Take the Heat and Stay in the Kitchen

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of my pastor, the good and ever steady Father Fred Riegler, I realized the invitation to his reception recognizing this great milestone included a parish ‘pot luck’ supper following noon mass a Sunday back in May. Work and family had me so tangled up I didn’t start thinking about what to bring until the Friday before and quickly began wondering where I could buy the nearest packaged baked good or food item as donation from the DiRenzo clan joining hundreds, near to thousands of others in recognizing our good pastor’s 40 year mark as man of the cloth in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and pastor of St. Isidore’s for the last several years.

As I sat, tired from a long week of work, shuttling the kids around and taking care of home, I figured I’d let myself off easy and just stop at the nearest food store or bakery and bring something already prepared. Then my conscience started to eat away at me. Forget that this approach is clearly the easy way out it also says a lot about our generation today.

Been to the grocery store lately? Back in the day when I grew up Northeast Philadelphia food stores offered you opportunities to buy food that actually required your having to prepare it at home. Wwhile this is still the case, today’s grocery world makes it far too easy, not to mention expensive, to grab a prepared item, heat, serve and eat. All you have to do is have the culinary skill to know which setting to place your oven or microwave and pre-heat or re-heat your already cooked and processed meal. Like everything else in life it’s a fast paced world, too fast, especially when it comes to meal time. There are at least two times per day when we should take our time, preparing good food to eat and enjoy and relaxing before calling it a day. Society has got us so discombobulated lately that we’ve sacrificed the tradition of good, home cooked meals too often in an effort to save time and shuttle off to the next work, family or other activity, event or project.

Here’s a great example of what I’m trying to convey, in a recent visit to the food store I was at the meat case, one entire chicken that required preparation, cooking and some skill to prepare was priced at just 90 cents a pound. Sounds good to me, I picked up the bird and placed it in my cart, right next to the well priced chicken was prepared chicken shish-kabobs for, get this, near to $5.00 a pound. Why? Because the prepared skewered chicken was ready to cook, serve and eat. Want convenience? Be prepared to pay, through the nose it seems. Through any food store you’ll find this same pattern.

Ironically in trade magazines and industry inside news this is where grocery stores are building and making their most margins. They expect us all to be too busy, too time starved, too lazy, too unwilling to get in the kitchen and actually cook something, that they’ll tempt us with the easy way out by doing our job for us, then charging us extortion prices for the privilege of warming up at home. Well, this consumer has had enough, To all the food stores out there: when you see me and my clan coming, skip the fancy packaging, the crazy high prices on all your prepared stuff and pardon me while I direct myself to the unprepared section of foods and do my own cooking. I’ll save a ton of money, polish up on my cooking skills and actually be able to tell my kids when dinner is served that their old dad actually made the meal from something resembling almost scratch. I’ve been doing this more and more and you know what I’ve discovered? The boys like the cooking and have no complaints.

I think I may have created a monster because I get asked all the time about what’s for dinner, sometimes a week at a time, like they expect me to prepare a menu or something. I can’t blame them, I was the same way with my folks dinner at my home was always made, prepared and served from the same two sets of hands for almost my entire life. My parents. I have no problem with eating out from time to time, necessary part of life when you have to be at several activities in a day or you simply just want a break. But eating out more and more and then adding insult to injury with basically using the food store as a take out restaurant is over the top in this man’s view.

My parents and their generation were just as tired as our crowd, yet they knew the value of home cooked meals meant more than the food itself. It is and always has been another expression of how we show love for our families, friends and those special to us. So get cracking, cooking, baking and preparing, take the time to give your family an expression of your love with food. Need recipes? Just use my blog on my website as a posting place and we’ll all share some great food items we can pass amongst each other. Easy enough to log on just visit www.onemansview.net .

And the next time you’re tempted to get the already prepared item at the food store, remember your kitchen, your family and your wallet or purse will be much better off if you keep walking and make dinner instead of opening the container and serving. As far as that parish pot luck supper back at the outset of my column? I did make something from scratch, three pans of homemade lasagna. A lot of work for sure, but it felt good when completed. Cooking i s like any other skill, the more you do it, try it and keep at it, the better you’ll get; not to mention it’s loads of fun learning to cook for yourself and others. Looking for great recipes in and around our hometown, as always, see ’ya around town.