serenity now
I just spent the whole afternoon in the kitchen. And now I am so zen.
I'm sure those of you who don't know me well have noticed a trend in this blog to tend towards food related topics. Those of you who do will be mightily impressed at my ability to hold back on the subject as often as I do. I don't know why I am so monofixated on it. There's that wives tale about how men think about sex every 10 seconds or whatever it is. I think cooking is my sex.
Not my actual sex. Just, you know, with respect to the thinking about it every 10 seconds thing.
As my Meyers-Briggs personality profile will attest (that's a post in the making people, just wait a few days) I am a person that spends an awful lot of time in my head. I'm an intuiter, I am most in my natural state when I'm thinking and pondering. I run over social situations a million times to logic out every iota of meaning. I spend 45 minutes on a three paragraph email making sure I'm writing things in the best possible way. And I define myself in large part in relation to my ability to deduce and critique and problem solve. Sometimes, like after a hard gym workout, I think so hard my brain hurts.
For the most part, I like this attribute of my personality. I value intelligence and the pursuit of it higher than just about anything else. But sometimes, more and more so since I've gotten a little more in touch with the ability to emote, too much thinking just makes me tired. And the problem is, I've spent so much of my life in pusuit of thought, so much time encouraging receding farther and farther into my own head, that I can have a hard time knowing how to turn the thinking off.
Music doesn't do it. In fact, music tends to add a soundtrack to the movie playing in my brain. TV can sometimes be useful, if the program is at least passingly entertaing but also round and fluffy enough to have no point upon which thoughts might grow. Reading is similarly dependant on the material one is engaging with. Running can do in a pinch. But I have found that cooking works better than anything else.
Cooking is the perfect salve for the overly analytical mind. For those who spend months, years, working on things waiting to see them bear out, cooking provides the antidote. Instant gratification. Take something, work it in your hands and a few hours later, boom, you get to eat it and you're done. It's physical which takes focus away from mental stress and diverts that attention towards mechanical motion: chop, stir, slice, mash. I love it best when you have multiple things going at once, a main, a side, a dessert, all needing attention in varying degrees. No time to think in my kitchen, just ride the wave and try to keep up with the food.
And I find that when you've spent all day in a man made environment there's something lovely about dealing with the natural and elemental. I always take a moment to look at all the ingredients when they're still in raw form, just to take stock of them for a moment before I begin. I won't deny there's an essential and earthy quality to it. And while a high tech gizmo is exciting in theory, for the most part I like to use only the most basic tools: a knife, a wooden spoon, a pan, my own hands. To me there's something terribly right about the feeling I get when making ravioli from scratch and I'm elbow deep in a pile of flour and egg. To knead that chaos into something that makes sense.
Cooking is a sensory pursuit, all about smelling and tasting, so it puts a person in touch with a more instictive part of theirselves. A real cook doesn't use a book to figure out if two flavors mesh, they simply try and see. And unlike watching TV or running, cooking for me is highly creative. I admit I own a lot of cookbooks and have subscriptions to two cooking magazines. I like to read them in my spare time to get general ideas, noting what an interesting combination this or that recipe has. But when the stove is on they stay on the shelf. A cookbook is a kitchen prophylactic, a condom for my food. Whatever its presence may gain you in security, it will surely cost you in sensitivity to your medium. On a good day I can pull out whatever's in my fridge and just go on instinct, no specific endpoint in sight. My besh dishes have always come from this technique.
So I spent all afternoon in the kitchen. And what do I have to show for it? A warm and full sense of contentedness.
Finally, a parting thought:
For those of you who just read and walk away, and you know who you are, don't think that just because I've put something new up here today that you get out of responding to yesterday's post. I know the three comments left thus far have set the bar high but come on friends! Dream big. Or small. I don't care, put something on there. I just want to feel popular.
I'm sure those of you who don't know me well have noticed a trend in this blog to tend towards food related topics. Those of you who do will be mightily impressed at my ability to hold back on the subject as often as I do. I don't know why I am so monofixated on it. There's that wives tale about how men think about sex every 10 seconds or whatever it is. I think cooking is my sex.
Not my actual sex. Just, you know, with respect to the thinking about it every 10 seconds thing.
As my Meyers-Briggs personality profile will attest (that's a post in the making people, just wait a few days) I am a person that spends an awful lot of time in my head. I'm an intuiter, I am most in my natural state when I'm thinking and pondering. I run over social situations a million times to logic out every iota of meaning. I spend 45 minutes on a three paragraph email making sure I'm writing things in the best possible way. And I define myself in large part in relation to my ability to deduce and critique and problem solve. Sometimes, like after a hard gym workout, I think so hard my brain hurts.
For the most part, I like this attribute of my personality. I value intelligence and the pursuit of it higher than just about anything else. But sometimes, more and more so since I've gotten a little more in touch with the ability to emote, too much thinking just makes me tired. And the problem is, I've spent so much of my life in pusuit of thought, so much time encouraging receding farther and farther into my own head, that I can have a hard time knowing how to turn the thinking off.
Music doesn't do it. In fact, music tends to add a soundtrack to the movie playing in my brain. TV can sometimes be useful, if the program is at least passingly entertaing but also round and fluffy enough to have no point upon which thoughts might grow. Reading is similarly dependant on the material one is engaging with. Running can do in a pinch. But I have found that cooking works better than anything else.
Cooking is the perfect salve for the overly analytical mind. For those who spend months, years, working on things waiting to see them bear out, cooking provides the antidote. Instant gratification. Take something, work it in your hands and a few hours later, boom, you get to eat it and you're done. It's physical which takes focus away from mental stress and diverts that attention towards mechanical motion: chop, stir, slice, mash. I love it best when you have multiple things going at once, a main, a side, a dessert, all needing attention in varying degrees. No time to think in my kitchen, just ride the wave and try to keep up with the food.
And I find that when you've spent all day in a man made environment there's something lovely about dealing with the natural and elemental. I always take a moment to look at all the ingredients when they're still in raw form, just to take stock of them for a moment before I begin. I won't deny there's an essential and earthy quality to it. And while a high tech gizmo is exciting in theory, for the most part I like to use only the most basic tools: a knife, a wooden spoon, a pan, my own hands. To me there's something terribly right about the feeling I get when making ravioli from scratch and I'm elbow deep in a pile of flour and egg. To knead that chaos into something that makes sense.
Cooking is a sensory pursuit, all about smelling and tasting, so it puts a person in touch with a more instictive part of theirselves. A real cook doesn't use a book to figure out if two flavors mesh, they simply try and see. And unlike watching TV or running, cooking for me is highly creative. I admit I own a lot of cookbooks and have subscriptions to two cooking magazines. I like to read them in my spare time to get general ideas, noting what an interesting combination this or that recipe has. But when the stove is on they stay on the shelf. A cookbook is a kitchen prophylactic, a condom for my food. Whatever its presence may gain you in security, it will surely cost you in sensitivity to your medium. On a good day I can pull out whatever's in my fridge and just go on instinct, no specific endpoint in sight. My besh dishes have always come from this technique.
So I spent all afternoon in the kitchen. And what do I have to show for it? A warm and full sense of contentedness.
Finally, a parting thought:
For those of you who just read and walk away, and you know who you are, don't think that just because I've put something new up here today that you get out of responding to yesterday's post. I know the three comments left thus far have set the bar high but come on friends! Dream big. Or small. I don't care, put something on there. I just want to feel popular.
posted by A at 9:30 PM
1 Comments:
Adrienne, you are my heroine. Yay, other people who cook like me. I've long believed that cooking can be a meditative state if you let it.
As to cookbooks, I'm with ya. Lots of them on the shelf, for inspiration. Rare that I cook from them unless it's a complicated recipe unlike anything I've made before.
And kitchen condoms? Priceless. You made my day.
Post a Comment
<< Home