| Cooking in Cars | Toronto Star Wheels - 05/01/04 | |
Or did you nod enthusiastically in agreement with BMW’s announced support of a Canadian no speed-limit autobahn?
Both pretty good April Fool’s pranks on BMW’s part. But did you hear about their full-page ad in British paper, The Guardian, boasting of new SHEF™ technology, which uses satellite technology to link your car’s controls to your home’s oven, and comes complete with an “oven cam” for your car’s dashboard?
Gullible gourmets checking out the website (www.anewwaytocook.co.uk), eager to try the SHEF™ (Satellite Hypersensitive Electromagnetic Foodration) recipe for Chicken á la M42, were treated to a message that informed them of the ruse and invited them to view real BMW technology.
What is this fascination with combining cooking and cars? Every futuristic vehicle ever dreamt up seems to have included some sort of cooking device. One episode of the television show Futurama featured a Beta Romaro complete with such essentials as a refrigerated margarita maker and dashboard Pop-Tart toaster.
Today it seems some car owners aren’t content with modern kitchen conveniences staying in the kitchen, and they’re not about to wait for factory-installation either. Witness the speeding gourmand, caught last August by the OPP, with his lunch simmering away in a plugged-in crock-pot. Seems he knew enough to rig up a slow cooker, but not to renew his license plates. The last thing already distracted drivers need is to be braising and basting while navigating through traffic.
A few years back, Ford and Maytag conjured up Windstar Solutions, a concept minivan equipped with a refrigerator, microwave, hot and cold cup holders, a wet/dry vacuum, a washer and a dryer, plus a trash compactor.
Okay, I’ll grant you the trash compactor and wet/dry vac do seem like logical additions to a family car. But please, spare me the washer-dryer, I will not fluff, fold, and chauffeur.
Interestingly, heated and cooled cup holders do now exist in the 2004 Cadillac Escalade ESV Platinum Edition, and while not technically a fridge per se, several car models do sport air-cooled glove boxes.
I know many drivers would welcome a refrigerator but I’m haunted by visions of a ravenous teenager hopping into my car, yanking open the fridge door and peering in for what seems like an eternity, only to whine “There’s never anything good to eat in here”, followed by the inevitable, “Oh by the way, we’re outta milk”.
Regardless of what’s invented, I am not stocking, and cleaning, another refrigerator. Around here when we need in-car refrigeration, (for example this very weekend when a homemade cheesecake is being delivered to carb-craving, exam-stressed Ryerson U students), the old ice-packed cooler plunked in the backseat works just fine.
One silly trend a few years back brought new meaning to the question: What have you got under the hood?” when people actually started cooking on their cars, using the heat from the engine. Despite the fact that nobody really relished dining on meals made on the manifold, entire cookbooks sprang up with mile-by-mile how-tos. Even today there’s a television commercial featuring a couple of guys driving around while their mac and cheese simmers beneath the hood.
Practically speaking, do we really need engine-seared food, a microwave embedded in the dashboard, or even a voice-activated car-to-oven monitoring system? With modern homes already equipped with labour-saving devices, including a plethora of pre-programmable appliances, not to mention the availability of decent take-out, all this talk of in-car cooking technology begs the question why? I’m not saying people wouldn’t use it, I’m asking do we really need it? Think about it, won’t the next logical consequence to all this then be in-car bathroom fixtures?
Vehicular kitchen appliances are a half-baked idea that must never come to fruition.
No sir, if it can’t be cooked, cooled, or crammed into their hands before they climb aboard, then my passengers aren’t going to be eating it in my car. I am not getting outta the kitchen, only to find myself right back in another one when I slip behind the wheel.