A real chef writing about Blue Apron and Co:

My deepest problem with meal kits, however, is that I worry they’re not teaching people how to cook, but are instead teaching them how to prepare meal kits. The recipe cards that came with some meal kit boxes sounded like word problems, full of measurements, times and temperatures, and if there’s anything I hate it’s this insistence on turning cooking into math.

Hear, hear! I love making long, complex dishes that have a million ingredients but this format just kills the joy for me.

And also this:

Chefs sample their dishes multiple times as they cook because cooking happens by taste and by eye, not by time and temperature.

YES! You can’t cook well by disengaging from the process and placing a wall of numbers between you and what’s supposed to be a sensuous experience. Psychoanalysts recommend that very brainy people pick up cooking as a hobby to awaken the beaten-down intuitive, sensuous part of their psyche.

I just received a large package from an organization called “Take Control of Your Diabetes” addressed to the former owner of our house. We’ve owned it for over 3 years, by the way. Three years! And he still hasn’t managed to find a way to redirect his diabetes supplies to his new address?

Now I get to schlep the box all the way to campus again to give it to him. This has been going on for years, folks. It’s not cute any more. And yes, of course, I told him to redirect, why does everybody ask me that? 

I’ve stopped passing along the magazines and the envelopes that look like promotional lit but I can’t not pass along diabetes supplies. A week doesn’t go by without me getting something in the mail for these people.

A colleague from Media Studies is trying to talk to a future student. 

“So what do you say, CNN or BBC?”

The student just stares. 

“You like Fox News, maybe?” 

The student stares. 

“Newspapers? Washington Post? WSJ?”

The student stares. 

“What kind of things do you like to read about?” the professor perseveres. “Local news or international?”

The student stares. 

“Is there a journalist you like?”

Suddenly, the student beams. 

“Rush!” he says. “I’m going to get a journalism degree and be like Rush.”

The professor just stares. 

“I like radio. Do you offer degrees in radio journalism?”

The professor stares.

At this time of day, the park is completely deserted. People will start appearing with kids by 11 am. But the sun will be too harsh by that time, so we’ll leave. 

I can’t express how much it bugs me to open a Spanish newspaper and find the dumb story about Trump’s comments on Mika’s facelifts. Why are the Spanish readers supposed to care? How can anybody give a flying fuck? And this is after the similarly inane story about doctored Times covers had colonized people’s minds for days. 

Journalism is dead. There’s nothing but tabloid gossip any more.