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

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 3, 2007, at 12:31 PM, Michael Gunter wrote:

> Now, cooking IS a hobby. One that many people take quite seriously but
> don't do restaurant style. Personally, as a person who has spent  
> his time
> on everything from fry-cook, salad station, line cook and pastry  
> chef I am
> happy being a hobbyist.
>
> And, Master A (the cook I admire greatly and have unending respect  
> for)
> unless you are making your living cooking for folk or are the only  
> source of
> dinner on the table every day, you are a hobbyist as well.

I suppose so. Or perhaps I'm more an amateur, in a literal sense,  
since I'm now doing for the love of it what I used to do for a  
living. Although I've never worked in fast food, unless you count the  
Oak Room at the Plaza Hotel, where we had to open oysters in advance ;-)

> You are extremely
> serious and knowledgeable. But, really you are. Now there is a  
> difference
> between hobbyist and dilettante and maybe that is your take on the  
> word.
>
> Just a thought.

Well, obviously I'm employing a negative connotation to "hobby" _as  
it was used_, which is not to say all hobbyists are posers or  
dilettantes, but many of the people who have done the most to make it  
an expensive hobby (essentially indicating some really screwed-up  
priorities) are hobbyists who often do tend to be posers and  
dilettantes. Most pros don't buy a $400 stock pot, and 99.9% of the  
time I'd question the need for the existence of such an item, much  
less have any imperative for me to buy one, hobbyist or not.

Thinking back, I also realize it's been a while since I've bought a  
big stockpot; maybe the prices have gone up a lot. But for a 30- 
quart, it seemed like an awful lot...

Adamantius


"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