Dear LPG,

I read with interest what BC had to say about watching other people cook (►►►) but I think that there is one aspect of the whole cooking subject that was missed there.  I find it quite disturbing that so many younger Brits find alternatives to planning, collecting the ingredients and cooking their food.  

I cannot say that I looked forward to and enjoyed spending lots of time each day in the kitchen when I was a young mum, wife and worker.  And there was that element of spending time preparing meals that the family ate without commenting on the taste or even mentioning their appreciation of the time it all took (unless the meal had resulted in disaster as it sometimes does).

Do you remember when the concept of ‘eating out’ was something that we used to leave for special occasions.  Someone had to be visiting for us to shell out all that cash and being a chef became a serious vocation.  

The question I want to ask is how did we become a nation of people who either ‘eat out’ or send out for ‘take-aways’ of one sort or the other so readily?   After rationing and so many limitations on what ingredients were available to us in the 1950s, preparing daily dinners had to have been a serious challenge, but I was too young to worry about all that back then.  

But being a young mum of the late 1960s meant that I was one of the many women who both worked and played housewife.  I had to Thank God for the accessibility of a freezer in the kitchen which meant that I could do all the cooking once a week, freeze daily portions and take one out each morning in preparation for the evening meal.  So all I had to do is put a few potatoes and greens on which brought the cooking time down a bit.  Microwaves and all the electric slow-cookers, air-friars, waffle-makers-, deep fat fryers, rice cookers and halogen ovens have also made life more easy.

There always seemed to have been the fish and chip shop and the internet tells that the first one of those was opened in 1860 by Joseph Malin.  Then there was the international contingent which started with the Chinese take away the Indian take away.  Now nearly every eating house has a take-away and delivery service, so we don’t have to look far to find an establishment to cater for any national need these days, all we had to do is pop in on the way from work and, at the turn of this century ready cooked meal delivery became a thing.  We all know that Covid-19 has made that more commonplace than ever.  It was one of those many things that grew out of necessity during lockdown and we will never put back in the box. 

But I think that the latest idea of spending loads of money to have a recipe and ingredients delivered to your door in a box is the service that I question the most.  I suppose you save the time and effort you would need to shop yourself, but there is no variation in the taste and the thought of spending all that extra money and still having to do the cooking defeats the object a bit for me, not to mention that you still have to do the washing up!

Many of us are left cooking for one as we get older and there is little satisfaction derived from the most tasty meal if you are the only critic.  So the TV dinner, ready meal, take away, and cook in a box are likely to be here to stay, but I bet that many ladies who still can, would love to have someone to cook for. 

We are often told that the young only have time for their mobile phones and other gadgets these days and I have to ask myself if this is the reason why so many of our Younger people have lost their sense of culinary adventure… sadly it appears that there are just so many more important things to do…

KE, Depford.