For the past several decades, some cultural observers have claimed that home-cooking was a dying art.  As Americans became more dependent upon working long hours, and fewer had either the desire or the opportunity to choose homemaking as a career, living upon convenience foods and restaurant fare became the status quo.

But a quiet trend has been gathering speed in the past two or three years, as more people—most notably, 20- and 30-somethings—learn, or relearn, their way around a kitchen.

The economic recession, of course, has recently added fuel to this trend.  Eating in restaurants and spending more money on less and lower quality food in exchange for convenience has lost its appeal for many consumers.  But even before the recession, those who kept track of culinary trends were noting higher sales of basic cookbooks and cooking utensils as Americans began to restock their kitchens with the necessary supplies to make a home-cooked meal.

Economic considerations aside, many experts believe that this new generation of cooks has several reasons for rediscovering from-scratch methods.  One is simply the higher quality of home cooked food.  Another is the increasingly great importance placed upon educated food choices.  Even when preparing decadent meals cooking from scratch offers the chef complete control over ingredients.