Modern life is a never-ending sequence of wonders. I have just stayed in an expensive apartment where the over-sixfoot host had to shoehorn himself into a tiny square bathtub. Why is it that people get bigger and bigger whereas the things they use get smaller and smaller? And why is it that when, for the first time in history, thanks to modern food preserving and distributing techniques, it is no longer necessary to cook, people produce and buy more cookbooks thart ever? By cooking, I mean getting a dish together from various ingredients as in times past. What modern cooking consists of is plain heating food that, except for palatability, in practically all cases could be consumed as is.
Equally interesting is the fact that convenience foods are no longer simple. I am speaking of frozen convenience foods which are the foods of the present and the future, leaving canned goods far behind. Several grocers have told me that canned foods are largely bought either in small cans, for one or two helpings, or in large-economy-size ones, and that as an integral part of the American diet they are passé. (With the exception of things that don’t freeze well, such as tomatoes and mushrooms, some fruits and, of course, soups which are cheap to can and expensive to freeze.)
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