Hungry For More

I enjoy cooking. I don'tknow when I discovered that cooking could be more of a hobby than just a means of preparing fuel to be shoveled into my mouth to

be burned up in my stomach and turned into energy. But somewhere along the way I realized that taking the time to make something tasty to eat offers the opportunity to be creative, a certain amount of discipline and yet frequent chances to bend the rules to meet my wishes. Cooking gives me something to look forward to at the end of a busy day or on a relaxing Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon. It is a possibility to challenge myself to think how I might recreate something that I once ate at a restaurant or in my childhood or how to improvise something that I suddenly crave. And there are fun things to do like cutting up meat, chopping things, and playing with fire. And lest I forget, turning on the radio in the kitchen or on the back deck while making something to eat provides great relaxation and relief of stress. This is added by the fact that cooking any meal is made infinitely better with a glass of wine or bottle of beer on hand. In short, cooking has developed from a means of supplying my body with food to a full fledged hobby.

Like any hobby, cooking, for me has a variety of likes and dislikes. Here are some of them:

Knife work. For whatever reason the precision of chopping an onion, dicing vegetables, or most fun of all, cutting meat whether it be a chicken, rabbit, fish, or some other bit of critter is extremely satisfying. Perhaps it is the enjoyment that comes of seeing things prepped and ready for the upcoming stages of the recipe. Perhaps it is the sound of the knife clacking on the cutting board. Maybe it is the proud feeling of dominating the ingredients by turning them into what I want them to be. At any rate, cutting is fun.

Grilling. Ask any man who likes grilling why he likes it and what will they say? Probably any of the following: Food tastes good grilled. Fire is warm and heat is nice. Mankind's control of fire signifies our rise from knuckle dragging primates to the intelligent beings who created companies like Weber and Kingsford. Besides fire, grilling requires tools like spatulas, tongs, big long forks and knives. Grilling often involves meat, and grilled meat also signifies mankind's rise from knuckle dragging primates to the geniuses who could breed cows to create certified black Angus steak. Grilling and beer go hand in hand.

Improvising. How many times have you been preparing a certain recipe only to discover that you lack several ingredients as seen on the list? Happens to me all the time. I honestly enjoy realizing that and then rummaging through the pantry to see what I have that will best approximate the missing ingredients. Similarly, I enjoy coming home and seeing what I can whip up with whatever items I have on hand. Not only does it save a trip to the grocery store, but it often results in some pleasing-and sometimes spectacular- meals!

Sharing food with friends. As many have said in many other places, eating is a great social activity. Cooking with a significant other or friend is fun. Better yet is sitting down to eat with that person after putting together a nice meal. Same goes for a group of good friends and spending the meal chatting and savoring each bite of the meal as well as the time together.

I said I disliked some things about cooking. Here they are:

Ingredient snobbery.

So you get your stuff all verifiably locally grown from a farmer's market. And oh yes, that broccoli cost you $9.99 a pound. I don't care. Really, I don't. Everybody want's to eat tasty and secondly everybody wants to eat well. Where and how we get things are important but what nobody needs is somebody else telling them about wonderful locally grown hubbard squash and free range hormone & cruelty free pork chops. Great. Super. I'll be impressed when I have the time. Also, too many of these people tend to blanche when I tell them where I got or even what I regularly do to get hormone free, free range meat. Just eat your good food. Don't hold it over people's heads.

Sliders.

Sandwiches are great. Multiple tiny versions of a sandwich are pointless. White Castle had a good thing going for itself when it decided to make tiny hamburgers. The public, forgive the pun, ate it up. However, our postironic age of the 2000's decided that if it could be a sandwich it definitely should be available for the same price as four tiny versions of the whole thing. Besides being more work for the kitchen and no increase in taste for the customer, this is a ridiculous trend. It's the stupid version of the typically American desire to add quality by multiplication: A pulled pork sandwich? It might be even better if we made an equivalent four tiny pulled pork sandwiches! I'll give you four tiny "no's" that equal one huge one.

Kitchen speak as mainstream talk

I don't think this happens a lot but I do want to mention it. I know that executive chefs are part businessman. The work they do involves lots of ordering, counting, measuring, and further dealing with numbers. But I don't like when businesspeak extends to the food, especially meat. Please do not call meats or fish "proteins" or "product". To me, this is the same as a person saying that a man who died in a fiery car crash "passed away". Food is food, and some of it comes from living things. Those animals that became food died. (I won't even get into plants!)

The animals died. They became meat. This includes fish, deer, cows, pigs and lots of other things. Proteins are an infintesimmally small part of what creates these creatures. They are not products nor are they proteins. They are meats. For eating. Give them the respect that they deserve since they came from living things and don't just describe them as building block of matter.

Clean up.

You didn't think I'd talk about cooking and not mention the part that so few people like? I like doing lots of things in the kitchen. I dislike cleaning up my own messes. The odd part of it all? I like the orderliness of kitchens and that they can be arranged with military-like precision. I like how things have their places and you can get them to deal with a specific task. But after they have all been used... well, cleaning them just sucks.

Equipment snobs.

See "Ingredient snobs". People, you can find it written in many places: cooking requires a pot or two, a frying pan or two, and some knives. I like gadgets and I like having a kitchen full of stuff that I can use, but please don't mention the things you have just because you have them. Remember, before you had the machine you had that helped you make the dish you're bragging about, NOBODY had that machine. Your feat can be done without that expensive gizmo. Cooking is about making sure that the starting ingredients wind up with a certain taste.

Like any good trip, the story at the end is probably more important than the journey.