While waiting my turn at the grocery store one day, I scanned the magazine racks filled with the latest issues of Good Housekeeping, Shape, Ladies Home Journal et. al., where anything that had to do with food was heralded as Easy! and Fast!

Thumbing through the pages, I saw: the usual pastas and sandwiches. One writer had taken the brave step of adding chicken to his pasta (revolutionary!). Other writers boasted that their recipes were hassle-free and could be made almost with one’s eyes closed (dangerous!).

Fine, but what if I want MORE?

What if I like to dream up an extravagant menu for an upcoming dinner party, then write my grocery list organized not only by sections of the store, but by the different stores I’d need to visit in order to get everything?

What if I want to spend the day of that dinner party in the kitchen, with nothing but the sound of my Wusthof knife on the cutting board as my soundtrack?

What if I suddenly feel the inspiration to create an amuse bouche for my guests to nibble during pre-dinner drinks?

What if I take a photo of my dish before serving?

What if I revel in the glow of accolades cried out between mouthfuls of my food?

WHAT IF I LOVE TO COOK?

So what about people like me? Even when I turn to the Food Network, a channel devoted to food and how to cook it, I’m deluged with dumbed-down recipes and personalities (not chefs) extolling the virtues of speed and pre-made ingredients.

Where’s Julia Child? That woman knew her way around a duck. Has Martha Stewart been banished too? Though her manner was a bit standoffish, her voice soothed me and I respected how she valued presentation.

Sometimes I wonder if we’ve lost our way. Sure, here in the Bay Area and more specifically Napa, we wax poetic on the latest seasonal produce and seek out cult heirloom beans. Local chefs are our version of celebrity. People around here know what arugula is.

But what about the rest of the country? More specifically, what about the next generation?

I understand that budget cuts have sliced most of the home economics classes out of our educational pie, but where are our kids going to learn how to cook if we can’t even be bothered to do it? Will they grow up on pizzas and other takeout?

I worry that developments in food processing will continue to result in “beef” that’s only 35% of something that actually came from a cow. I worry that prepackaged foods filled with things I can’t pronounce will take over our pantries. I worry that speed will be chosen in favor of flavor. I worry that sitting down to a home-cooked meal will become a novelty rather than the norm. I worry that people will forget how, or just not even learn, to cook.

I love cooking because it’s my chance just to make something beautiful -- something I constructed with my own hands, that sustains others and tastes delicious. I hope someday those people who "don’t have enough time" to cook will try to make the time and discover what’s quickly becoming a lost art.