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THE JOY OF HOME-MEAL ASSEMBLY (p. 2 of 3)

1 | 2 | 3 | Cookbooks | Oct '04

The average Canadian kitchen is quickly descending into chaos, as shown by exhaustive food market research. According to surveys conducted by the consulting firm NPD Canada, 60 percent of consumers spend 45 minutes or less preparing dinner and 42 percent spend 30 minutes or less. "The trend toward shorter cooking times has been slowly building for the last 10 years," says vice-president Marion Chan. Even more telling is a statistic that’s one of Colin Farnum’s favourites: Thirty percent of the population does not know one hour before their usual meal time what they are going to make for dinner.

Because of the time pressures, says Chan, a product’s "convenience factors" (ease of preparation, short cooking time and all-inclusive packaging) are now more important to our purchasing decisions than either taste or nutrition – especially for under-35s. But that doesn’t mean we’re about to resort to the frozen dinner. As Chan puts it, "We really feel the need to participate in meal preparation."

And so we have set out to wring a shred of personal fulfilment from our dwindling kitchen time. As any working professional can tell you, there is an opportunity cost to cooking: The time you spend fussing with the carrot peeler or marinading pork chops is time you could spend closing one last deal. We don’t cook from scratch because we can’t afford to; we need the extra income more than we need to chop our own onions. But we still want the satisfaction of watching those onions fry since the sizzle is the sexiest thing about cooking. What we really want is our own sous-chef to handle the boring jobs.

Nat and Enzo Lanzarotta know this. Their company, the Produce Counter, is Southern Ontario’s very own prep cook. In addition to that broccoli and cauliflower, they also make stir-fry mix, veggie kebabs and various combinations of precut onions, peppers, zucchini and other fresh vegetables. The finely chopped pizza/omelette mix is brilliantly versatile: Toss it in a pot with some canned broth for instant soup, on flatbread with tomato sauce and cheese for quick pizza or even – what the hell! – into Kraft Dinner. Because that’s another joy of HMA: sprucing up packaged foods to create the facsimile of a home-cooked meal.

The Lanzarottas’ business model couldn’t be simpler. Every morning, Nat goes to market and brings fresh vegetables back to his warehouse, where they are hand-chopped (just like mom used to do!) by a battery of female employees. They are then wrapped – never canned or frozen – and sent off to major supermarkets. "We started with carrot and celery sticks, and we just kept coming up with new product ideas, and the supermarkets kept ordering them," says Nat. "The products sell themselves." This summer, to meet the growing demand, the Produce Counter moved from its old 8,000-square-foot digs into a brand new 22,000-square-foot facility.

Nothing exposes the fiction of cooking shows more clearly than the everyday truth of HMA. No one really has time to pipe pea pods with cream cheese. (No wonder Martha ended up in court. Anyone with that much time to cook has to be on the take.) It’s ironic that HMA is emerging as a major market force at a time when we’re also inundated with glossy gourmet food porn and 24-7 food programming. But now television is being forced to adjust. This fall in the United States, the Food Network will air the second season of Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee, featuring great meal ideas that start with a box of frozen meatballs or a roll of Pillsbury dough. Lee defines her philosophy as "70 percent store-bought, 30 percent homemade," and has actually registered the term Semi-Homemade^®. Wise move. The field of HMA personalities is quickly getting crowded, and many HMA cookbook titles read like proposals for new cooking programs.

1 | 2 | 3 | Cookbooks | Oct '04