[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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