Generation Eats

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Generation Eats beats at your eyeballs with its strident, aggressive
style. The author describes it as “a place where food, film and funny
collide.” Strip away the hype and we’re left with 80 recipes with
attitude, matched to videos. Conventional ideas about meals as an
occasion for conversation collide with the book’s basic concept that
food and videos go together. The fall-out from that collision is an
in-your-face vocabulary. And the conviction that if it’s loud, hot, or
suggestive then it must be cool.

In Rosen’s kitchen you don’t discard something, you trash it. You
don’t place food in a dish, you dump it there. Or in a rare gentler
mood, plant it. At times the hip language thing looks suspiciously
forced. Does anyone, of any generation, say “side it up” or “cup
of joe?” This exercise in atmosphere-building may be a false front,
’cause under all the Gen–X pretences Rosen does have a strong
message to deliver about healthy cooking: it can be fun. And it can be
done.

The recipes, when you find them, rely heavily on international fads
(couscous, pad thai, dal, tabouleh, anti pasto, hummus, stuffed
jalapeсos, bruschetta) offset with comfort foods (mashed potatoes,
apple crisp, potato salad, meat loaf, rocky road squares).

Generation Eats is directed at the person who is approaching the
kitchen for the first time and, if spooked, will return to take out. It
assumes that any meals resulting from the recipes will be consumed while
watching a video. It should be popular on university campuses.