Cooking: More Than A Culinary Skill

As we grow up, we stop building houses. My cousins and I used to build houses, and we would use whatever materials we found. The same way we tried building a car engine. The faith we would have, expecting the engine to start after feeling like we had connected all the pieces we thought we needed to connect. I mean, there might be some strings in there, some unrelated and different-sized wires, and the day would come for a test when we would agree that now it's ready to start. There would be one wire or something that would act as a switch, and one person would have to connect it. And it wouldn't start. It just didn't make sense.

One thing I remember seeing up was a house. I don't really remember how long it stood up for, and it didn't really matter. Another problem we encountered that we hadn't focused much on when we were still building this amazing house was the size of the house versus the size of us and how we were going to fit in. I don't think we managed to solve that one.

But seeing that house up—from nothing but an idea—regardless of the engine that never started and the car stereos we tried to bring to life after people threw them away because they had been damaged, the excitement of pressing that button waiting for the music to blast out (regardless that these weren't even connected to a power source, but to a source of faith). You see, you're taking me back right now. I would still be that mechanic building that engine. I never stopped looking for engines to build, even in this lifetime. I've discovered that there's an infinite source of knowledge and practices out there. Some are pretty extreme—to get there, you need to be willing to bend yourself to a point where you are unrecognizable even to yourself. But some are easy wins, like taking a walk, prioritizing your sleep, and my favorite: cooking.

The Art Of Creation

Just start cooking. Cooking is a practice. Cooking is not just a means for eating. It's a basic form of creation anyone can pick up and get to see their vision come to life in real time. No wonder there are even phrases like "we are cooking something here" or "what are you cooking," all referring to bringing something new to life. "There's a bun in the oven"—an idiom referring to someone's pregnancy, the bun being a baby, and the oven being a womb in this case.

It's your back door to becoming a creator. Without dwelling much on God as we know him (I'm Christian; we refer to God as him), I would like to get your attention on one opportunity where we get to create something ourselves and get judged by others and by ourselves. And I must admit, it's not an easy task, but it is a task worth pursuing daily. So, given the complexity of the task, tips along the way might help immensely. There are easy wins along the way, one of which is cooking.

Off The Books

This is the off-the-books kind of skill. We are not going to be talking about adding milligrams, degrees Celsius, or Fahrenheit. We are going to be talking about things like adding a bit of your soul in it. Why not go for a foreign taste? (I'm only getting to liking Hawaiian burgers recently, still not quite there with sushi. I'm a steak kind of guy. I'm still fresh from the forest, smelling blood all over the place.)

Feedback Loop

You get a chance to see what sort of creation you would have made.

You got distracted. You scrolled while cooking, and you left that chicken 15 minutes more than necessary in that oven. You pushed that oven to the max because you wanted that chicken faster because you were hungry. And when you open that oven eventually, it's Jeffrey Dahmer (the serial killer who would chop and store his victims' bodies in the fridge and eat them). But you know exactly what you did. And when you're eating, one thing you can't lie about to yourself is this. You know when you smashed it. You'd be eating and thinking, "Jeepers creepers, is this you?"

When you did a bad job, you'd be thinking, "Eish! I missed that salt a little bit. Something tastes a little bland here." And you're hoping nobody notices. Oh, they do. They just don't tell you.

But some people maybe don't know, because you'd be battling with swallowing or mixing what you're told to mix and swallow, and you'd be thinking, "So they're not thinking there's maybe a little too much salt here? Or don't they taste that there is no salt here at all?" And you don't want to be rude to ask for salt. And sometimes you'd be getting threats from the get-go, like "no one is leaving any food behind here," or "this is so nice," or "you are not a man."

Save the mission. Offer Aromat or water to wash down the taste. You don't want to end up with a lot of dishes with unfinished food. And tell stories at the same time, preferably jokes, to balance the taste.

Let go. Stop thinking about it too much. Just take what you want it to taste like in your head and mix it like that. It usually tastes better than you imagined. But if it doesn't, you try again, and again, and again. Take a break from trying it. Forget about it. And try it again.

Mission For Men

So cooking is important. Especially for men. You might not be able to create a ship or house for your family, but if you start by something as basic as cooking for them and realize how much satisfaction you get from doing it, you are going to be wanting to invent more and grander creations. You take your woman out. You try a new dish for the first time, and she enjoys it. You've got work to do. Your new mission is to create that dish for her until you master it. And you know what? Oftentimes, eventually you will beat that restaurant's dish.

Food or cooking is spiritual. You can taste the food that was cooked with no care at all. The fries will be undercooked, overcooked, or something is off. They added an old mushroom sauce. But if it's you, you know the culprit. You become one with the food. You can taste without tasting it by smelling the aromas in the air. You've had instances where you were busy mixing it up, flipping it over, fighting with the heat, and somebody comes in and says, "Oh, that looks nice." This is a good achievement at this stage, but the next hurdle is actually producing what they smelled, because that's what you were going for. And honestly, sometimes you get even better results.

I've gotten fascinated by cooking naked in the past. After working out, you are already sweating. You have this built-up energy that you want to convert to something else. Strip naked and hit the pot. There can be some music in the background. It's more important than ever this time to watch the frying pan's handle while you're busy dancing and spicing it up with your naked band.

Reading The Signs

You can get immediate feedback after dishing your meal. You will see if anyone is asking for water or Aromat. If anyone is asking for these, you know it's mission Chernobyl. It's time for getting the jokes running. But if there is silence and you hear some silent grunting going on, you know already you're getting pumped. You are about to collect those compliments. Yeah, some will come with curveballs, like "your food is so nice; I helped a lot by buying that black pepper." Take the win. But some would be genuine, like "it's got that spicy taste that somehow I keep wanting more of," and you would know exactly what they are talking about. You'd be thinking, "For sure, I know. That's what I was going for."

Sometimes you will get improvement ideas, like "it's so nice; would go well with garlic rolls, chilies, cheese." If it's curry that involves meat, you can tell a lot from how people eat their meat in the meal you made. If they leave meat for last and sometimes even leave it on the plate, you did excellent work here. If mostly the only thing they eat is meat and they left mostly everything else behind, you didn't do so good here—unless they are sick or something, but most probably, you didn't do a good job.

The Modern Hunter

As mentioned above, this practice is particularly important if you are a man. Gone are the hunter-gatherer ages. We've lost that hunting-for-food-to-eat ability as men. I know you might argue that we have converted that skill to the skill of making money. And I would be able to listen to you here once you are coming home with money, we make that fire, and we eat that money. Otherwise, that's just your favorite toy that tends to be worth something. But if someone did the hunting for us and brought the kill home, and we give them money that we also worked for doing other trades, we can prepare this for the family the best way we possibly can. And over time, they will forget we are not the ones doing the hunting and killing. Easy win.