The Importance of Home Cooking

The European edition of Time Magazine’s June 25th edition is titled “We Are What We Eat” and has various articles about food.
Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, contributed an article called “The Importance of Home Cooking.”

Here’s an excerpt from the first two paragraphs:
“When I was a child in Bra in Italy, hardly any mothers had a job, grandmothers lived with their children and grandchildren, and lunch and dinner were rites you couldn’t miss. Even if the world were collapsing around you, you would go home at a set time, sit down at the table and eat a full meal fondly prepared by the women of the house. Most ingredients came from local markets, though a lot of the vegetables were grown directly in our allotments, and meat came from animals raised by friends or acquaintances. The most "exotic" foods were bought at the neighborhood grocer’s shop.

Women were emancipated at last and started to go out to work.”

So, now it’s a woman’s fault that our culture has gone to hell in a hand basket? If only we had stayed at home, everyone would be eating healthy, home cooked meals?  I was so emancipated that I worked all day in an office, shopped on the way home, and made dinner. OK. I didn’t make lunch, so call me emancipated.   It was an exhilarating 15-hour a day emancipation.
What is this guy smoking?? Women joined the work place (I love that expression, the “work place”, what, we sat around and ate bonbons all day at the home place?) because one income wasn’t enough to support a family in the way that they wanted to live. Women joined the work place because staying at home wasn’t all that they were capable of, and there was a trade off.  But to insinuate that it’s a woman’s fault is just bullshit.   Maybe we should blame our men folk that they weren’t working hard enough to make enough money. That’s not a fair statement, and neither is Mr. Petrini’s statement.
To be fair, he does back off in the last paragraph of the article:
“I’m not advocating a return to the family scene of my childhood; such environments were often indicative of poverty and social backwardness. And going back to the old days would force women back into the kitchen.”

I don’t think it’s socially backward to eat together whenever possible, and I’m not being forced back into the kitchen.
I don’t think that Mr. Petrini has a clue about what women have done, and continue to do to safeguard “The Importance of Home Cooking”.  He needs to descend from his Slow Food throne and listen (not talk to) some real people, who day to day, are doing the best they can to put good food on the table.
Rant over.
Mr. Petrini seems to be ruffling a lot of feathers these days, and I guess he’s now ruffled mine.