During the past week, I made a pan of corn bread. Corn bread is a very simple thing to make that uses basic ingredients — a cup of corn meal, a cup of flour, 1/4 c. sugar, 1 Tbsp. baking powder, 1 c. water, 1/2 c. vegetable oil, 2 eggs. I add no herbs or spices or seeds or anything. Just a basic corn bread baked in an 8x8 pan.
I happened to take a piece with me as a snack, and an acquaintance looked at it and said, "Lemon poppy-seed pound cake" (despite the fact there were no poppy seeds in it). I said, "No, it's corn bread." And he said, "I thought it would be something more complex."
The comment was again emblematic of the transformation of cooking into an occasional hobby rather than a daily chore. There appears in our society to be a general assumption that if something is home-baked, it must be rich, decadent and complex. Pedestrian bakery like corn bread doesn't provide the satisfaction that a more complex fare like lemon poppy-seed pound cake would. (Though I should point out that lemon poppy-seed pound cake is not really all that difficult to make; it is a bit more involved, as one needs to grate a lemon and make a glaze, and you need to have poppy seeds on hand.)
Simple foods simply made are tasty and satisfying all on their own. Turning food into a complex challenge becomes an excuse for turning over its preparation to others, and purchasing those prepared foods rather than preparing them oneself.