Unpopular opinion: Far from erasing the work of supplying a kitchen, Blue Apron outsources it, giving it a cost when it was given a value of zero. As housework is often done for free by women without men having any idea it even occurs, Blue Apron is feminist.
Edit: I'm an idiot and used a term of art without meaning to. That's what I get for posting while hungry.
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I know my wife loves it more than I do...
ReplyDeleteBut is it intersectional?
ReplyDeleteKimberley Lam Since it is expensive, No.
ReplyDeleteRalph Mazza Who does the grocery shopping?
My parents raised me to know how to run a household. I appreciate the effort involved. It's intersectional enough by my standards.
ReplyDeleteOh, and the greatest gift to the emancipation of women in the last couple of centuries was the washing machine. For the record, I handle the laundry in our household and have for many years.
Or at least, Kimberley Lam, if I fully understand the word. Which I probably don't.
ReplyDeleteHrm. For it to be radically feminist, I think that the company itself would need to demonstrate a structural breakaway from the standard framework of the wealthy deferring work. Does it? It's not a service I'm specifically familiar with.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, I like these services in theory. For those who can afford it, I agree that it disproportionately frees up time for women, and that's pretty cool. But I'd need more convincing to see it as radical.
(Being expensive certainly creates a barrier where other systemic issues disproportionally puts this service out of reach which, yeah, makes it less intersectional unless the company takes efforts to address those barriers.)
ReplyDeleteHm. I used a term of art without really thinking about it. I retract the term "radical", though I for sure do more cooking from base ingredients with blue apron than I did before -- that is, it also shifts work from women to men.
ReplyDeleteIts feminist. I dunno which, if any category, if falls into.
Heh. Ask two feminists, get three answers.
ReplyDeleteBut is the fact that /you/ do more cooking really indicative of it being feminist? While yes the general food in the home cooking has been a "woman's work" staple, being a /chef/ is certainly a male represented, if not dominated, area and these services seem to portray you more as chef than cook, with fancy recipes and premium ingredients.
ReplyDeleteAndrew Ragland Cool! Laundry machine, dishwasher, vaccuum. No-iron clothing. Air Conditioning.
ReplyDeleteBut, Matt Johnson, who stocks the kitchen? That's where I think it frees up womens time!
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols exactly.
ReplyDeleteRequisite terminology wonkery:
ReplyDeleteFor something to be feminist, does it need to identify itself as such? If it doesn't, but meshes, do we say "supports feminism" or do we need a better line?
If I say "It would work with my feminist agenda", do we care that I'm actually talking about my day planner, which is Google Calendar?
I dunno, I guess I disagree that it's feminist in that these services aren't really aimed at the demographic where that would matter. They are aimed at a section of people who can afford to shop online for food.
ReplyDeleteI don't really think it's an ist either way, but if I were going to label it one, I'd probably put it in the category of "white women feminist". Where it's really only empowering to a very select subset of the group it's purporting to be empowering.
Also, I think decision fatigue is likely a factor. "What's for dinner" "what do we need at the store" "how large a package of this makes sense weighing bulk savings vs rate of spoilage."
ReplyDeleteBlue Apron eliminates all of that.
Also, cost is probably a bit of a red herring. Things are allowed to be middle class things. And blue apron costs about the same or less per meal as what regular groceries cost for middle class people.
I dunno $8-10 a person per meal still seems on the high side for a grocery store visit.
ReplyDeleteRalph Mazza [citation required]
ReplyDeleteI believe there is research supporting the suggestion that at-home grocery-store meals cost more tan we realize due to invisible food waste. It'd be great if you could support the claim.
Also, dinner was delicious: blueapron.com - Cumin-Sichuan Shrimp Fried Rice with Bird's Eye Chile & Marinated Radish
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols there are lots of cost comparison guides out there.
ReplyDeleteHere's one
highya.com - Comparing Costs: Popular Meal Kit Delivery Services vs. Groceries
It's all entirely the wrong question William Nichols. Feminism isn't a state, it's a process. Something doesn't become feminist because of a moment or an idea, at most it becomes feminist and stays feminist as a cumulative action.
ReplyDeleteDoes the fact that someone (three male founders) have found a way to monetize the previously ignored value of women's invisible labour make them feminist? Not necessarily. Is ascribing the value of women's work actual value a feminist act? Maybe? Does it matter that their CIO, CTO, CFO, COO are all male make them feminist? That they don't have gender equity in ther senior management? That they actually might on their Board of Directors? Does the idea that they have reportedly poor labour conditions for their warehouse workers (http://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Warehouse-workers-at-2-billion-food-startup-Blue-9537697.php) who are likely not as white or wealthy as their senior management? Probably not.
Asking if a company is feminist based on a single idea is the kind of questions that narrows an understanding and makes a single story. It's definately not the most feminist way to approach a question, if we agree that the endgoal of feminism is progress rather than righteous state.
(Note, because people online generally get very defensive when I post things like this, I'm not mad, just very clear on this.)
sfgate.com - Warehouse workers at $2 billion food startup Blue Apron complain of stressful, violent conditions, report says
I defer to Mo Jave on this one.
ReplyDeleteAs per usual, so do I.
ReplyDeleteI feel like I just made an offhand comment about the wine and was treated to a proper critique of it.
ReplyDeleteI join the above in basking in the warm glow of Mo being right.
It would maybe be feminist if it didn't have miserable working conditions for the people filling tiny two tablespoon vinegar bottles. Outsourcing injustice isn't feminism; it's capitalism.
ReplyDeleteMo Jave Thank you.
ReplyDeleteYou are essentially an expert, and the following questions are asked in that spirit. Which also means that should you wish to not labor for free in this domain, that's no different than saying you don't want to design a database for free, or edit a larp. I say the previous as a reminder to myself and others that you don't owe us nothing. It is also not meant to denigrate or erase the experience or capabilities of others, which I am simply less aware of.
Putting aside Blue Apron for a moment, the component I was attempting to isolate is monetizing traditionally invisible women's work. That seems likes progress, ascribing value to what was invisible and done without recompense.
Right? Or did I miss something?
Except cooking, at least as a profession, is a male dominated profession. It's only denigrated as 'women's work' when it's done at home. In all the restaurants I have ever worked in (more than a few) the head chef and top sous chefs were men. Occasionally there'd be a female line cook or prep cook but the back of the house is usually a sausage fest.
ReplyDeleteThere's actually a ton of "disruptive" companies that boil down to "chores my mom did for me when I was a kid and now that I'm an adult I don't want to do them myself."
ReplyDeleteBut rather than making the invisible labor visible in a meaningful way, they just provide wealthy people with incremental staff without all of the bother of hiring someone. If it's feminism at all, it's white woman feminism for the most privileged. These companies are mostly created by white men to try to solve the problem of invisible labor in the most profitable and often wasteful ways ever, without the vast majority of people doing that invisible labor benefiting because they lack the means. They just ease the barrier of entry to having servants, and making the servants even more invisible because they're abstracted, so you don't have to think too hard about their working conditions and often lack of benefits.
http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/10/10/my-feminism-will-be-intersectional-or-it-will-be-bullshit/
There's something here my brain isn't wrapping around in your post, Gretchen S..
ReplyDeleteI feel like either I don't understand what you are saying, or I do understand and very much disagree. I'm not sure which one it is, and don't know how to state those differences without being a bullshit mansplainer.
Re: monetizing women's labour as progress
ReplyDeleteThis depends on two things:
1. Does monetizing it cause the labour to be viewed as having value when you don't need to pay for it? That is, does monetizing grocery shopping mean those who do it for free get the recognition they deserve?
2. Who gets the money?
Kimberley Lam To the first, in my household it does! Part of the reason this came up is thinking about the time & energy it'd take to figure out a blue apron meal, and how all of that work is outsourced.
ReplyDeleteTo the second, the lions share to some dude, right? And a much smaller amount to the employees.
William Nichols it's cool that it's helped you realize how much labour goes into stocking and organizing a kitchen. Do you think that's a systemic effect, or a side effect?
ReplyDeleteRe: money going to a dude
Would it be any better if the money went to a woman? I'm not convinced it would be because the structure of it (akin to having servants, as Gretchen points out) still follows a traditional framework. Like, is it more feminist to underpay my employees if my investors and my board of directors is composed of greater than 50% women?
Kimberley Lam issues with "underpay", but that's a digression.
ReplyDeleteHere's a similar question: If absolute poverty is reduced while economic inequality is increased, has progress been made?
What's absolute poverty?
ReplyDeleteKimberley Lam Call it the equivalent of a buck a day. To rephrase the question: If we raise up the lowest standard of living but, in the doing, also increase economic inequality, has progress been made?
ReplyDeleteIf I'm reading him, "Absolute poverty" means "The sum total of poverty".
ReplyDeleteOkay. How was it done? I think if the idea is that feminist progress involves overcoming systemic oppression, then methods matter as much as results. So, in my example of gender parity in higher management, there was no indication of changed methods or systems. So I'd say no progress was observed.
ReplyDeleteYour question is too general for me to address.
( Matt Johnson That's how I read it too. It's just that that makes no sense to me. How do you sum poverty?)
ReplyDeleteI mean this: en.wikipedia.org - Extreme poverty - Wikipedia
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteHi William Nichols, This has been WIP since early this morning around conference calls so probably Xposted with a million others.
I think the answer is: it’s complicated, and pinning it down as a static idea is similarly shortsighted. There’s certainly something worth discussing there – it’s a great place to explore stratification and intersectional displacement, and therefore a great place to learn from, but I’m not sure you’ll get a clear yes or no if that’s what you’re really looking for.
Revealing that women's work that was invisible and therefore unquantified has value for sure, especially if it comes with education and advocacy that is aimed to reveal in tandem the inequity that that situation has caused and continues to cause for women, and that reveal actually serves to reduce inequity for women as a whole.
So - in a very abstract way, maybe, if that's actually happening? There’s many layers to look at it from – conversations in an individual home, ideology, structural movement, cultural capitalism etc. etc.
In my mind, evaluation of the deeper context progress is measured in actual progress, not in notions of abstract progress. And when we talk about the quantification and monetization of invisible labor I think the first place you have to start is by following the money, followed quickly thereafter by following the labor.
Blue Apron isn't the first company to successfully monetize women's labor - there are whole industries and empires based on the notion of monetizing labor, women’s and otherwise often in mixed capacity (like say, slavery, indentured servitude, the segregated service class). Molly Maid is a great example of that, started way back in 1979 by a white professional Canadian couple who saw the momentum of the women’s lib movement and agreed that people (read: like them)would rather spend time in leisure rather than cleaning their home. So they outsourced it. Turns out there’s a market!
Like Blue Apron, it is priced for the upper middle class, lower upper class dual income professional families, who are less likely to be subject to the race wage gap (and less likely to afford in-house help). Like Blue Apron, it is clearly outpriced for lower income families who are both more likely to be subject to the race wage gap and also far more likely to be the service class that works in the lowest paid sector that the work is outsourced from.
A Molly Maid makes just above minimum wage. A Blue Apron packing associate a slight bit higher than that (hourly they make about the per person per meal cost of the Blue Apron package) and arguably a slight bit higher only because unlike Molly Maid which redistributes the labor to a majority female workforce, it is redistributing the labor to a majority male workforce. And as a point of note: beyond the worker replacing the act of labor itself (packing and warehouse associates), the wage of Blue Apron management is on average $91K, majority white and 2:1 male.
Which means that if we follow the money for both Molly Maid and Blue Apron, it comes out of wealthy white households and goes in to wealthy white households in ways that maintain white, and male hegemonic power. The labor goes away from wealthy white women and onto lower class, likely PoC workers.
This certainly works incrementally towards reducing the second shift in white middle-upper class families. This in itself is practical progress, but non-ideological progress, and inequitable progress: It alleviates the disparity of the work without (mostly) actually challenging the idea that men should have been equally participating with it in the first place – it actually could entrench the idea that the privileged do not need participate in the shit work of maintaining a household, and displaces that work out of gender, and into race/gender – a position that hurts on multiple fronts, both in terms of race equity also in the obfuscation that there is no gender problem, when there is, it’s just an intersectional gender problem.
ReplyDeleteThat the work becomes a job that someone is paid for is for sure something, especially in Molly Maid which is taking work that was unlauded, invisible and unpaid and creating a new job with it. That job is statistically accessible and served by lower class, POC folks, which is complicated because those folks are much more likely to be subjected to the race unemployment gap and the jobs are a good thing to combat that, but and also because these jobs afford little opportunity to change economic futures for the employees or their l decendants – they are cycle of poverty jobs. In the case of Blue Apron, that job isn’t a new job, it’s a replacement job – moving jobs from the farm-to-supermarket chain and putting it into a higher priced corporate delivery chain (it Walmartizes the work).
In both cases, this labor displacement does nothing to alleviate the second shift of women who exist in the service class structure of the workers of both companies: No one is buying their groceries for them.
Ha! Mo successfully addresses the race stuff I wasn't able to articulate.
ReplyDelete(Side note: I'm also having trouble articulating thoughts on the fundamentally problematic nature of drawing attention to invisible labour by slapping a price tag on it.)
ReplyDeleteMo Jave Thank you. I'll think through this over the next day or so. I appreciate the work you do for all of us!
ReplyDeleteAnd having read through all the cross posts, I'd encourage you to read my post to help you get to Gretchen S.'s (very astute) comment about reducing the barrier to obtaining servants - it might help you understand what she was pointing at (Gretchen S.feel free to correct me if I'm incorrect there).
ReplyDeleteKimberley Lam Is it because monetizing labour is fundamentally the opposite of humanizing labour, and the insult and injury of invisible labour is not in it's lack of compensation, it's it's lack of humanization (especially for those of us that are in a class that feels the lack of compensation less egregiously and so are Maslow satisfied sufficiently enough to dwell harder on the emotional side of the insult & injury)?
ReplyDeleteOoh, yes, that's likely a chunk of it! The other part is that the market which sets prices is flawed in practice and so the actual value of labour becomes suspect.
ReplyDelete::touches her nose, points at Kimberley Lam::
ReplyDeleteSpot on.
For some reason, I imagined it was Sanju doing that and I can't stop giggling.
ReplyDelete(Also, as a side note, I'd like to say that I'm not thinking harder, nor have done any more historical work to understand this stuff than many of the other women in the thread have, I just have a degree in Cultural Studies which gives me access to articulate it with a particular ease and force. I very much appreciate the gratitude and recognition of work done to support your exploration of this worthwhile topic, but that praise/recognition shouldn't me mine alone! <3)
ReplyDeleteOu Ot It Im. Ou ot it AILED OWN.
ReplyDeleteOh also, side note, as I'd never looked over the Blue Apron website before today. Their marketing photos are fascinating. Did anyone else notice that in all their beautifully lit Ikea/William Sonoma style Blue Apron shots that everyone featured, especially all hands handling the food are white?
ReplyDeleteMo Jave You sure? Main page, bottom, there's a bunch of pictures from twitter that're only 95% white.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Yeah, those are people who've shared their pics with Blue Apron, but every BA originating photo is whitey white town (example below, but look at every pair of perfectly manicured white hands on all the other pages, esp the Market section).
ReplyDeleteblueapron.com - Blue Apron: Fresh Ingredients, Original Recipes, Delivered to You
Agreed, but those twitter users are there with the express permission of BA. Essentially people are doing free shots and BA is using them, and in those shots at least, its not so white.
ReplyDeleteWhich ... I'm not sure if it is better or worse that they'll take free publicity from poc but not use them from central casting.
And all the recipes step by step pics.
ReplyDeleteExactly!
ReplyDeleteMo Jave It's okay! An indeterminate percentage of those hands are actually Chinese, and as we all know, light-skinned east Asians can stand in for any other PoC to demonstrate that racism is over.
ReplyDeleteWhen you get a blue apron box, its filled with ingredients, an info sheet about an ingredient you may not know much about, and recipe sheets. The two person ones have three recipes.
ReplyDeleteI have never once noticed that there even are hands in those pictures, much less than they are suuuuuper white.
The privilege of invisible whiteness.
Kimberley Lam I totally snorted out loud at that.
ReplyDeleteKimberley Lam totally over.
ReplyDeleteWilliam NicholsThey're meant to be your hands! (Or your wife's)
ReplyDeleteMo Jave I know! And the nice interpretation is that I'm the target demographic: DINKs with office jobs.
ReplyDeleteThe less nice interpretation is that I'm the target demographic: white people.
Bingo. And truth is, it's both.
ReplyDeleteI actually found some of the hand photos super interesting, because unlike in most home products, the hands are very often very gender ambiguous. The could code as male or female.
ReplyDeleteSure sure.
ReplyDeleteThere's maybe a difference in targeting white people as a by product of systematic societal bias and targeting white people intentionally due to internalized bias, though.
You know, this is kinda a point moved past but it just occurred to me about the price points and how they are deceptive.
ReplyDeleteBuying your "Seared Chicken & Creamy Couscous with Olive & Raisin Sauce" food prep from Blue apron might only be a couple of dollars more expensive than grocery shopping for it (or even neutral) but average people aren't making "Seared Chicken & Creamy Couscous with Olive & Raisin Sauce". They spend a lot less per person per meal because they aren't trying to replicate such fancy things. That's another point where privilege is showing, if you think the recipes they are providing are in any way related to general family meal prep costs.
Matt Johnson absolutely!
ReplyDeleteOh, gosh, yes. These are not the recipes of my people.
ReplyDelete(Ask me about "Asian-inspired recipes." I dare you.)
Kimberley Lam what are your thoughts on the Asian inspired recipies?
ReplyDelete(duck)
Mmm, I could go for some roast duck....
ReplyDeleteStart here:
https://munchies.vice.com/en_us/article/the-struggles-of-writing-about-chinese-food-as-a-chinese-person
My sarcastic, biting response is: once upon a time, Americans tried to serve chop suey to the Chinese ambassador while under the impression that it was a national dish rather than made-up dish to cater to white folks so the Chinese could make a living under oppression and racism.
ReplyDeleteThe western understanding of Chinese cuisine has not improved noticeably.
Matt Johnson our "standard" dinner, if we have one, is Trader Joe's pasta ($2) + sauce ($2.30) + a veg ($2.5), which usually makes enough for a third lunch portion without veg, and that's twice the sauce we need. That's 2 + 1.25 + 1.25 = $4.5 or so. $2.25 a portion, which is, yes, considerably cheaper than the BA meals.
ReplyDeleteThey are intentionally not comparing against that. Instead, the claim is: Given you were gonna make something fancy ...
Yes, exactly, William. But people seem to gloss over that when they start saying "But it's not that much more expensive than a regular meal!". That's my point. It's not more expensive than fancy food, or eating out, but it's not comparable to average people's lives. That's where it fails to be anything resembling empowering, IMO.
ReplyDeleteIt's probably worse, actually, since the foodie movement has convinced people that they're doing things authentically.
ReplyDeleteMy dad once said, "Authentic Chinese food is made by a Chinese person, so all the food I make is authentic Chinese food."
ReplyDeleteThen he pulled the steak from the grill and put it on my plate next to the potato salad and spinach salad.
Oh god, now I'm looking at a Canadian Equivalent, and their marketing copy is even more noxious:
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/photos/...
Kimberley Lam - So, no Chop Suey in the game night order tonight, is what you're saying?
ReplyDeleteHello Fresh is also down here, Mo Jave. All the positives I have to say about Blue Apron -- fresh foods, teaching my skills, actual skill in ingredient and recipe creation -- do NOT apply to Hello Fresh.
ReplyDeleteAh... that marketing is so telling!
ReplyDeleteLevi Kornelsen I'll eat chop suey if that's the only veg available - but, like, why would you order it as the only veg? :P
ReplyDeleteI think all the pictures on the meals on Blue Apron are the same person. That is, that is one set of hands over and over again.
ReplyDeleteI do find your positive/negative reactions interesting William, as the people that I personally know who have done these services were much more satisfied with Hello Fresh as compared to Blue Apron... different strikes and all that I guess. I have no real room to compare, as Hello Fresh was the only one I tried to try as I got a free week... but something happened with my apartment management and thy didn't give me the box for two days so I didn't actually try it and never really followed up to try again.
ReplyDeleteWould you like a free box of Blue Apron, Matt Johnson?
ReplyDeleteHeck, would anyone participating on this thread? We've got five.
Mo Jave That was a lot of what I was trying to get at, but not very articulately in my case. :)
ReplyDeleteI also don't feel that service work is inherently bad or anything: I've done plenty of it myself. I've also hired gardeners, etc. But there are forms that are more exploitative and forms that are less; a lot of service work does not really pay a living wage, or make it possible to receive afford health care. Some that pays adequately is prone to environmental abuses such as Blue Apron's cold working conditions, or the abuses in on call shifts (very little notice, so the worker is chained to a pager, and might be bounced from morning to swing shift and back in one week) I've seen in some workers.
I actually like the concept of these things, from the point of view of demystifying cooking for people who didn't grow up knowing how. So I feel complicated about it, because I want this service to exist and to teach people how to cook. I feel like the structure is a good entry point, but when I investigated it, it just seemed a bit wasteful for our household: not just the externalities in the labor, which took me aback, but in all of the packaging.
But I already live in a household that already cooks and shops fairly efficiently, and I feel like someone who is usually eating frozen meals because it's easy (and it is, I know! We have been there, too, and go in and out of it) would very much benefit from having an easy way into eating a more structured meal with more vegetables, and the waste is balanced against the fact that they will eat more vegetables and learn how to cook.
I find that the abstracted service tends to do a very bad job of humanizing the people doing the labor, or addressing the basic inequity of invisible labor, but it also makes the barrier to more balanced meals lower.
I'm not sure why labor qua labor should be humanized, rather than automated such that people can get on with being people. I see nothing humanizing about cleaning a toilet, and would rather have a robot do that such that humans have time enough for each other.
ReplyDeleteAnd toilets are a great example, as they are robots that replace servants, and outsource the drudgery outside the home.
ReplyDeleteI think you misread. No one said humanize the labor. Gretchen (and others) said humanize the people doing the labor
ReplyDeleteI did say humanize the labor above, but in context meant: make us aware of the person doing it and humanize our relationship with that person. In general though, humanizing the work itself does have value. When we stratify work and dehumanize the lowest eschalons of it we associatively dehumanize the people performing it.
ReplyDeleteI'm all for a world where the toilets clean themselves (I'm still waiting for my jetpack, dammit!) but everything about living in the world we live in tells me:
- When that time comes it's not going to come for everybody. Somebody will have toilet cleaning robots, and others will still scrub their own toilets
- Even if everybody was saved from the peril of scrubbing toilets, there will be a new lowest eschalon of work to dehumanize, and along with it, a group of people who perform it that we dehumanize with it.
Gretchen S. I'm with you! I don't think there's anything wrong or bad with service work.I recognize it's necessity, and give major props to the people doing it. I feel strongly for those who work in it because pay is poor, it is socially undervalued, and conditions are often hard, but that's a structural problem (mostly).
Also, I do like the idea of the boxes too. I don't know how the actuality of the process works for most people, but I think they could be a middle ground for people who eat out because they don't know what to do, and don't have the advance skills/time allowance to plan food.
I think the boxes have the propensity to change the conversation in the home a bit in good ways. In my house, the plan-shop-cook cycle is connected labour: the person that shops is most of the time the person that plans and cooks - they know what the ingredients in the fridge are for, and they've chosen to make it. I think that's pretty common, especially among DINKs. In much of the stereotypical gender relations of a household that means, by default the woman does the plan-shop-cook cycle. When the box shows up, chosen by someone else, with instructions contained, the plan-shop-cook cycle becomes the cook-only cycle, and is better aligned (to what I decode as) the male experience of the world. The box is potentially as equally mystical for both people and many of the excuses are taken off the table.
I can see families (both DINKs and DIKs) using the unboxing and exploration of recipies as a way to explore the dynamics of cooking - as a family activity. For those families that can use the box that way, I think it's a terrific thing. Transferrance of skills, joint discovery, engagement with the process of food (even if it further divorces us from the origins of our food) and bonding time all in one go. The conversation of the household has incentive to change from who is tagged, to how we get it done.
I do like the eco-promises of the Blue Apron website, and I think there's some potential benefits there. However without investigation into it I also distrust them deeply on a number of accounts (socially following the money, following the labour, measuring the outcome).
So yeah, I'm in no way against the use of Blue Apron, nor thing it's necessarily any more harmful than any other corporate entity I use all the time. My participation here was about evaluation in a robust way and getting to a nuanced version of feminist evaluation.
For examples of valued labour and dehumanized labourers, please see prison labour and any Communist regime that institutes work camps/work placement.
ReplyDeleteOh god yes. Kimberley Lam 100000%
ReplyDeleteOh, I am all for automation, if it's done in a way that saves us from drudgery (sometimes it moves the flavor of drudgery, but anyone who has done laundry by hand generally really appreciates washing machines, for example.)
ReplyDeleteBut I mean humanize the laborer, really, not the labor. If a human is doing it, value them.
I suspect that a pretty common pattern with dinner boxes is that many people look at either the expense or the packaging and wean themselves off of it as the habit internalizes, because it changes "home cooked meal" from a monolithic unknown into a set of concrete knowns, and it also shifts dinner into a more pleasant social experience, or into a chore that's more easily delegated to the less skilled, or both.
I had a housemate who didn't know how to do any household maintenance chores other than possibly vacuuming, as well as a few baking recipes (his mom had done all of the housework.) It was all pretty monolithic to him. But I didn't have a car, so he drove me shopping and I explained what I was thinking as we went, mainly because I felt that everyone should be able to make a balanced meal. So he learned how to pick out produce, plan a menu, cook the menu, etc. (Speaking of the value of labor, we didn't have an electric beater, but whenever I offered to make Death By Chocolate I always got volunteers to hand-whip the cream with a whisk.) He learned bit by bit on our trips.
I see the upside of places like Blue Apron as being a less ad hoc and more planned and documented version of that. It astonished me when I met my friend that there were people in the world who didn't know how to pick out a melon or an avocado. That's because I grew up in a house where that was a skill we were all assumed to need, so I was taught young and thought it was general knowledge.
Likewise, because the labor was still invisible to both of us, we didn't understand how much of the household food system was being quietly managed by me until I became disabled, and how time consuming it was. We were actually unusually equitable because we'd been housemates (a different one from the one I taught to cook; Sweetie started out with more grounding in household skills) so we'd split up tasks based on likes and dislikes, and I cooked but never needed to do the dishes, which I disliked. A while after I had been disabled, Sweetie's blood pressure went up, and instead of eating so many convenience foods, which we'd crept into the habit of because cooking is a lot of work and the cooking fairy was unable to stand, we worked on a way to eat a healthier diet even when I was having a sick stretch. (I just set rules like so many servings of X, because left to his own devices there's no fiber or vitamin A or K in his natural diet, because he's a bit of a super taster and doesn't love the very foods that bring his BP down.) We worked very hard on finding recipes that adapt to these circumstances, and vegetable dishes that he enjoys, so that meals don't feel like penance.
These plans give people who might never have learned how to shop exposure to less processed fresh ingredients, so they learn what they look like, feel like, and taste like closer to the form they appear in the shop. They are a structured introduction to a set of very useful skills, and they teach a habit in a good way: incrementally and with feedback and support. My solution, to individually teach someone, isn't scalable at all. This system adds economy of scale to the process.
It's also probably a bit like getting a present; we're in a bi-weekly cheese CSA and it's always fun to see what's in season. (This time it was ricotta salata.)
So I definitely see why people use it!
But we are privileged ourselves (unusual in families with disability); we can afford to subscribe to cheese from a local farm. (Pleasingly, the yogurt arrives in reusable glass jars.) We pay a little more for the union strawberries, and a lot more for the eggs from pastured chickens. We understand that these options aren't affordable for everyone; our local farmers markets take EBT, and double it (every dollar of EBT gets you two dollars of food) but it's still pricy on an EBT budget, and the working poor generally have trouble getting to them: I didn't shop at the farmers market very much when I was working poor, myself, and I grew up so enthusiastic about produce that I'd spend as much of my allowance on fruit I'd never tried as on other things.
ReplyDeleteGretchen S. your experience sounds much like mine!
ReplyDeleteTL;DR: growing up knowing how to cook, plan a menu, shop, and budget was a gift from both of my parents, who were very skilled at these tasks (they divorced when I was young, so my model of a household included different approaches to cooking.) So I didn't understand that they were not universal skills until I met an adult without them and went through the process of teaching them.
ReplyDeleteI also didn't realize how time consuming the tasks I thought were fun were until Sweetie had to do them, because he doesn't think they're fun. :/ Which makes the time suddenly pop into visibility. (He does enjoy the farmers market, though, so we maximize our food from there.)
Yeah, my parents taught us how to cook from a very young age so it was a bit of a surprise to learn that not everyone knew what to do. I've learned not to take for granted someone knows what I'm talking about when I give them a recipe. Notable but fun mistake: A friend wanted my lasagna recipe so I gave it to him and he used 3 HEADS of garlic because he thought that's what a clove was. It was delicious but definitely vampire proof (which was even more amusing because he was running WoD for us at the time.)
ReplyDeleteSo if I ever give you a recipe that's too dumbed down that's why ;)
Meanwhile, my lawyer mother was too busy to do much more cooking than pasta during the weekday, french toast on christmas. She majored in home ec, as that's what was available in the 60s.
ReplyDeleteDad tried, but things came to a head when my sister said we should order pizza as he just makes burned rice and tabouli. She wasn't wrong. That man can burn rice with the best of them.*
*Also, for reasons that're tangential and strong, don't make fun of my dad.
My mom was amazing. I'm extremely grateful for the skills she gave me - I'm sure it's all transferred skill but some of it is so deep and ingrained it feels like cooking intuition.
ReplyDeleteMy dad made me fried egg sandwiches on Saturday mornings, and I have a strongly nostalgac connection with them. But he wasn't present in the kitchen or much of the household stuff. For the most part my childhood had an inside/outside divide for everything but hero tasks (walls and floors) and the after dinner dishes.
When my mom went back to university when I was 8-13, she did batch cooking, and taught me a handful of easy meals (she had a strong fondness in that era for wok cooking due to Wok with Yan, so I learned a million ways to stir fry). I learned a lot, but hated that era because my Dad did not participate with cooking but overprotectively hovered the whole time I did for fear of fire or me cutting myself. He had started a fire as a kid.
The one thing I have had my mom teach me five bajillion times but have never mastered is how to make turkey gravey. She makes the best gravy in the world, and somehow I'm still intimidated by a roux.
Mo Jave re: roux. Have you tried the oven baking method of making roux?
ReplyDeleteMisha B no!
ReplyDeleteHeat an oven to 350°. Whisk equal parts canola oil and flour in a Dutch oven; bake, uncovered, until it reaches the desired color, about 1½–2 hours for dark brown. There's also Dry roux, where you toast just the flour in a 400° oven to peanut butter color. you can then store it in the fridge and add when needed to your liquid.
ReplyDeletemaybe related: I made a bechamel sauce last night. Because Blue Apron. It was pretty good, and I know how to make it better next time.
ReplyDeleteInteresting!
ReplyDeleteOoh, I like that baking method of making roux. I learned how to make roux from a really funny Internet turkey gravy recipe that described running off and hiding in the closet with turkey neck soup. My mom's pie crust is impeccable (I am too improvisational so my baking is uneven at best) but her gravy is too blonde because she gets impatient with the roux, so I make the turkey gravy now thanks to the power of Internet! I also practiced making roux with a good jambalaya recipe I found on rec.food.cooking.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I keep meaning to sit down and learn the rest of the master sauces. I make an okay bechemel but not by heart; I have to look up the proportions. It's useful enough that I feel like it would be nice to internalize. We just didn't sauce a lot in my house growing up, so I only ate it at restaurants.
My mom thinks omelets are too fussy despite keeping a dedicated omelet pan, so I was very pleased when I learned on my own that omelets and poached eggs just take a bit of practice and are no harder than scrambled or fried; I just had a one-egg omelet with lox trim for breakfast, yum yum.