THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 1, 1996 TAG: 9605010651
SECTION: FLAVOR PAGE: F1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARY FLACHSENHAAR SPECIAL TO FLAVOR
LENGTH: Long : 172 lines
STEPHANIE FAGAN hardly ever cooks.
A Chesapeake wife and mom, she also is project manager for development and public affairs at Eastern Virginia Medical School. At 27, Fagan works 8:30 to 5, longer if she's on a special project.
After she picks up her 5-year-old, cooking is the last thing Fagan wants to do. So the family eats out about four times a week and relies on convenience or carryout cuisine the other nights.
``Sometimes I'll make spaghetti for dinner or fix a salad at night to eat the next evening,'' said Fagan. ``Yes, I feel guilty about not cooking more, but you just can't do everything.''
Faythe Cates of Virginia Beach doesn't cook, either. She's married and the stay-at-home mom of three small children.
``My 7-year-old and I might make a muffin mix together once in a while,'' said Cates, 31. ``But that's it. Life is so totally hectic around here, I barely get time to shower, let alone cook.''
Weary of a diet of fast food, Cates hired a professional about seven months ago to prepare the family's meals. Cates shops for groceries. Then for about two hours a week, Virginia Beach cooking teacher Janie Jacobson transforms pasta, seafood, fresh herbs and vegetables into a week's worth of family dinners - in the Cates' kitchen.
``This might seem extravagant until you think about the cost and quality of takeout food,'' said Cates. Someday, she said, she might get around to cooking like this herself.
``But not anytime soon.''
Like many members of ``Generation X,'' the post-baby-boomers who are 20 to 32, Fagan and Cates have put cooking on the back burner. The National Restaurant Association reports that X-ers go out for dinner more than any other adult consumers.
When they're not dining out, X-ers rely heavily on takeout and the cornucopia of convenience foods in supermarkets - salads in bags, pizza crust that simply needs toppings, poultry and meat that's fully cooked.
Many of today's young adults grew up in households where both parents worked and the dinner bell was likely the doorbell signaling the arrival of the pizza. Even if the parents cooked, as they did in the homes where Fagan and Cates grew up, often there just wasn't time to pass along kitchen skills.
``No, I never really learned how to do anything in the kitchen,'' said Cates.
Many X-ers didn't. And some food professionalsare concerned about the nutritional values of what X-ers eat and about the damage to family and society that results when people stop eating together.
At Virginia's department of agriculture in Richmond, for example, officials are distressed about the health of X-ers. .
``This is a microwave-dependent generation,'' lamented J. Carlton Courter III, commissioner of agriculture and consumer services. ``We are worried that those who never learned how to cook will not distinguish between foods that need cooking and foods that are fully cooked.''
Courter fears, for instance, that inadequately cooked poultry will be on the menu all too often in the homes of those who usually buy cooked-through chicken rather than raw chicken. Most older home cooks know what many Xers may not: that undercooked chicken can make you sick.
At the Chesapeake office of Virginia Cooperative Extension, home economist Carol Thorpe frequently hears questions such as ``How do I know when the chicken is cooked?'' This wasn't always so.
``In years past, consumers more often asked questions about food-preservation methods such as canning and pickling,'' said Thorpe. ``Now the questions generally have to do with day-to-day food handling and safety, like `I accidentally left the roast in the oven overnight - can I still eat it?''
(The answer: please don't.)
``The basics of food preparation are just not being passed down by word of mouth,'' said Thorpe. She has also noted that instructions on packaged foods have become simplified and are often accompanied by illustrations.
``Many people don't even know the basic terms like whip, fold, saute,'' she said. SLICING, DICING, WINCING
Chef Jerry Lanuzza often winces when the students in his kitchen-fundamentals class start to slice and dice. About half of the students in a recent class were in their 20s.
``I was teaching how to cut a whole chicken into eight pieces,'' said Lanuzza, an instructor at Johnson & Wales College of Culinary Arts in Norfolk. ``It was downright scary. Nobody had any basic knife skills and I thought one woman was going to chop her finger off.''
Lanuzza says he took it for granted that everybody learned slicing and dicing and other basics the way he did - from Mom. He grew up in a family of five children.
``Mealtime was family time, and we all had to sit at the table peacefully,'' he said. That was never a hardship, he added, because ``Mom is a helluva cook.''
Jacobson, the cooking teacher, had a similar upbringing. Not only did her mother put a mouth-watering, nutritionally balanced dinner on the table every evening, she also cooked a full breakfast for the family of four daughters.
``A lot of people who come to my cooking classes tell me they never learned to cook because their mothers shooed them out of the kitchen,'' said Jacobson. ``This is sad. I learned to cook from my mother when I was very young. And now I'm teaching my 4-year-old niece. I feel one of my missions is to get people excited about cooking again.'' COOKING AND GUILT
Moms whose plates are too full to cook or teach their children how, might interpret the laments of the professionals as a reason to gulp more guilt.
But Suzanne Puryear of Norfolk doesn't. Puryear, who works in Norfolk's department of human services, believes her 25-year-old daughter Kelly cooks well because Puryear cooks poorly.
``A person can eat only so much spaghetti out of a can, so much blackened cuisine that isn't supposed to be black,'' said Suzanne Puryear.
That silver lining extends over the Noxon household too.
Deborah Noxon, the director of investor relations at Norfolk Southern Corp., briefly felt guilty about not cooking often for her children, who belong to the generation right behind ``X.''
Guilt disappeared when she tasted 14-year-old Hilary's cookies from scratch and the dishes 12-year-old Andrew made with peppers he'd grown himself.
``I am proud they have learned to fend for themselves so well,'' said Noxon, who lives in Norfolk.
Phyllis Cannon, director of culinary arts programming for Virginia Beach public schools, said the lack of cooking skills has reached epidemic proportions. Still, she has hope.
There are many places besides the home to learn about cooking, she said.
Since the Virginia Beach high schools replaced their traditional home economics curriculum with a jazzy course in the basics of French cooking in 1992, enrollment has almost doubled, Cannon said. ``And many of the classes have more boys than girls.''
Judith Vinson-Klein, program planner for the Adult Learning Center in Virginia Beach, has noticed a dramatic leap in the number of people signing up for cooking classes.
``Many young adults who never learned to cook want to learn now,'' said Vinson-Klein. ``People are getting tired of going out. They're ready to stay home.'' ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/The Virginian-Pilot
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WHERE YOU CAN LEARN
TV cooking shows, beginners' cookbooks and some food magazines
offer step-by-step instruction. And cooking classes are simmering
all over Hampton Roads. Here's a list of some.
ADULT EDUCATION CLASSES
Chesapeake. Call 548-6001 for information on a low-fat cooking
class, which will be offered in fall.
Virginia Beach. Call 473-5091 for information on cooking classes
taught year-round. Fifteen classes will be available this summer.
Norfolk Technical Vocational Center (441-2957) and Suffolk's P.D.
Pruden Vo-Tech Center (925-5507) have no cooking classes now, but
will offer cooking if there is enough public interest.
CITY DEPARTMENTS OF PARKS AND RECREATION
Chesapeake. Call 436-8467 for information about adult summer
classes in food safety and healthy eating.
Portsmouth. Call 393-8481 for information on year-round cooking
classes for children and teens.
Virginia Beach. Call 471-5884 for information about programs.
Cooking classes for kids and adults are offered year-round.
OTHER
Johnson & Wales University of Culinary Arts, Norfolk. Call
855-1835 for information on Chef's Choice classes, cooking classes
offered to the public from September through May.
Bouillabaisse, a kitchen shop at 1611-A Colley Ave., Norfolk.
Call 627-7774 for information about cooking classes for kids and
adults. These will begin May 7.
Kitchen Barn, a kitchen shop at 1600 Hilltop West Executive
Center, Virginia Beach. Call 422-0888 for information on Janie
Jacobson's cooking classes for adults.
Hannaford Brothers Food & Drug Superstore. Cooking classes for
kids and adults, at the stores at 4692 Columbus St., Virginia Beach
(490-1202) and 201 E. Little Creek Road, at Wards Corner, Norfolk
(587-5945).
by CNB