AOW November 14

     Technology plays a role in nearly everything and it would seem, technology even has control in the kitchen.  With Thanksgiving quickly approaching, many people are trying out recipes and marking pages in their cookbooks.  However, it could be that the cookbooks we have used for years aren’t as informative and useful as once believed.  New cooking apps for the iPad are in many ways hinting that “books as kitchen tools are on the way out” (1).
      Julia Moskin has been a writer for the New York Times Dining Section since 2004.  She began writing about food in 1993 as a restaurant critic for the New York Press. She has co-authored nine cookbooks and has written for the magazines, Saveur and Metropolitan Home.
     The piece was written in response to new cooking apps that are available for purchase.  The new apps include, Baking with Dorie, Jamie Oliver’s 20 Minute Meals and Professional Chef. These apps animate cooking instructions. The book The Geometry of Pasta has an app in which “motion is added to the mix”: pasta butterflies flutter into boiling water, the word “Parmesan” is itself grated into a bowl, and the word “prosciutto” is sliced into slivers (2). 
     The purpose of the piece was to not only inform the audience of all the new cooking apps available, but also show that slowly but surely, cookbooks could become a thing of the past.  It is reasonable to say that eventually everything becomes obsolete with new and advancing technology making almost all aspects of life easier and more efficient.
     The rhetorical devices used in this piece include an appeal to ethos, pathos and logos and also description.  Moskin established logos as well as pathos by quoting people who have used the app before. For example Bob Huntley said, “I struggled with getting the whole recipe downloaded into my head. I kept having to go back to the page, and the interface was so difficult to manage” (3).  Also,  “You can’t hear the onions sizzling in the pan, or how to move your knife through a salmon fillet, or see how to put your pasta machine back together in a book.”  By embedding these thoughts into the article, the audience can connect and relate to those same annoyances and struggles with using a cookbook and can see logically that using a cooking app is the best option.  Moskin also describes with much detail what these apps have the ability to do which establishes credibility.
       The audience intended to read this article are readers of the New York Times and also anyone interested in or just pondering the efficiency of the new cooking apps.
     The author did accomplish her purpose.  She used quotes from various sources, included detailed information but still made the article interesting and fun.  Maybe instead of a cookbook for mom’s Christmas gift, I’ll consider a cooking app instead!

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/dining/are-apps-making-cookbooks-obsolete.html?pagewanted=2&ref=technology