When I was in High School back in the 1970’s, we were required to take Home Economics. We didn’t have a choice; it wasn’t an elective….it was a necessity. And with good reason.
In Home Ec, whether we felt like it or not, we learned the basics of running a home; cooking, sewing, you know…domestic engineering.
Nowadays, very few women are domestic goddesses. Heck, nowadays, very few humans are even able to navigate the most basic elements of a kitchen or laundry room!
Take the stove for instance. Some folks don’t even know how to operate one. What with microwaves being so convenient, why would a person ever need to use an oven?
Well, to cook a Thanksgiving turkey would be one reason. Microwaving Thanksgiving dinner just wouldn’t be the same as slaving over a red-hot stove for 3 days prior to the big event. Nuking up some Ramen noodles instead of baking yams covered in marshmallows & pineapple wouldn’t feel right. Holidays should be infused with the wonderful aromas of baking, not the odd scents coming from frozen & plastic wrapped trays being nuked for 2.5 minutes before rotating half a turn & being left to stand, covered, for 2-3 minutes before serving.
My son’s girlfriend had an unfortunate run-in with some new fangled kitchen contraption she’d never seen before: a gas stove.
When she opened the bottom ‘drawer’ of said stove & saw some Tupperware plastic bowls residing there, it never occurred to her to remove them before turning the temperature to 425. Within 30 seconds, all that plastic caught fire & covered the entire house in black soot & toxic fumes.
The ‘drawer’ turned out to be a broiler. Had she taken Home Ec in High School, like I did, she probably would have known that, huh?
$2,000.00 & 4 days later, the professional crew finished cleaning up the mess from the $10 Tupperware bowls.
These days, we’re more likely to know how to operate a smart phone, a PC, an IPod or a GameBoy than we are a standard kitchen appliance.
My daughter wanted to know what I was doing the other day when I was washing out a bowl in the sink. I told her I was washing my bowl so the oatmeal wouldn’t dry out & create a cement-like coating which would later require a chisel to remove. “Mom, Duh, why aren’t you putting that bowl into the Dishwasher?” she asked. “Well dearest,” I replied, “It appears that I am the ‘dishwasher’ in this house, huh? Besides, I’d still have to rinse the bowl out before I put it into the dishwasher anyway, so why not get ‘er done once instead of twice?”
“What’s that green squishy thing?” she wanted to know.
“You mean the sponge?” I responded.
Then there’s the hand crank can-opener I was using to open a can of tuna fish yesterday. My son looked at me like I had 3 heads.
“Where is the electric can opener Ma?” he demanded to know.
“Under the stove…..you know…..that contraption designed to house Tupperware?” I said with a tone of sarcasm he’d have to be tone-deaf not to have heard.
Not everything requires a specialized gadget, does it? Must I use a $675 Kitchen-Aid Stainless Steel Electric Mixer to scramble an egg? Or a $250 Italian Pannini Machine to make a grilled cheese sandwich? Won’t the $5 Teflon frying pan do the exact same thing? All I need is a coffee mug to press the bread down for petesake. And a $3 knife can easily replace another $500 worth of useless kitchen gadgets, when you think about it.
I caught my daughter using Velcro to ‘hem’ up her jeans the other day. What? Who has the time or the know-how to thread a needle anyway?
The ironing board is a near-relic, hiding out in the garage next to one of the deep-freezers my husband has purchased over the past couple of years. 2 stand up models & 1 deep meat locker is a necessity for a 4-person household, isn’t it? Yes, if one’s nephew is the HR director for Swift Premium & happens to get ‘good deals’ on large quantities of meat.
When I opened the stand up model this morning, a 75 lb side of beef came tumbling out & shattered a 3 foot square of cement on the floor of the garage. I wonder how much the repairs for that will cost?.But hey, that side of beef was such a steal!
When I opened the stand up model this morning, a 75 lb side of beef came tumbling out & shattered a 3 foot square of cement on the floor of the garage. I wonder how much the repairs for that will cost?.But hey, that side of beef was such a steal!
But I digress. I was talking about the ironing board relic before I got sidetracked by the dead-but-frozen-cow story.
In my house, the ironing board is used for craft projects so the kitchen table doesn’t get covered in Elmer’s glue, staples or magic markers. Because let’s face it, nobody in my house irons. There are dry cleaner’s to do that little chore, after all. Even I have retired the Steam Iron to the junkpile in the garage in favor of a Conair stand-up clothes steamer I bought for $5 at a garage sale! When I was a kid, I remember my grandma Anna-May-Her-Soul-Rest-In-Peace did all the ironing in the household. Sheets, towels, washcloths, tablecloths, absolutely everything we owned was ironed. For some reason, she would BANG that iron down on the fabrics, over & over again. I have no idea why she did that…….perhaps she was taking her hostilities out that way.
Nowadays, we want to streamline our lives….find a shortcut to do everything in a timely, efficient manner. Which means take-out, send-out, order-out or go out.
We hire a cleaning service to dust, vacuum & mop, we hire dry-cleaners to launder our clothing, we get in line at restaurants to pick up take-out food for dinner, or we drive our cars through McDonald’s for a few sacks of burgers to feed the family. Yet, for some reason, we still feel the need to over-complicate our lives with specialty gadgets.
How such a thing makes one iota of sense I’ll never know.
My son’s new girlfriend is quite handy around the kitchen, fortunately, so I don’t imagine we’ll have a repeat performance of the Tupperware Incident any time soon.
But then again, she's smart enough to use Corning Ware.
No comments:
Post a Comment