How the cooking world has changed!

Yeah, how has the cooking world changed, kid?

1. Instead of good ol’ American made carbon steel knives, all you can find are odd foreign sheepfoot shaped knives, and with many of them coated in all sorts of odd colors or patterns, with blades made of very geeky named mixtures or what can be justly called ‘plastic’. Don’t forget that the handles are no longer American walnut, too! “Can’t have that!” says the food patrol troll. No, now they are made of bamboo, or some other concocted material, and again, in some rather odd colors. (Julia Child and James Beard would be spinning in her tomb!)

2. Instead of good for granny good for you American made cast iron cooking pots and pans, we now have foreign and domestic aluminium, stainless steel, copper pans, and all sorts of linings, claddings, and again, all colors of the rainbow. What happens to all those coatings and colors when they begin to come off? Where does that stuff go? “Gee Ma, that was really tasty, yum!”

3. Oh yes, let’s not forget the Food Patrol Troll’s ideas of making it scarce to find really well made WOOD cutting boards these days. I mean real wood, from a tree that bears fruit and/or has a running sap. I do NOT consider bamboo as fitting that criteria, as I also do NOT find ‘rubber wood’, wood from the rubber tree, palm wood – although there is a specie of palm tree that produces dates, or Asian monkeypod wood, fitting that criteria, either. No, by gum! The cutting boards must be of some space-age plastic, or glued togther wood chip particle board, a.k.a. ‘epicurean’ .

Yes, boys and girls, the cooking world has undergone some changes, and those young enough to not know where I am recalling these things from, need to look them up. ( A French knife, is not a German knife, is not an Asian knife – go look it up!)

Now, dear reader, what say YE? American, French, German, or Asian knives? Cast iron, aluminum (I used the British proninciation above), stainless steel cooking pots and pans? Wood or synthetic cutting boards?