by Nikki Everett

Created on: November 23, 2009

While shopping for some ingredients for a cake, it became apparent that shopping at more than one store would be required to actually find them. It seemed odd because the ingredients were staples in holiday cooking. When I finally did locate the candied fruit, there were only a few canisters as opposed to a whole holiday display like years past. Yet, right beside the candies were bins overfilled with boxes of pre-mixed cake, cookie, and bread mixes - Just add milk, eggs, and oil - You know the kind.

Welcome to the world of convenience which has quickly eradicated the need for knowing the pleasure, skill, and art of cooking. And before you ask, you do not need to know how to cook in order to use a pre-mixed box of ingredients and follow simplistic directions. Contrary as it may seem, cooking home made and from scratch is nothing akin to rocket science. Just like anything in life, it merely takes lots of practice.

All that practicing shouldn't be hard in the customized kitchens of today which look like something out of a Julia Child(famous before the days of Emeril) dream. The modern day kitchen comes equipped with convection ovens, microwaves, indoor bar-b-que pits, granite countertops, and warming bread drawers which are lost on the average consumer. They would prefer to open up a premixed box of food rather than to actually measure out ingredients and follow a recipe - If they even know how. Surely measuring spoons are somewhere in that new fangled cooking space.

Having the latest and greatest appliances gives guests the feeling that their host or hostess is capable of turning out a gourmet meal even if they can hardly boil water. Be sure to have a television installed so you can be conveniently watching the Food Networkwhen someone drops in unexpectedly. Those shiny new kitchens just hold new fangled devices in case the need to use them arises. One's money would be better spent on vending style machines that dispense pre-made dinners and fast food microwaveable snacks with just a little touch of a button. Before long, aspirations of being like Emeril Lagasse would be replaced with ambitions of being more like Jane Jetsonwith time to spare for things like botox injections and shopping at Wal-Mart. Otherwise, one might actually have to learn how to cook, and let's face it, who has time for that? - Now that's really putting priorities in order.

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