...The way I see it, it's like being a chemist and a sculptor. You need to create just the right chemical solution for the right flavor. You then have to arrange it in a way that is beautiful, crafting the entire experience to perfection. Then you have to do it at hyper-speed, over and over and over. All while doing the ballet of the kitchen, bustling past all the other bodies, trying to focus through the cacophony of language spoken only in kitchens, shouted across heat lamps. A greasy old speaker blaring in the corner. Adrenaline on full juice. It's a hoot...
I'm not sure sure why, but when I was young, cooking seemed like something fun. My parents were very exploratory in our diet, eating a wide variety of ethnic foods and other "fancy" things, that at the time, were too sophisticated for me. I liked trying to make fancy mac'n'cheese. Or maybe fancy pancakes (Nothing really seemed to turn out quite the way I planned it though...)
Necessity and Pleasure.
When I was twelve, I graduated from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts. Unbeknownst to me a the time, I was actually blessed to be in a troop that gave the finger to the more traditional views of the council and kind of did what ever they want, which was to actually teach boys to be responsible. The adults would tell us to write our own menus, buy what ever we wanted for our meals (2 breakfasts, 2 lunches, and a dinner for a weekend camp out,) and what ever we bought is what we ate. If you only bought Twinkies and Ho-Ho's, then all you ate were Twinkies and Ho-Ho's. (You probably also never did that again) When you burned your flapjack, you ate burnt flapjacks. On arriving at a campsite, the adults would tell us to go off and set up our camps. So 4 patrols of 5 boys, of ages 12 to 17, would go off set up tents and drag out their chuck box along with a massive white cooler full of food. (Chuck Box: a Swiss army kitchen. A box, 2 foot square by four feet long with 1.5" dowels sticking out of both ends so that it could be carried like a stretcher. In it, is a butane stove and literally everything but the kitchen sink. Don't worry, there are two large tubs for doing dishes.) Between the stove and a skillet, a dutch oven (the cast iron one not the one you do under the covers), or just tinfoil and fire, a group of boys would set up, cook, clean, and breakdown all their own meals. There are a lot of memories, standing in snow huddled around, making flap jacks and bacon. Or staring into the coals, as they cuddled your foil dinner and hissed when the warm juices would overflow. The smell of Monkey Bread and Black Forest Cake slow cooked in the cast iron ovens, gathering around the fire after night games.
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The Game
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The Art
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The Community
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