Cooking from scratch is hard or simple, depending

RECENTLY I WAS speaking with a group of new parents and making googly-eyes at their babies, when one mom asked me, "Do you cook dinner from scratch?"

I nearly spit up, because it's the kind of question with no good answer. Say yes, and you're an overachiever; say no, and you don't care sufficiently about your family. I hemmed and hawed because I wanted to seem like a regular guy. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I didn't know what "cooking from scratch" meant.

The question got me thinking about Tim Harford, who is neither a chef nor a food writer; he's a British economist. In his book, "The Undercover Economist," however, Harford made a trenchant observation about one of my favorite forms of sustenance, the cappuccino:

"Your coffee is intriguing to the economist for another reason: He doesn't know how to make a cappuccino, and he knows that nobody else does, either. Who, after all, could boast of being able to grow, pick, roast and blend coffee, raise and milk cows, roll steel and mold plastics and assemble them into an espresso machine, and, finally, shape ceramics into a cute mug? Your cappuccino reflects the outcome of a system of staggering complexity. There isn't a single person in the world who could produce what it takes to make a cappuccino."

OK, fine, but cappuccinos require high-pressure water and steam. What about something more simple and ancient, like a loaf of bread? Let's turn to William Alexander, whose new book, "52 Loaves," follows his quest to reproduce his favorite peasant bread at home. "I realized that this seemingly simple, earthy, non factory-made loaf of bread could not in fact have been made without dozens of complex, sophisticated machines . . . my loaf of 'rustic' bread is so far down the supply chain that I can't see the beginning of it."

I thought about brownies (there's a whole lobe of my brain dedicated to this subject). I've been known to lament the ubiquity of brownies made from a mix, when it is so easy to make them "from scratch." That is, to combine chocolate, flour, sugar, butter and eggs, all produced by somebody else. With boxed brownies, someone has done 99 percent of the work for you. With brownies from scratch, it's 98 percent.

What would it take to truly make brownies from scratch? It would probably be impossible; at best, it would take years of my life.

The more I thought about this, the happier it made me. I'm embedded in a community in which other people — people I don't even know — will do 98 percent of the work of making my "homemade" brownies, and I get to take all the credit! You've heard of the invisible hand? These are the invisible sous chefs. By any reasonable historical definition, nearly everything that comes into our kitchens is "convenience food." We get into arguments and passionate calls for action over this tiny sliver of the full spectrum between "from scratch" and "prepared foods."

To me, there's no moral dimension to cooking from scratch. I like to put in my 2 percent of the job, because I enjoy both the process (melting chocolate) and the results (brownies). If you'd like to outsource your 2 percent, why should this bother anyone? I have friends and family who like to knit. I have never heard them say that every American should make their own clothing. I don't see why food should be any different.

All of these pseudo intellectual gymnastics were making me hungry, so I flipped open Karen Salomon's book, "Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It," which is the least intimidating kitchen DIY book of all time. It features recipes for homemade Pop-Tarts and marshmallows, crispy fried potato chips, and various infused liquors.

"Cooking from scratch is making something that you would not normally make," Solomon told me. "One thing that I've always tried to be sensitive about with 'Jam It' is, it's not a manifesto by any stretch." Which is probably why I like it so much. (She also would like you to know that she's working on the sequel, and it includes alcoholic Popsicle.)

Solomon is, however, a pickling proselytizer. "The simplest pickle is a jar, vinegar, water, vegetables," she said. "You can put that together in four minutes and eat it in three days, doing no work whatsoever. That's definitely the gateway food craft."

Why should people do this, though? I pressed her. She took a breath. Surely the polemic was coming. "It's fun," she said. "It's entertainment. It's a project." OK, never mind.

So, to the mom who asked me whether I cook from scratch, yeah, I guess so. It won't save the world, but it's a great hobby.