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Yesterday's "Well" column in the New York Times links to a quiz to determine what kind of cook you are. The story explores the idea that the family's healthfulness is determined not by the food preferences of family members but by the "nutritional gatekeeper"—mother, father, nanny, grandparent—whoever does the shopping and cooking. Although the piece praises healthy cooks, they come out in the quiz as the ones you'd least like to have dinner with: They use fresh ingredients but don't care about taste. (Reminds me of something Julia Child once said about vegetarians: "Do they ever enjoy a meal?") The "methodical" and "competitive" don't seem all that fun either. I rated "innovative" (translation: erratic). I can live with that.
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Ladies! To the trenches! We've been slandered! Over at National Review's "The Corner," Lisa Schiffren bewails the "orchestrated deception" involved in the Obamas' (entirely traditional) hiring of a White House chef -- and dings the XX Factor in the process:
According the New York Times,
Sam Kass, who cooked for the Obamas in Chicago will now move onto the
government payroll as a White House chef. ... Who knew? I believed all that stuff about how Michelle was an
overburdened modern working mother, rushing from school dropoff to her
high-paying, demanding work at the hospital, to dress fittings, to
whatever it was she needed to do to support her husband's political
aspirations, back home to take care of her daughters. Call me naive,
but that model usually includes making dinner. ...
Didn't the women at Slate, among others, complain that there
was something offensive about Sarah Palin's apparent ability to raise 5
children, run the state of Alaska, run marathons, and cook those
mooseburgers—because it set the bar too high for ordinary women? But
they were willing to believe that Michelle could do it all, and keep it
all organic and healthy at that—because she has a law degree from
Harvard?
Yes, I left parts of Schiffren's post out, but no, it doesn't make any more sense when they're put back in. I do recommend reading the whole bizarre thing if you haven't gotten your day's dose of 17 laughs in yet.
To take Schiffren's post seriously for a moment, rather than perpetrating some kind of lie, Michelle Obama has long admitted to being a bit cooking-averse (here's one instance, from May of 2007). Schiffren's a journalist, right? Call me naive, but that model usually includes Lexis-Nexising.
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I love your post, Ellen, and your point (and June's) that as Frank Loesser put it, "You can't go to jail for what you're thinkin'—or for the woo look in your eye. ...'' As I've said before, (almost all) of my old (pretend) flames are either making Cialis commercials now, or else have become even more definitively unavailable. Yet my still more retro variation on the sugar daddy fantasy—its uptight, uptown cousin, the Donna Reed scenario (April Wheeler, only happy)—endures. Along with the knowledge that in real life, this would never be me. (In both the kept woman and domestic goddess narratives, you'll notice, there's a troubling amount of work involved.) If you like to pretend once in a while, though—in the kitchen, I mean—I just got a cookbook that can totally help you fake it: Big Night In, by my friend Domenica Marchetti, the best cook I know. Her recipes are not easy peasy—in fact, she's proud that some food writer pronounced them a big fat pain, and worth it. But my issue with a lot of cookbooks is that they assume knowledge ("three eggs worth of pasta'') and skills (dice until invisible) that I don't have. Whereas this is black-diamond cooking explained on the bunny slope, with gorgeous photos and the kind of storytelling I need to get warmed up and going on the creamy carrot soup or veal and mushroom stew in a puff pastry crust. I actually made these two, and felt like Bree Van de Kamp for a night; next time, I want to play her well-fed husband.
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