The New York Times has a delightfully elitist article about the latest in kitchen gizmos and baking technology.  For example, much is made of the "pizza bump," a semi-circular appendix on the side of microwaves and toaster ovens so that you can bake a frozen pizza in there.

As intrigued as I am by the "perfect turkey" button on a stove, I think most of us can agree that these extra buttons and doo-dads are mostly useless.  With very few exceptions, I doubt that most people use 85% of the options on their microwaves or ovens.  

The problem of course is that every oven has to improve over last year's model, and it has to stand out from the competition.  Having a "perfect turkey" button is a great way to flag down shoppers, and it gives them an excuse to buy.  ("But I need a "perfect turkey" button," the shopper says with a straight face.)

The first fallacy this article has to overcome is that there is any correlation between "the extra gadgets and functions we stick on our stoves" and "things consumers actually want."  I mean, heck, I know for a fact that my microwave has a dozen buttons, but I can only name three of them.  (I just went to check.  It has a "muffin/roll" button, for one thing.  What could that possibly be for?  Who puts a muffin in the microwave?)

Nevertheless, that doesn't keep the reporter from working up the advances being proclaimed at this trade show into an entire movement in the field of home cooking.  Call it the opposite of Michael Pollan.  "Index finger cooks" is the term coined by the article, which is clever enough, I grant you.

Naturally though, real life is rarely so tidy.  I cook 80% of my meals from scratch by hand.  10% of my meals I buy at restaurants, and the other 10% are "one button meals."  Microwave popcorn, for the most part.  And you'd better believe I use the "popcorn" button!  In fact, I dare say the "popcorn" button is the best thing ever to happen to microwave ovens.

Clearly, not everyone cooks delicious homemade from-scratch food for every single meal.  Even the best of us sometimes just want to stick a pile of pizza rolls in the oven and call it a day!  But another market that the author overlooks is children.  You can teach a child to stick a pizza in the toaster oven and click the "pizza" button.  It's harder to explain that "you need to preheat it to X, and then cook it for Y minutes, and be sure to turn it off when you're done."  

Of course, some of us managed to microwave our own meals just fine when we were kids.  But I have to tell you, if my childhood microwave had had a "frozen dinner" button, it would have saved me a lot of scorched and/or frozen Lean Cuisines!  

If you cook a preponderance of meals simply by pushing a single button on your microwave, then it may be time to reassess your eating habits.  But I don't agree that this proliferation of single-purpose buttons is going to lead to the Downfall of Society.

Creative Commons-licensed image courtesy of Flickr user agsaran