Anthony Bourdain Might Be Onto Something

Like many, I’m cur­rently engrossed in Anthony Bourdain’s lat­est book Medium Raw: A Bloody Valen­tine to the World of Food and the Peo­ple Who Cook and he might have an idea that I believe cur­rent school dis­tricts might want to pay atten­tion to.

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Grow­ing up, I have to con­fess, I didn’t do much cook­ing, if any.  My first recipe I remem­ber mak­ing on my own was a home­made lasagna made from a recipe off of the side of the pasta box.  My par­ents gave praise but look­ing back and remem­ber­ing my con­coc­tion of spices that I “added to the recipe,” I think my par­ents were being WAY too kind (much like when my friends and I regaled the par­ents with Bar­bie Cabaret Shows that I think I charged admis­sion to and they sat through patiently).  I remem­ber some other kitchen exper­i­ments that were attempted over the years and I’m pos­i­tive now that per­haps my idiot fiancée was cor­rect in his assump­tion that my cook­ing skills were *ahem* a bit chal­lenged (well in his words I was the worst cook to ever come near a stove but then again, he wasn’t so great either!)  Over the years, it was eas­ier to call take out than rather try to put together some­thing more chal­leng­ing than a box of mac & cheese and I admit that it wasn’t until I really started to develop an inter­est in cook­ing that I learned that I do, indeed, have a skill set for cook­ing and even some­times bak­ing.  Does that mean I’m going to open a restau­rant or some­thing along that lines – not in the least.  I leave that for the more sea­soned and trained professionals.

 

One thing I DON’T remem­ber from grow­ing up is tak­ing a cook­ing class.  While I’m sure my high school had Home Eco­nom­ics at some point or another, per­haps it was one of those elec­tives where I chose to take Span­ish (or per the direc­tive of my father – Latin) and I just didn’t see the need for learn­ing how to cook, properly vac­uum or sew.  At the time of grad­u­a­tion, I wasn’t think­ing of any­thing out­side of pos­si­bly being an enter­tain­ment lawyer (trust me, I got smarter as I got older and learned – hell to the no!) and lawyers don’t cook – they don’t have time.  I also remem­ber think­ing high school didn’t pre­pare us for much of any­thing – sure we could read and write and pos­si­bly add 2 + 2 and get 4 but I didn’t real­ize that Alge­bra would be vital for bal­anc­ing a check­book or Chem­istry would be much like cook­ing.  Long story short, I prob­a­bly could burn water if I tried.

 

Anthony Bour­dain talks about the need for chil­dren to learn to cook and how cook­ing received a bad rap.  Many of the boys wouldn’t dare take home ec due to ridicule and the stigma, while girls were expected to thrive in their “house­wife train­ing” class so, there­fore, many girls decided to protest.  If the boys didn’t have to take it, why shouldn’t the girls and the school dis­tricts caved, many not requir­ing their stu­dents to take home eco­nom­ics.  He pro­poses a manda­tory cook­ing skill set for chil­dren to learn that way they can fend for them­selves when they get older rather than rely­ing on restau­rant din­ing and takeout. 

The pro­posed culi­nary skills that chil­dren should learn include: 

Of course there is way more than that but I think he might be onto some­thing.  These are all skills I’m learn­ing NOW and I’m well into my 30s.  Some­where, Julia Child is lis­ten­ing and nod­ding in agree­ment, I think.

 

What skills and tech­niques do you think today’s chil­dren should learn that you did not know grow­ing up?