Guest Post: Ilana

Have you tried unlocking a smartphone screen while floury fingers lately? Have you then tried to scroll down a webpage to find the next step in a recipe after you've minced garlic, and then noticed the smell of garlic on your smartphone later? Have you found that your laptop's trackpad doesn't respond to fingers wet with olive oil and balsamic vinegar? 

The technologies available to view recipes while cooking have given cooks dilemmas in this twenty-first century. Before we develop advanced technology that projects recipes onto our subway tile backsplashes, I'd like to reflect on this strange moment in cooking history. (I wonder if a woman in the sixteenth century wondered how books might change the way they cooked. Do you think she could imagine turning pages with soiled hands, or spilling a little olive oil on a book's precious binding? Did books even have bindings in the sixteenth century?)

If we look for options beyond the laptop and the smartphone to view a recipe while cooking, what are we left with? 

First, there's the option of watching one of those fast-motion recipes filmed from an incomprehensible camera angle (right where the cook should be, in fact) that they have been posting on facebook. Cooking from one of these recipes requires either memorization or repeated playback. This is not a good option because it's not really cooking; the recipes are more ways to assemble ingredients than the real live kind of recipes that involve chemical reactions.

Ordering a food subscription service is another alternative. Along with horrible names and over-branding, they come with extremely clear printed directions. (An extra benefit: everything seems to come out of the oven/off the stove/out of the fridge at exactly the same time.) 

If you prefer older-school methods of cooking: you can transcribe every recipe onto a card, but the attendant problem is where to store those cards.

You may dare to cook from an actual cookbook (they cost $40 now! And the quality of the photopaper makes a librarian's heart sing, and for that reason you can also see the disdain on her face when you're checking the book out, because surely this is the same patron who returned Sense and Sensibility sandy after her beach vacation last summer). If you dare carry the book over where the threshold used to be in your now open-layout kitchen, make sure to put a heavy object with a clean bottom in the book's crease to keep it open and keep it far from the burner, your glass of wine, and especially any sand you might have lying around your kitchen. 

If you have a working printer, printing a recipe can work--the major cooking websites now offer printer-friendly options that condense the text and eliminate the photographs--though you will end up with the index card problem of where to store a mess of once-folded 8.5" by 11" sheets of paper on the off-chance that you actually like the recipe and want to keep it. And printing for every meal seems unfriendly to our environment.

Since the interface between smartphones and the real world of cooking is so difficult to manage, you might try redeeming the smartphone by calling your mother on it; if she walks you through the steps, she might also keep you company while you do the dishes.

My best advice, though, is to take full advantage of the recipes that still come on the sides and backs of cereal boxes. (Taking care to remember that it is in the interest of the cereal company to sell you as much cereal as you can buy, and therefore be suspicious of the serving sizes. Similarly, refrain from Cap'n Crunch and Fruit Loops box recipes.)  Plus, you always have at least one of the ingredients!