It was inevitable that I would go see Julie and Julia. All in all, a cute and entertaining film. Meryl Streep amazing as usual. Despite the brief surge in sales of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, you really can’t go home again. Those days in the sixties  of America’s awakening to French food are long gone. It is now just one cuisine out of many that are of interest to us. Real men still don’t eat quiche; they eat pizza and tacos. Most of us prefer grilled chicken to coq au vin and we now know that pounds of butter and cream are not good for us. Plus they make us feel full, fat and guilty. Julia once questioned me as to why I embraced  the Mediterranean diet. She was not impressed with it because it had such small portions of meat and not much dairy. I told her my father died at 47 of a heart attack and I was not blessed with her metabolism and gene pool to survive all that saturated fat! 

The days of elaborate dinner parties that were inspired by her book are over too. Few people are willing to devote the time to prepare such multicourse feasts. In fact few people invite you for dinner, despite those elegantly remodled kitchens . They’d rather meet you at the latest restaurant.   

 When I started teaching cooking in 1965 all my students wanted  “Gourmet French.”  But over the years their tastes evolved. They wanted  Italian, Middle Eastern, Asian, and Holiday cooking.  Americans are omnivorous, and interested in all kinds of cooking.

The other thing that struck me as ironic is that if Julia tried out for television today they would not hire her. Weird voice, not pretty, sort of awkward and too natural. Not slick enough for the tube. Sort of sad what has happened to cooking on TV. It’s mostly game shows and competitions that get the most attention. You really can’t go home again.

In this weeks NY Times Magazine section Michael Pollan has noticed that since the advent of the Food Network that home cooking has just about vanished.  Many of us in the food  business noticed this quite a while ago.  It has affected those in the restaurant  business as well as those at home.

Trying to hire line cooks who will cook the food that is the signature and style of the restaurant? Good luck. Since the Food Network, they want to be creative, to run free.  TV fantasyland has invaded their minds and rather than stay on the job and learn something, they daydream of being discovered as the next Top Chef and have a lucrative career on the tube. Restaurant  work is physically  demanding, repetitious, and does not pay that well. So they don’t want to stay for long in the working kitchen but aspire to stardom on a TV set kitchen.

Watching the competitions, Iron Chef battles, Top chef melees, home viewers are  entertained by the sport, but not really inspired to cook anything. Like Peter Sellars in Being There, they just want to watch.   Gone are the days when Julia Child cooked and  the home cook watched and then cooked. Now most television cooking is fluff for the  mind.  Displays of technical derring do!  Turbo ovens, whirring machines, Paco Jets, chemical thickeners, sous vide. No one has that kind of equipment at home so why bother??

Cookbooks are still printed but few at home are really using them. Sales for the last five years are down dramatically. Publishers are worried, as are authors and culinary experts who used to write books for people who used to cook. That audience  is now buying prepared food at Trader Joes and sending out for pizza.  We have become a nation of culinary voyeurs. Some buy books for the photos of food.  Food porn for those who dream of cooking while eating mediocre takeout. 

Well, maybe after reading Pollan a few people may be sufficiently embarrassed to pick up the saute pan, but will not know what to do with it. Three  generations of kitchen absenteeism means that no one at home has taught them how to cook.  

Maybe it is time for a grandma who cooks every night at home to show them.  Except they don’t like old people on TV. Not glamorous. Not as perky asRachael Ray, no cleavage, no snappy patter and amped up adrenalin.  No machines a plenty . No five minute meals.  Just cooking common sense in real time for the real world.  Anyone ready for that??