Are people who cook their own party food a dying breed?
Certainly in New York. We have the same kind of affluence that we did in the ’50s and ’60s, but both members of a couple have to work, so there’s no time to cook. They have people do it for them, as in France. Today we can buy so many things. The difference in takeout and delis is extraordinary. You can get good paté; you can get good bread. You don’t have to do it yourself. And you don’t have to serve gourmet food. We used to do hamburger parties and on the Fourth of July, we served fried chicken and hot dogs. Some people have to have everything fine, but I don’t worry about that. I use my restaurant china, commercial stuff. I do have good silver, but I piece it out with my crummy everyday things. So the era of competitive cooking is over? Women can’t do that anymore because that’s when women were exclusively in the kitchen and men out at work. So competitive cooking was a way of professionalizing women’s work. When the system broke up in the ’70s, as women went first to male schools
