Tuesday, February 20, 2007

The sweetest words ever heard...

"Would you like to be on call?"

Yes, I think so. After sleeping 10 hours yesterday, I fell asleep watching a documentary about the 1918 influenza epidemic and slept another four hours, woke up, fixed a chicken sammie, ate it while watching some info-mercial about how I can make a jillion dollars a second by selling worthless crap on E-bay, fell back asleep for another hour.

I was tired.

So, I'm watching the early news this morning and I see a commercial for what I assume is a new product: cream cheese cake filling. It is in a plastic tub. You buy it, you buy a pre-made graham craker pie crust. You put the cheese cake filling in the crust and hey look ya'll: I made a cheese cake.

No you f-in didn't make a cheese cake.

It's the same damn thing as those commercials that tout the joys and everlasting childhood memories created by baking cookies with your child(ren). Cut to mom and said kids slicing off chunks of trans fats and high fructose corn syrup in a tube that Pillsbury has convinced you is cookie dough.

That is not baking! You have not home made cookies.

I know a grown woman who didn't know that you could make your own spaghetti sauce. She just put plain Ragu (shudder, vomit, shudder) on top of her noodles.

Does anyone know how to cook anymore? You know, all that stuff that your mom or grandmother or great-grandmother made? Pan drippings gravy? Mashed potatoes that began as real potatoes? Oven baked macaroni cheese pie? Cookie dough so thick you had to rest between bouts of stirring in the flour? Pancakes that began life as flour and milk?

I'm hoping it is just a marketing tool and that people are really carting home bags of veggies and stuff and quietly making real food for the kids.


Loki sez: Oh, yes. Because that swill you feed us is sooo fresh and home made.

6 comments:

Marcheline said...

Hey -

Just found your blog via JAZ's... love the cat pics! You guys are so cool.

My mom (the nurse), sister, aunts, uncles, and grandmother all live in NC so I'm familiar with wishing NY was further south, or that The South was further north... I guess I'm just such a Damn Yankee that I can't leave Long Island.

- M

JanetLee said...

Howdy. Thanks for stopping by. Jason is the cool one. I'm just the crazy cat lady.

jaz said...

Evil corporate America has convinced us that we do not have time to cook, that (wipes sweat from brow) cooking takes so long and (shakes head in frustration looking at the clock) it's so complicated.

They do this so that we will spend mo money, mo money, mo money on whatever they tell us to buy.

And it works like a freaking dream.

Sunnie (Kaytee) said...

Oh I LOVE to cook! I make homemade mac and cheeze, my own spaghetti sauce, and Jimmy makes the mashed taters from REAL taters! And I do remember how to make pan drippings gravy. I just don't make it often since I rarely fry anything that results in drippings. LOL

I love browsing recipe sites online looking for new ones to try.

Anonymous said...

I met someone recently that didn't know what I meant by 'make a cake from scratch'. She was clueless. She only knew of cakes that came from boxes.

Sunnie (Kaytee) said...

Meant to add, love the pic of Loki. I love the captions you always give them. LOL