems to me to be a pretty radical
| idea that culture could not be 'heteronormative' because
| heterosexuality IS the preferred and normal sexual
| orientation since 1-babies need to be born for existence to
| perpetuate (this is basically the purpose of life) and
| 2-non-heterosexual people continue to this day (even with
| all the radical celebration of deviance) to be a tiny
| minority. That said I think it is dumb to try to pressure
| kids to 'be straight' (lol, you don't choose who you're
| attracted to). If you're saying 'to live as you choose' to
| mean 'to live as a single person with no familial support',
| then yea, you're setting yourself up for a rough time and I
| can't imagine how you're going to 'restructure the culture'
| to support this, nor why you would want to aside from
| attempts at self gratification.
|
| I don't even know what you're talking about with this
| 'Freedom to leave a marriage' part. It seems like a
| smorgasbord of ideas smashed together rather incoherently,
| my apologies but it's after lunch and maybe my brain isn't
| all functioning 100%.
|
| Ok I also don't understand what you're talking about in
| 'Fewer mental health isues' either. It seems like you're
| trying really hard to imagine a fantasy reality where non-
| heterosexual people can live by themselves - but with a
| partner if they want - but they can leave - but they should
| be able to leave and be by themselves and be just fine -
| all with regard to COOKING specifically. Am I getting in
| the ball park there? I don't really know what you're
| getting at. When you deviate from 'normal' culture, life is
| going to be harder for you. That's how our world works. The
| people that have and are trying to change that... just
| watch for if things are getting better in their wake, or
| worse in their wake.
|
| I suspect economic stability comes more from personal
| responsibility than 'personal flexibility'. One must make
| great sacrifices, in general, to develop the character to
| be able to progress in most areas. What I typically see
| from the crowd wanting more freedoms is the freedom to be
| more hedonistic, where I see the people more grateful to
| exist and actually progressing growing their discipline and
| losing their selfishness.
|
| >>> "in crisis due to various social factors making full-
| time wives and moms relatively rare"
|
| >>> "It seems likely to me we need to rethink and rework
| our food culture so everyone can eat adequately"
|
| How could the second work without fixing the first?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| I'm a former full-time wife and mom. I got divorced and
| got a corporate job at a Fortune 500 company where most
| of the women were shocked and jealous that my sons took
| over most of the cooking, grocery shopping and cleaning.
|
| I've thought a lot about this problem space and the
| connections I have listed are clear in my mind. If it's
| not clear to you and you are interested in the idea, you
| are welcome to do your own reading and thinking and draw
| your own conclusions.
|
| Given that I met exactly one woman with children who
| didn't feel affronted by how I was living, I imagine my
| opinions and such fall far outside the Overton window --
| which seems to be the story of my life.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Maybe not full time but I would still say the vast majority of
| women still do all the duties around the house and those
| regarding raising children. America has become more like
| countries in Asia that way where women always worked but still
| did everything an American full time housewife did.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| This is true.
|
| And also false.
|
| In households with a nuclear family or heterosexual couple,
| women still tend to do the lion's share of "the women's
| work."
|
| But people are generally marrying later, having fewer kids,
| more couples are having no kids, the number of households
| with four or more related members has plummeted, the number
| of households with one to three members has skyrocketed and
| far fewer people have someone in their life whose primary
| role is doing the women's work and looking out for their
| welfare.
|
| People are time stressed, fatter and less healthy, etc. We
| point to a lot of different causes for those very well
| established facts and I'm saying that one common denominator
| that gets largely overlooked is the decline of the number of
| full-time homemakers.
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