Bake Sale Bashing

Hello everyone! Watch for the name and design of these blogposts to change sometime over the next few weeks. You’ll start seeing “Respect Food Roles” as the title of the blog and the header will change to something food-related. I’m excited about the new content that I’ll be publishing. So don’t be freaked out if things look different soon. I’ll tell you exactly when the change will take place so you’ll know what to look for.

Okay. On to the post for today. This morning I was listening to one of the podcasts I follow, “The Briefing” with Dr. Al Mohler, the president of Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and he was sort of bashing an article in the New York Times by Deb Perelman, the author of the monster cooking blog “Smitten Kitchen.” I follow SK obsessively. Indeed, it’s one of only four cooking blogs I do follow of the millions out there. (The others are Pinch of Yum, Sally’s Baking Addiction, and Half Baked Harvest.) While I truly admire and respect Dr Mohler, I think he sort of missed the point of the article, or got off on the wrong tangent, or foot, or something. (You can listen to his comments starting at the 17:20 time marker. He’s saying that there’s “a sense of loss” over the fact that women aren’t home in the kitchen so much these days. At least, that’s what I think he’s saying. I went back and re-listened to the segment, and his meaning is not all that clear. But if we’re suffering the pangs of nostalgia over changing women’s roles, well, I’d strongly advise going back and reading Proverbs 31.) Deb (if I may call her that) makes two trenchant points, one relevant to this post and the other not so much. The not-so-much point is that women are expected, just by virtue of being women, to cram in brownie-baking at midnight in order to deliver the goods for the sale the next day. She mentions the fact that potential First Ladies are always asked for their favorite cookie recipe. (I’m personally quite fond of Laura Bush’s Cowboy Cookies.) Well, fair enough. When (not if) we have a female President, are they going to ask her that question? I would hope not. Maybe the First Husband will be asked for his favorite barbecue technique, or some such.

Anyway, the main point for me in Deb’s article is one that I’ve made myself: the economics of bake sales, as with most/many fundraisers, do not make sense. You spend your money and time on making something (or you just spend your money and buy a bag of Chips Ahoy or Pecan Sandies) and then donate the items so that other people can spend their money buying food they don’t need. It would be better all around if the donor and the buyer just wrote a check. And, in light of my new emphasis on respectful roles for food, it can be said that those bake sale items almost certainly don’t fulfill either of them:

1) Food as fuel, and

2) Food as celebration and community.

Sure, it might happen that the bake sale item is used mindfully for a party, but let’s face it: Most of the time, that paper plate with the colored plastic wrap over it is going to end up on the kitchen counter for people to sn-a-a-a-a-ck on. Once in a while, though, fundraising events do indeed fulfill proper food roles. Here’s what I wrote back in January of this year, before I had even formulated my new respect-food-roles rules:

Just to prove that I’m not a totally anti-social misanthrope, I will say that sometimes fundraising events are actually social events in disguise and that this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I would never, ever dispute with, say, the local fire station that holds a pancake breakfast once a year. Sure, people could just give money, but events such as that help get people acquainted and involved in the community. So the breakfast serves a dual purpose.

And, of course, the dual purpose is found in the two role rules above.

So, as I head in this sort-of-new direction for these posts, here’s a question I’m going to ask myself and would encourage you to ask yourself:

What’s this food for?