COVER STORY
Modern meal alternatives to suit our stage of life The daily grind of food preparation has been disrupted and JULIE LAKE finds out how we haven’t held back embracing a range of choices.
C
arole Vancini, now in her early 70s learned how to cook the hard way – everything fresh, unpackaged and prepared by hand. “My mother taught me to cook,” Carole says, “And she was old-school Italian; very particular about everything, from finding the best and cheapest tomatoes to rolling out her own pasta the way it was done by generations of women in my family”. Today, Carole still looks for bargains, buys the freshest produce from favoured
local suppliers and even makes her own pasta - using a machine. Her kitchen is full of gadgets, her inspiration comes from the internet and she can cook food her mother never even imagined. Kitchen technology hasn’t changed much – baby boomers grew up with mixers and food processors, dishwashers, electric woks and pans and grills, heat sensors and microwaves. The popular air fryer is the only really new cooking idea in years; otherwise the most exciting change for
most kitchen equipment has been the digital display. In fact, a quick check of websites promising “awesome new kitchen gadgets for 2022” showed nothing most of us don’t already have in our kitchens except a Chinese/Japanese dumpling mould and a peeler/scraper with three different blades! What has changed is US. Those born when the iconic F Series Holden ruled our roads differ from our parents in many significant ways: Working women became the norm rather than the exception and convenience in shopping and food preparation became a given. We have been much more healthconscious, encouraged by the advent of health food shops and outdoor fresh produce markets in the 1970s. No white, sliced bread and processed cheese for us! Though we do consume more alcohol. Fresh food was mostly seasonal and bought close to where it was grown but supply chain economics changed all that and now we can get a vast and onceunimaginable variety of international cuisine ingredients all year round. Cooking has become an art-form; a home-based hobby fostered by so many TV cooking shows that it’s hard for even the most avid foodie to keep up with them. And for many older people this focus on fabulous food is a bit overwhelming – knocking out a batch of sushi one day and a truffle-stuffed lamb rump with a kiwi fruit compote is simply beyond those who used to think pavlova was the
height of culinary sophistication! The one big difference that technology has made to our culinary lives is where and how we source our information. Don MacKinnes, early 60s, never cooked at all until his wife died. “I could boil an egg or fry it – just!,” he says. “And do a pretty good barbecue”. Now he enjoys the creativity involved in preparing meals for himself, family and friends – and he’s good at it, thanks to his laptop. “My wife wasn’t a great cook, but she could do all the usual meat and veg stuff”, Don says. “And bake good cakes. She had a whole collection of recipe books people had given her as presents, most of which she never used”. She also had, like most of us, a couple of box files stuffed with recipes cut out of magazines. Don, who has downsized since she died, threw them all out. Now he downloads recipes when he needs them, watches on-line videos and is even doing a YouTube cooking class. Don and others get a kick out of the fact that if a downloaded recipe doesn’t work they can go back to the site and say so in the comments section. Or share their own variations of the recipe with others. Using the videos, he can rewind and repeat when he doesn’t fully understand something. The cooking class is interactive, and he can ask questions. And he can do it all sitting at his computer or in his armchair with his tablet. According to a new survey, 70 per cent of Australian seniors, like Don, are
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Phone: 07 5493 8038 | www.scorthogroup.com.au 4 YOUR TIME MAGAZINE / April 2022
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