your either a foodie or a nucklehead

It's seeming to be the case that if your mother ( or father I suppose) doesn't like to cook, neither will you. Even if she does cook but while doing so seems like she is being forced into the kitchen by this nagging necessity of nutrition and the reality that eating out every night is too expensive, you will inevitably grow up with the concept of nourishment as a very low priority.
This is of course just my opinion and I would love to be proven wrong!

We need more food role models!

Of course there are the celebrity chefs. I don't doubt that there are several young ladies and gents who have sparked an interest in the culinary arts after developing sweetheart crushes on Jamie Oliver or even brutish Gordan Ramsay ( totally my type!)
Or even still some individuals encouraged to experiment in the kitchen now that taboos have been broken by dominating, novel and aggressive chefs like Mario Batalli or Anthony Bourdain.

While thinking about food is culturally more accessible here in North America, I worry that we may have lost a valuable sense of necessity when it comes to cooking for ourselves and our families.

Cooking has risen in status. At one time cooking in your home was a skill but not a particularly developed one or one of passion. You cooked your meals paying attention to nutrition and food costs. If you wanted something special you paid for someone else to cook it for you, a kind of artist. Now home cooks that enjoy cooking are rising to the occasion and producing restaurant quality food for dinner parties and holidays thanks to access to recipes and cooking instruction on television and the internet. And those individuals who don't like cooking are either too intimidated to try to cook for the sake of good hospitality or they don't have to because grocery stores now make everything so easy and cheap that 'fresh' and 'homemade' has taken on a new meaning.

Just because you can buy whole hard boiled eggs in a bag, or already mashed potatoes "just like mom's" doesn't mean you should. There are kid's going of to college that have no idea how to crack an egg let alone boil one, they know that they love fettuccine alfredo but have no what a bechamel sauce is ( its the plain white sauce).

In my opinion, it should be every parents goal to pass on at least basic cooking skills to their children. It is no longer deemed a skill necessary for survival... it's an art form that's not worth learning unless someone has a passion and a talent for it. Parent's are comforted when their son's find a nice girl who can cook, or vice versa. That just seems rediculous to me! Teach your kids to cook for themselves, teach them the nutritional value of food. The pleasure of eating, of company and of enjoying somthing that you have made that will KEEP YOU ALIVE is priceless. I'm not saying that you have to love cooking like I do, but at least don't let your ignorance bury you so deep that you are completely dependent on other peoples "talent" or the grocery store being fully stocked with 30second rice packets in order to stay alive.

There is a division in society.... the foodie gobshites as Gordon Ramsay calls them and the total idiots who can't make their own oatmeal for breakfast. I think there are even people that don't know how to make coffee because Starbucks does it for them. It's as though the simplist behaviours are being owned and perfected by a few who in turn serve the masses. There are no well rounded people anymore... just experts in one field and bumbling idiots in any other.

Anyway as to avoid digressing too much I will stop here and leave you to think about whether cooking is an art or a necessity or both.

Good day
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