As he notes, this is really about the Left’s resentment of anything that requires actual effort. The people who can least afford (in more than one sense of the word) to eat out is poor people. But it’s a bad deal for everyone, in terms of both fiscal and physical health.
16 thoughts on “The Tyranny Of Home Cooking”
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If a person doesn’t want to cook, let them not. Why advocate others?
Because that’s not the way a leftist thinks Ken. If they suck at something, they don’t want anyone doing it!
Because as long as others still do it, well that simply reminds them of their inferiority and reinforces their feelings of failure.
I’ve noticed the same thing with people advocating for lowering “full time” hours. They usually whine about having to work and not have quite as much time as they would like for leisure. Apparently, their idea of a better society is one where everyone’s time is devoted to leisure and nobody is allowed to work aside from the few people that would be necessary to make sure the robots keep running.
OTOH, there have been some scientific studies that show that the typical person becomes a steadily less productive worker after about six to eight hours of work, and after nine or ten becomes pretty much just a butt in the chair. So there is a sweet spot after which more really isn’t better.
That said, some people really can put in ten, twelve, fifteen productive hours a day on a regular basis (as opposed to crunch time heroic efforts in which everybody pushes their bodies to the limit for a couple of days to get a project done by a deadline). But the evidence is strong that they’re statistical outliers, and brain fatigue is a real, organic thing for most of us.
And there’s always the possibility that the studies were skewed to give the answers someone wanted to hear.
“I’ve noticed the same thing with people advocating for lowering ‘full time’ hours. They usually whine about having to work and not have quite as much time as they would like for leisure. ”
Or: they’re people like me, working in jobs solely to support our artistic and cultural interests, for whom leisure time activities are where we really come alive. I expend far more effort in those than I ever have on my day-jobs, and I’ve always gotten good reviews for diligence in my day-jobs. I wouldn’t mind full-time hours being lowered, so that I have more time for self-expression (which, for me, is the main thing that makes life worth living), as long as the lowering wasn’t coerced by the Mailed Fist of the State.
I get that. What I don’t get is why the rest of us have to work less so that your lifestyle is somehow more enabled than it was before.
I didn’t intend anything against you, Bilwick. I’m just thinking of the people who think we need to be forced to work less in order to enjoy what they think is the ideal lifestyle for us. Somehow that lifestyle doesn’t involve making choices.
Or: they’re people like me, working in jobs solely to support our artistic and cultural interests
Doesn’t cooking count as an artistic and cultural interest?
If you look at un-paid creative activities, I would venture to say that cooking is one of the most common, if not the most common. If the need to cook suddenly disappeared, most people wouldn’t use the extra leisure time for oil painting or composing operas. They’d more likely spend it watching “I Want to Marry Harry.”
Amanda Marcotte is not speaking from experience. If she were, she would realize:
1) Home-made meals are cheaper than the processed foods one can buy, such as Hamburger Helper.
2) As one who makes his own food, it really isn’t hard. Buy meat on sale, cook it on the weekend and buy vegetables as needed. Yes, the price of food has gone up, but relative to Captain Crunch, Doritos, etc, basic food is still affordable.
3) 1950s America didn’t have a microwave. Modern, poor people do.
4) You don’t need to buy German knives that cost 500 dollars to cook well.
There is a bizarre obsession with 1950s America that I see in lefties, even with people who are too young to have lived through the decade. It has become synonymous with Satan. Add 1950s as an adjective and you’ve immediately demonized whatever it is you are describing.
Amanda, you are an idiot. You don’t cook and you are not helping poor people in any way. Cooking has been for millennia, if not millions of years, more than eating. And far from causing stress, it actually can bring families closer together.
Plus, I know there’s some fellow travelers who believe diametrically opposed things. Perhaps they ought to fight these things out among themselves first before wasting our time?
I will first make a comment about cooking at home. I rarely go to McDonald’s. If my memory serves me correctly, I can spend over $6 for a basic meal there. That includes a hamburger, some fries and a soft drink. Let me compare that with a meal I can cook easily at home. The main dish is broiled chicken with a cream sherry sauce. I have a salad with it. I drink a few glasses of wine with the meal. It takes me a little over 30 minutes to cook the chicken and the sauce. It is easy. I make the salad while I am cooking the chicken. Opening a bottle of chardonnay is quick and easy. This tasty dinner costs me less than the McDonald’s dinner. I also get to listen to music of my own choosing. Oh — my musical tastes range from 11th century French polyphony to the Edinburgh Fringe comedy “Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens.” Oh — lots of people like my cooking.
Regarding workaholism, I will point people to a rather long blog posting of mine I titled An Interesting Side Comment by Michael Griffin. Yes, my blog postings are usually longer than Rand’s.
But you miss the aesthetic experience of an environment tailored to getting you to buy overpriced food and then getting you out of there as soon as possible (with such tricks as loudness of music, hard chairs, etc).
Karl, I am not a masochist. These days when I see a McDonald’s ad proclaiming their quarter pounder awesome, I downgrade the word awesome. The last time I had a meal out was at a DC place called Tunnicliff’s Tavern. My friends and I enjoyed our meals. Yes, it cost more than McDonald’s. But the food — even the burgers — was much better. And I could drink a beer with dinner.
Where can I find examples of 11th century French polyphany? Is there anything on YouTube?
Jon, I can’t really help you. I bought the one CD of 11th century French polyphony I own years ago partly on impulse. I might have bought it through a record club. You might try a good, local library. Or go online to a record club. Or Amazon. I own so much music at home I have gotten out of the habit of looking for more.
When I was young and strong(er) I usually worked two full time jobs while going to school. I might have liked six hour shifts? For a while I had one job in Sun City that ended at 3pm and another that started at 3pm at Sky Harbor. This is rush hour traffic in Phoenix. I think I used a magic motorcycle to make the trip every day in no time at all???