Look Mom, recipes! I told you it was useful!

Years ago, when I was a Star Trek-and-anything-technology-obsessed 7th grader, I had a particular obsession with the young and emerging market for personal computers. (Yeah, so what’s changed right?  I’m no longer into Star Trek.  Other than that, nothing.)

Computers were fascinating and inscrutable devices.  Mysterious black boxes, capable of potentially calculating anything, mathematics and intelligence solidified.  That was the image anyway, perpetuated by movies, most memorably at that time by the HAL 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

So when Radio Shack (my favorite place in the world at that time in my life) released the TRS-80 Model I, I was of course, obsessed.  For $599, you could have your very own.  A 1.77 mhz CPU, 4KB of RAM (eventually increased to 16kb), and a black & white 12-inch monitor. Really cool things like a cassette tape drive to store programs on were extra, of course. What dark secrets would it hold? What arcane knowledge could be obtained by typing the right commands, by knowing what questions to ask the Oracle of the Blinking Cursor?

“What would it be useful for?” This was my Mom’s question. And a good one too. We grew up very low-income. $599 to solve a problem we didn’t have was just not going to happen.

My only answers to her were the sorts of suggestions that computer companies were offering to a mostly skeptical public, long before connecting to the rest of the world revealed a personal computer’s real potential. Business owners were an easier target; automating accounting or inventory were tempting ideas.  But for most people the answers were something along the lines of “balance your checkbook” or “organize your recipes”.  And that was about all I had to offer my Mom, too. 

Of course, Mom already had cookbooks, and a plastic box with some index cards to write recipes on could be had for a few bucks. And what was wrong with using a paper check register?

Years later my parents had their own PC, and even had broadband before I did.  My obsession paid off, as I’ve put together two PCs for them.  You could say that I eventually won that argument.  Even so, I’ve only met one person (Lynn) who ever bothered keeping recipes on a computer.  But now it’s come full circle and I can really say I told you so.

“Personal Trainer Cooking” for the Nintendo DS is the ultimate answer to “why do I need to keep recipes on a computer” skepticism. For those not in the know, the Nintendo DS is a handheld gaming system.  Lynn got one, with Personal Trainer Cooking, as an early Christmas gift from her youngest son. As good a cook as she is, she’s still excited about it. Want to make enchiladas? The “game” gives you a grocery check list. Then it reads the cooking instructions to you so you can work hands free. It’s also voice-activated, so you can say “continue” after each step is completed to go on to the next. Don’t know how to dice onions? Ask what that means and get an illustrated guide to onion dicing. And how much for this feat that would have been possible in 1977 only if you were watching Star Trek reruns? About $150 for the game and the Nintendo DS. Forget childhood dreams of a TRS-80. This is having your recipes organized by HAL 9000. 

So there you go Mom, that’s what you can do with it. Can we have Chicken Marsala when we visit?