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

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 3, 2007, at 2:45 PM, Michael Gunter wrote:

> I really think it depends on your viewpoint. I have made my living
> cooking for people. If I still did that by working as a chef,
> catering, writing books, or even if I spent most of my working career
> as one of these then maybe I would still consider myself a  
> professional.
> But I don't get any money for my cookery anymore. I can have a
> professional attitude about my cooking and teach classes and all of  
> that
> but now I'm a hobbyist.
>
> I also think what Master Adamantius was partially ranting about is the
> fact that cooking shouldn't be an "expensive hobby". With decent gear
> that lasts a while you should be able to make pretty much any dish in
> a professional manner. $400 stock pots are the results of the industry
> taking advantage of these new enthusiastic real hobbyists

And in some cases people who want to have a smashing-looking,  
expensive-and-therefore-serious-looking kitchen they never actually  
cook in... these would be the posers I spoke of...

> thinking they
> have to have the very best of everything in order to justify their  
> lack of
> real world experience.

Justify, or maybe, compensate for. Lack of experience, or lack of  
skill, or lack of real enthusiasm.
>
> My great-grandmother's 150 year old skillet/dutch oven combo cooks
> better than the best All-Clad. Lodge gear, when properly seasoned, is
> about the best cooking stuff you can find and is very cheap. Of course
> I would love to have a set of Le Cruset or All-Clad because it DOES  
> cook
> well. I'm also looking to spend far too much money on a very nice  
> chef's
> knife. But I don't have to have the very best and latest titanium/ 
> copper/
> diamond encrusted cookware that Rachel Ray is schilling for me to  
> consider
> myself a cook.

Thank you. I wish I had the cojones to actually use my great- 
grandmother's hand-carved wooden mortar and pestle, probably nearing  
160 years old and in active use until the 1950's or 60's.

> I think that may have been a part of Master A's rant that we  
> overlooked.

That was most of it, actually. Maybe not all, but probably about 92%.  
The rest was not about being a hobbyist per se, but specifically the  
kind of hobbyist whose primary impact on an art form is more economic  
than creative.

>> I would hesitate to add some one out there among your friends in the
>> feast
>> hall is paying for it. So does that make feast a hobby or  
>> professional
>> situation ?or maybe some where in between?
>
> But I don't make money when I cook a feast, in fact, I often spend a
> bit of my own cash. They may pay to cover expenses and maybe benefit
> the group hosting the feast. But I get nothing out of it other than  
> the
> satisfaction of using my art to make people happy.
>
> Therefore, I'm still a hobbyist who shares with 100 - 500 of my  
> closest
> friends.

Yeah, well, when I hear about you working overtime to buy yourself a  
250-dollar copper zabaglione from a specific village in Umbria  
because that's where [everyone knows] the best zabagliones come from  
[zabagliones from the next town over are for losers], and you already  
have a hook on your wall earmarked for it, then I'll rant about you  
too, you hobbyist guy, you. But not till then ;-)

A.





"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