[Sca-cooks] Rant: And speaking of cooking equipment...

Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius adamantius1 at verizon.net
Tue Apr 3 08:56:14 PDT 2007


...I was hoping for a reality check of sorts: was my reaction  
reasonable?

My lady wife bought me a lovely present over the weekend, a simple 12- 
inch, heavy aluminum saute pan with tapered, not curved, sides, a  
riveted steel handle making it oven-safe, and some newish French non- 
stick coating called CHOC (I'm not really up on the latest non-stick  
technology; I rarely bother with such effete fripperies; mostly I  
cook in seasoned cast-iron). Basically, a large, aluminum, non-stick  
version of my cheap, thin carbon steel French omelette pan. Price  
_after_ allegedly massive sale discount, $60.

The guys in the store (whatever they're calling The Bridge Company  
these days) were trying to sell her on all sorts of extraneous items  
essential to any "gourmet" cook, things like a $400 stockpot, and my  
wife said something to the effect that "he", meaning me, probably  
wouldn't like something so fancy, preferring real workmanlike tools  
that you can dent and which'll keep on going.

The salesman sighed sympathetically and said, "Yeah, it's an  
expensive hobby, I know..."

So she's telling me this story secondhand, a day or two later, and  
I'm like, "Excuse me? I'm sorry. Hobby? HOBBY???" <twitching eye,  
throbbing temple vein> <spittle has not yet begun to fly, but give it  
time...>  At which point there was some restrained yelling and a cute  
little John-Cleese-style pantomime of poser "hobbyist" cooks with  
their matching copper stockpots hanging beautifully from a rack on  
the ceiling, and which have never, ever been used to create a decent  
meal...

Yes, I probably overreacted; it's a lovely pan and a blessing we were  
able to afford it, what with one thing and another. But I still think  
about it and shudder. Hobby... arrgghh.

I told this story to a friend of mine,  last night at his family's  
Passover Seder. He's a research chemist. He said second-rate  
university chemistry departments are littered with chemists full of  
tales of all the wonderful research they could do if only they had  
the proper equipment...

Hobby. Grrr...

Adamantius (not a hobbyist)




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread, you have to say, let them eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04






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