"I'm crazy-busy." "I've got a hundred million things to do today." "I'd really like to go see that movie … maybe I'll have some free time in a couple of years to rent it."
These are just some of the things people are saying to express how busy they are. Lately, people with time are regarded as kings--with envious stares or untrusting body language--while the rest of us have to break out our old algebra textbooks to calculate whether or not we have time to meet a friend out for a drink. Our social lives are the most obvious victims of our busy schedules but they're not the only ones. Home-cooked meals have joined the northern hairy-nosed wombat and the snow leopard on the Endangered Species List.
I remember a time when eating three meals a day around the dinner table was normal and dining out, or picking up fast food, was a special treat. In time I've found that the roles have reversed, not only for myself, but also for urban cultures in general. After all, there seem to be more of us in the drive-thru lanes after work, in the frozen foods section of the supermarket at night, or even darting in and out of soup and sandwich shops, also known as "quick casual" dining, during the day.
As time becomes more precious to Americans, so goes our freedom to spend hours in the kitchen preparing the five-page recipes passed down by our grandmothers. Today, meals are packaged and advertised to us with time in mind; just think of how many commercials you've seen this week that involved a microwave or a hungry individual "on the go." That is, if you've had time to watch TV this week.
The food service industry classifies these time-friendly alternatives to home cooking as HMR's, or Home Meal Replacements; they include frozen dinners, fast foods, Chinese take-out, and cereal bars. These meal options have been around since the first McDonald's, however they've grown in popularity, necessity, and marketability within the past two decades. Supermarkets sport bakeries, rotisseries, grills, and salad bars to entice the nearby bustling community inside their doors. Instead of spending hours roasting and basting a chicken at home, you can stop at the grocery store and pick up an entire ready-to-eat chicken. In fact, if you can get home before the rest of the household, you can throw the bought chicken in the oven, chuck the bag and receipt, and take credit for its juicy goodness … not that I've done that.
This week I asked several Chicagoans what they thought of fast foods and the growing need for HMR's. Jeremy Harris, a twenty-something college student studying restaurant management, replied with this, "I would say that Americans have really increased their fast food intake in order to save time for work and relaxation. It's becoming a large part of American culture. Here in Chicago, the fast pace leaves little time for home-cooked meals. I would rather just grab something quick, than spend time grocery shopping, and preparing a meal." Harris's view was shared with a majority of those interviewed. In fact, the only people to claim that they still spend a great deal of time preparing home-cooked meals for their families were people over 50. According to the National Restaurant Association, approximately 40 percent of our food dollars are spent away from home--on HMR's.
One meal that has most assuredly suffered from the tug-of-war between time and cooking is breakfast. I can't remember the last morning I spent more than five minutes in the kitchen; the thought of mixing up pancake batter or cooking greasy bacon and sausage hardly appeals to me in those first hours of the day. I remember when Pop Tarts first showed up on my TV screen and in the aisle of my local supermarket; I went from making scrambled eggs and toast in the morning to grabbing a Pop Tart on my way out the door. Now, it seems like we have as many breakfast bars as we do cereals. These breakfast alternatives are packaged in an "on the go" friendly bag or box, with little to no preparation time, so that we can envision ourselves snacking away in the car or on the train. I wouldn't be surprised if future minivans came equipped with toasters under the armrest.
A multitude of cookbooks have been published within the past few years that claim to have time-efficient recipes. Older cookbooks have longer preparation times--if they give preparation times at all--than modern cookbooks. Food product Web sites have even begun to add recipes, utilizing their product, with short preparation times. I surfed Red Gold's Web site, www.redgold.com, and discovered a section called "no time to cook" with their ideas for quick meals using Red Gold tomato products.
Many nutritionists agree that not having time to cook is understandable but the health risks come with not having time to eat. As long as Americans are eating healthy HMR's, it really doesn't matter if we're not spending hours in the kitchen cooking them ourselves. With that in mind, we can expect to see a continued increase in quick foods and a decrease in good old-fashioned home cooking, which is fine with me, considering my habit of burning anything that requires more than three steps--where one of them is preheating the oven.
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