Spoiled is what we are in the preparation of fine dining with our futuristic kitchen. Cooking ease that we have these days has been taken for granted. Imagine if we still had to gather wood and light the fire before cooking compared to simply pushing a button or two for home dining.
Let's first look at the history of dining preparation.
- Fire went from scorching meat to forging steel.
- Fireplaces in the home did the job of cooking meats and boiling water but very messy and very smoky. Everything tasted and smelled like charcoal.
- Benjamin Franklin in the mid 1700's worked with the forged steel and invented the cast-iron wood burning stove.
- A whole array of cooking ideas came from this stove like different sized pots and pans, bent in half metal coat hanger as a toaster and a kettle that whistles.
- By the end of 1880's electricity started coming into homes; by 1930 most towns and cities had power. The electric appliance invention exploded!
Future dining had changed....
- With electric oven/stove combinations, crude sparking toasters and the icebox (which just had a fan to circulate the cold). Fire insurance claims sky rocketed!
- The 30's to early 1990's the future of cooking and dining with kitchen appliances has become safer and better with extra gadgets added such as On/Off buttons, timers, lights and heat adjusting knobs.
What really sparked up the imagination of electric appliance design was computer technology in the 90's. For creating fine dining in the kitchen we now have....
Toasters - defrost tech., reheat tech., bagel toast tech. and high speed tech..
Toaster ovens - microwave, Infrawave tech. (50% faster and asks for tinfoil), convection tech..
Refrigerators - that make ice instead of ice making the refrigerator.
Kettles - with boil/dry tech. (shuts off automatically after boiling or when water is low).
Whats in the future for home fine dining?
- Microwave oven and LCD television combinations. A futuristic TV dinner.
- Toasters that toasts your bread between 2 panes of glass, literally right in plain view.
- Toasters that imprints (burns) a picture right onto your bread. 12 by 12 pixel resolution of a flower or your Aunt Bertha.
Future dining is going to change the look of the kitchen again with these two items.
- Refrigerators which are hooked up to the internet to give you an interactive message board, digital picture frame and a satellite radio. Also, has a cell phone charger, CD/DVD player and still makes ice.
- My favourite, floating salt and pepper shakers which are suspended in mid-air over a base plate using strong neodymium magnetic repulsion.
We forget that once upon a time fine dining was composed by building a fire, killing, skinning, gutting and throwing the hunk of meat beside a roaring fire, to just pushing a button to roast a turkey, to perhaps verbally ordering a microwave looking appliance in zapping you instantly any dish you can imagine. We really have it easy these days in the art of home dining compared to even 40 years ago, which is not a long time. We are spoiled and should have more appreciation for the humble kitchen appliance.
I wonder what the kitchen will look like in 2060?
What do you think?
