Diet Gender Gap

[Griffin NoName]

What about mixed gender peanuts?

[Aggie]

Not only are they mixed gender, they self pollinate!

[Opsa]

But are they allowed to be legally wed?

[Aggie]

Whatever they do in the privacy of their own petals is their business.

In any case, they're better off than Red Bartsia and Dodder, which are legally weeds here (not sure on whether Black Bartsia is banned in AB ).

[Lindorm]

Sort of veering off on a tangent here, but what about the trend towards (at least some) cooking becoming a mucho macho activity? Gordon Ramsey, Anthony Bourdain or some other suitably buff lad telling the housewives of the country that they do not know how to cook, and need a man's guiding hand to do so in a correct manner? Male-oriented magazines such as FHM and their equivalents running features on cooking, guides to expensive knives, pots and gadgets and so on? Or is this a trend more about conspicious consumption, rather than about actual cooking?

[Griffin NoName]

I can't answer your questions Lindorm but I can say that my son's liking of expenisive knives has nearly bankrupted me

[Aggie]

is this a trend more about conspicious consumption, rather than about actual cooking?

Both. Gadgets can easily go both ways.  IMO some things are straighforward conspicuous consumption, like very expensive professional knife sets for anything except a professional cook (sorry Grif ).  One expensive chef's knife may be justifiable, because they are a central tool, but really, unless you are regularly putting your entire knife set through its paces it's probably just a showpiece and you'd do better to add a couple of mid-priced specialty knives to the ensemble for the tasks you regularly do (i.e. cleaver and boning knife for me).

It also depends on your skill level; like many sporting goods, you don't really appreciate the very high-performance stuff unless you are very good, although you do tend to learn faster with at least entry-level gear instead of the cheap, flimsy low-grade crap. If you are a wizard with a knife, you may be able to justify top-of-the-line tools, if not, you're just a poseur.  IMO.

I think cooking's also "machoing up" a bit to make it seem a worthwhile pursuit to men who would otherwise worry that showing those kind of (traditionally) "wimmin's" skills makes them seem sissy. I think there's still a lot more emphasis on meat and fire with male cooking than on soups and pastries, especially in the FHM-type of media (that kind of mag exists to advertise products, so putting a macho image on it helps sell expensive gear).


There's always a bit of jockeying for dominance with male friends, and while one might impress his buddies a bit with a delicious meal, one needs to put a bit of macho in it to keep the upper hand with guys who are useless in the kitchen and associate food-preparation with mom/wife/girlfriend. Putting some badass cooking gear into the process helps. I buy gear for functionality, but must admit more than a few man-gadgets that I'm the primary user of:

-lots of cast iron
-19 inch meat saw
-meat grinder
-massive stone mortar and pestle
-charcoal smoker large enough to smoke a turkey in (did so for thanksgiving)

and this little beauty, which is totally functional and gets regular use, but is also a total man-toy:


I will admit boasting to my buddies ('specially foodies) about being able to handle this kind of equipment, which isn't conspicuous consumption (spending money) but is still status-oriented male dominance behaviour, albeit skill based instead of cash based.



_{The secret here is that men aren't generally cooking to impress men (they are cooking to impress women, hence the focus in FHM & equivalents), so they need the edge to keep cooking manly.  I just need some badass indoor gardening tools or some very scary plants to make up for my houseplant obsession now.}

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The secret here is that men aren't generally cooking to impress men (they are cooking to impress women, hence the focus in FHM & equivalents), so they need the edge to keep cooking manly.

I dunno about that, in a social setting being able to cook a lauded meal is a plus (besides my wife isn't that impressed with my cooking which she finds less healthy than hers ).
---
BTW, where did you get that beautiful puppy there? Gas, alcohol, coal? 

[Pachyderm]

I learnt to cook helping my Mum. Unfortunately, she has a natural talent with flavours that I signally lack. As she never really follows recipes (although she has lots of recipe books, including one of her mother's, who was a cook at a stately home), it was always "a pinch of this, a smidge of that.." and a glorious end product. Fortunately, all those years of lab training come to the fore, and I can (have to) follow recipes. And keep the kitchen clean, while I'm at it. As I love hot foods, I do tend to be a bit heavy handed with the spices, which not everybody appreciates. 

I can, however barbecue, and cook over an open fire. Handy in the savannah, less useful in Belfast...

I do have a very expensive knife set, which fell off the back of a lorry. Bloke came round to the pub kitchen where I was working, and offered them. The head chef didn't need any for the kitchen, but got a set for himself. Hmm, thinks I, Neil reckons these are good enough for him to want, so I'll have some of that as well...

[Darlica]

I tend to think along the same lines when it comes to cooking and kitchen appliances an I do when it comes to art and art-supplies. Good quality tools make things a lot easier and save you a lot of frustration however without talent and skill they won't help.


I'm a sucker for good quality tools. It doesn't matter if we are talking art-supplies, carpentry tools or pots, pans and knifes. That said Lindorm is the one working magic in the kitchen...   

[Aggie]

I dunno about that, in a social setting being able to cook a lauded meal is a plus (besides my wife isn't that impressed with my cooking which she finds less healthy than hers ).

Mixed-gender settings, I agree, and a good cook will still be lauded by his buddies, but it may not count for as much on the male dominance scale as owning the fancy gadgets to pull it off, unless said buddies also have culinary inclinations (I'm still running with the observation that most male-male interactions, even between close friends, are to some degree a subtle game of one-upmanship).

There's some cultural variations too, because in many places cooking as a profession is dominated by men. Regardless, men always try to out-gadget each other, and probably have since they started knapping flint, so perhaps it's just that more men are picking up cooking.

BTW, where did you get that beautiful puppy there? Gas, alcohol, coal? 

Got it from a little kitchen supply shop in Calgary, after seeing it at a big bbq place and drooling over it on the 'net for a couple of days.  It runs on charcoal - about 8 briquettes worth per load, although I think most briquettes are blasphemy and stick to hardwood lump charcoal - a handful is enough. Grills, smokes, roasts, and can cook a load of veggies in the base while grilling up top. I'm very happy with it, although I would like some of the accessories (roasting rack, griddle, or fit out some cast iron for a cooking surface) to make it a little more flexible.
http://www.cobbamerica.com/ for more details.

Fortunately, all those years of lab training come to the fore, and I can (have to) follow recipes. And keep the kitchen clean, while I'm at it.

I can do neither of those things, despite lab training.   I do keep my hands clean and minimize cross-contamination, though - field skills.

I do have a very expensive knife set, which fell off the back of a lorry. Bloke came round to the pub kitchen where I was working, and offered them. The head chef didn't need any for the kitchen, but got a set for himself. Hmm, thinks I, Neil reckons these are good enough for him to want, so I'll have some of that as well...

I'm a sucker for good quality tools. It doesn't matter if we are talking art-supplies, carpentry tools or pots, pans and knifes.

I will admit to owning a fairly good chef's knife (Henckels 5-star), but managed to pick it up for a ridiculously low $30 at Winners - it was marked as a second, but I can't find anything wrong with it.  I'm also a believer in good-quality tools, and generally feel that if you're buying something that you will be using for years on a regular basis, it's worth spending the money for quality.  OTOH, it's easy to spend money for the sake of spending money - keeping knives as an example, top-of-the-line knife sets can run into the thousands of dollars, wheras you can get decent quality mid-range knives from a reputable manufacturer around the $30 - $50 price point, and IMHO these are plenty for most home cooks, especially if you spend a little more on your main knife.

[Pachyderm]

Just been doing some currency conversions.

Set should have cost (at today's exchange rates) $755. I got it for $42.

Steal. (Quite literally, I suspect... )


I have a friend who is a very good cook, and his philosophy with kitchen equipment is to buy cheap, and if it gets worn out/broken he's using it enough to  warrant a good version.

[Aggie]

I have a friend who is a very good cook, and his philosophy with kitchen equipment is to buy cheap, and if it gets worn out/broken he's using it enough to  warrant a good version.

Good philosophy for all sorts of gear, methinks.

[Scriblerus the Philosophe]

I'm kind of on my own when it comes to cooking, though I still ask my mom for tips here and there. Pretty much every meal she's ever cooked is centered around meat of some kind and I'm a vegetarian so that doesn't cross apply very well.

[Lindorm]

Going back to the original post and subject, I'd say that education carries a strong correlation to economic status, and thus the ability to afford both expensive and healthy ingredients, as well as the time to buy and prepare them -or, for that matter, buying more expensive and healthier take-away food ( e g, Sushi ) instead of McGrease.

While Sweden is (yet!) far from the situation in the USA, for example, where it is actually cheaper for a lot of people to buy prepared foodstuffs and frozen dinners than to buy ingredients and cook from scratch, we are certainly making more and more moves in that direction, with healthy food and especially home-cooked food becoming more and more of a status marker -and, at the same time, becoming something perceptually more and more out of reach of the ordinary person. Cooking is done by celebs on TV, not your mom in the kitchen.

What I was skirting in my first, rather hurried, post, was the interesting perception that women are perfectly capable of cooking nice, home-made food and family dinners -but when things get serious, a Real Man needs to step in. Who cooks at home? Who is the star chef at swanky restaurant? There's more than a few interesting contradicitons here, contradictions that make the social anthropologist in me start to peek out again.

On the one hand, women are/were traditionally percieved as capable of cooking and nourishing the family -indeed, that was one of the definitions of womenhood. On the other hand, women seem to be incapable of knowing what it is that they do, when they fulfill their holy role in the family -they don't have the right recipes, techniques and what not. Indeed, a lot of traditional french home-cooking classics are sometimes lumped together as incodifiables -dishes that cannot be codified, are made slightly different from time to time, do not have exact recipes with ingredients, proportions and times, made by women in the home and most often not present on the menu of a classic restaurant, except perhaps in a modified or more luxurious version.

On the other hand, you have the dishes of the grand cuisine, made almost exclusively by male chefs in restaurant kitchens, with meticulous attention to detail, techniques and exact ingredients -or subject to endless debate between more male experts as to whether you can use chicken from somewhere else than Bresse in a certain dish. Most definitely not something for maman in her home kitchen, who is utterly incapable of the reasoning needed to be able to pull off one of these great dishes, though she might have one named after her, or her tits, if she is nice, or they are nice.

As an interesting side note, the lovely bean casserolle Cassoulet really ought to be in the camp of the incodifibles -several contesting recipes and regional variations, no real canonical list of ingredients despite several attempts at providing one, the dish it self can hardly be called elegant and often made at home, by women. However, it is also a popular restaurant dish, and one that is definitely within a man's domain -possibly because it has been the standard friday fare of the Foreign Legion since it's inception, and is also intimately tied to the sport of Rugby, which is extremely popular in the southern half of France. Are you going to tell the bunch of legionnaires enjoying their after-game beans that they are poofs, eating a woman's dish? 

Anyhow, more disjointed ramblings, but I hope someone else but me find them interesting.