# Why do you like cooking?



## zane (Apr 6, 2010)

Sorry if this is in the wrong section...please move it if so.

Why do you like to cook?

For me it's a passion, my skill set is nowhere near as good as it will be in a few years but I love it. I love it when  I succeed at a dish, and even though I'll curse at myself for hours when I fail I still love it.

And now for my hippie answer:

I also enjoy cooking because it is a way to help people understand the food and minerals ushered through the earth. The knowledge of knowing where your food came from, how it is grown or raised to me is one of the most fascinating things that I can learn about, and important also. I feel that if people can understand the food we eat, then they can be more inclined to preserve the way it comes to us which is actually giving back to the earth for what we take from it.


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## phatch (Mar 29, 2002)

Cooking's OK.

But I really like eating.


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## seaside (May 2, 2010)

Well Zane.  for me it may be the use of and purchase of my good  stock of spices and herbs, it to me is so exciting,  especially as I have recently gotten interested in Middle Eastern Cuisine.


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## siduri (Aug 13, 2006)

1. I like to eat.  Most of the time, if I want to eat what I like, I have to do it myself

2. I like anything you do with your hands.  It's my meditation, my tai chi, my yoga, my relaxation technique.  I allow my verbal brain to shut up (for a change) and think only with my hands and with the actions of the process.  I do other things like that, but cooking is the only one that has the side benefit of supper!


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## seaside (May 2, 2010)

Yes siduri, I am the same, I can cut off from all things that are worries etc., it is I suppose a relaxation - I hadn't really thought of it until reading your post, heres to more cooking!! good eaating and culinary creations/img/vbsmilies/smilies/licklips.gif


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## indianwells (Jan 2, 2007)

I go home, I crack open a bottle of wine, I close the kitchen door and I cook. Virtually every day. I love it and cannot imagine never cooking again. I like the challenge of taking a few ingredients that are nothing special on their own, and marrying them together to make something for my loved ones that tastes beautiful. OK, it doesn't always taste beautiful, but the journey to get that meal on the plate is one I love.


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## allie (Jul 21, 2006)

I love the creativity.  I'm not very talented in other aspects of creating things with my mind and hands so this gives me an outlet for that.  I also love to eat and to see my family enjoy something that I have made.


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## dc sunshine (Feb 26, 2007)

Why cook? It means I can make something for those I love which (hopefully) they will enjoy. As with others above in this thread, I also do it to please myself and have downtime for the old gray matter. They put up with my experiments too, but, touch wood, there aren't too many major muck ups.

Love to sit down at the table and share food and conversation at the end of the day, I think that is the main thing. The meal eaten together is the vehicle to be able to do this. Even the cats get involved. Hey I'm not a huge cat freak but we have 2, they will get the odd treat from the table. And they are clever - they smell and hear me cutting onions and gather around, because they know that meat is coming next.

They miss out though when I'm making salad /img/vbsmilies/smilies/lol.gif They really don't enjoy greens.


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## venom (Jan 12, 2010)

I always loved good food but that’s not why I cook. Cooking is my artistic expression but it also gives me time to myself to think about business strategies and mentally plan without distraction. Even though I’ll wear myself out cooking 12 hours in the kitchen, it recharges me.  

Most of all, I like to make people happy and my cooking does that. I have put a smile on my family, friends and clients faces countless times with my cooking. There is nothing more rewarding then pleasing the ones I love and care about with my food. It’s been a great way to make friends, keep clients and get the family together frequently for meals.


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## skatz85 (Mar 3, 2010)

i love cooking because i am an eater. my whole family cooked so i loved the food and defiantly ate it, im not a picky eater either, so i had to learn how to prepare them for myself. i enojoy making simple food with freshest ingredients i can and hoping that when people eat it they enjoy it. my parents always told me cook each meal like you are cooking it for yourself and people will enjoy it. if you cook happy the food will turn out good and vise versa. i think people can tell if the cook is having a bad day or is not into it. i just enjoy being in the kitchen at work or home or freinds house and making food.


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## dc sunshine (Feb 26, 2007)

skatz85 said:


> i love cooking because i am an eater. my whole family cooked so i loved the food and defiantly ate it, im not a picky eater either, so i had to learn how to prepare them for myself. i enojoy making simple food with freshest ingredients i can and hoping that when people eat it they enjoy it. my parents always told me cook each meal like you are cooking it for yourself and people will enjoy it. if you cook happy the food will turn out good and vise versa. i think people can tell if the cook is having a bad day or is not into it. i just enjoy being in the kitchen at work or home or freinds house and making food.


Good on you Skatz - keep that feeling alive


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## chrislehrer (Oct 9, 2008)

I started out liking cooking because I was cheap and loved to eat. That's still true, of course, but as I have developed a greater range of decent technique I have discovered that this makes cooking infinitely more fun.

I love being able to cook something by a combination of inference and knowhow. I love knowing that my classic sabayon sauces -- hollandaise, bearnaise, etc. -- will come out without my looking at a recipe because I just know how to do it. I get a kick out of turning my back on something blazing hot in a saute pan because I know what's going on and don't need to focus on it all the time. I love deciding I'll invent something because there's no recipe available to me, but knowing also that it's all perfectly classic and even ancient -- like the poultry offal neck sausages I made recently (see thread "Duck Brains and Other Nasties"). Being basically cheap and in some respects lazy, I also get a huge kick out of deciding that I don't feel like going to the market just because there isn't anything in the fridge, and nevertheless putting a generous meal on the table by cobbling together scraps and bits.

Things like charcuterie are my current Holy Grail, where I can take stuff others throw away and turn it into a delicacy. That's cool to me. All that "nose to tail" stuff -- I'm delighted that it's good stewardship and all that, but frankly I just think it's kind of fun to buy a bunch of pig ears for next to nothing and try to work out what the heck to do with them, you know?

"Cook happy" and "cook with love" -- I understand and respect those feelings, but they don't do it for me, honestly. I mean, nobody wants to be angry or unhappy, when cooking or otherwise, but I don't want my food manipulated by mood. I want my mood to be made by my technique with the food. Example: my kids adore sliced cucumbers, the thinner the better, and they don't like the peel. Over the last month, I've taken up preparing this with an _usuba_, an impressively irritating Japanese professional chef's vegetable knife, which doesn't handle like any other knife in the world. I cross-cut sections (tricky with this knife -- it tends to split), then peel the sections the way you've probably seen sushi guys peel daikon (_katsura-muki_), then I cut slices parallel to the board under one finger with a cross-slash motion. This stuff isn't so simple to do, it's dangerous (that knife is literally razor-sharp), and with my level of skill it would take less time to use a vegetable peeler and a chef's knife. I do it this way because every cut is fun for me. So my struggles with technique make it fun, even when I get it wrong and get mad at myself. And you know what? Nobody, but nobody, gives a flying *** whether I do it this way or with another knife -- just me. Nevertheless, every time I work with this knife, even sharpening it, I envision a time when I'll be able to do all these things really fast and smooth, just because to me that's a seriously cool thing to be able to do.

My ultimate goal, I suppose, is that if I've had an amazingly horrible day, I will know that (a) my food will be really excellent anyway, and (b) the process of making that food very rapidly and precisely will be the one thing that does go right that day -- and I will _know_ that it will be so in advance. Is that weird? I dunno -- it works for me.


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## dledmo (Apr 7, 2006)

Because it is fun.  It is like Bugs Bunny in the mad scientist's lab, let's add a little of this and a bit of that.  There is always something new to try, a new ingredient or a new technique.  But you always have to have an audience, when I have to prepare food for just myself (which is almost never, I have a wife and kids) it is the quickest and easiest way possible.  My seven year old loves to help me in the kitchen, so it is a bonding experience, by the way is 7 years old to young to buy my girl her own chef's knife?  That was one of the presents I gave her for her 7th birthday, I have been teaching her knife techniques since she was 4.


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## halmstad (May 17, 2010)

i cook for a living. 8 hours a day. sometimes more, sometimes less. when i get home all i want to do is cook. i cook on every day i have off of work.

i cook at work for a living. i cook at home for fun and relaxation. being able to cook what you want to eat brings amazing amounts of pleasure. for me it's even far more fun to cook the food than to eat it. prep and the cooking can take hours while the eating of the food can last a mere half hour. kind of anticlimactic, but well worth it.


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## chrislehrer (Oct 9, 2008)

dledmo said:


> .... by the way is 7 years old to young to buy my girl her own chef's knife? That was one of the presents I gave her for her 7th birthday, I have been teaching her knife techniques since she was 4.


Only you can answer that. I would not allow her to use it without supervision, of course. But some 7-year-olds would be dangerous to themselves and others with a butter knife, and some are ready to use a good knife well. I would not tell her teachers, however -- they might freak out.


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## stevenjoe (Jun 21, 2010)

I don't know why I am just passionate about cooking.

Steven


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## chefboyarg (Oct 28, 2008)

I really enjoy the transformative process, especially in baking. How a big ol goober of dough can turn into a delicious, light, crusty bread is just beautiful.


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## crazybuoy (Jun 16, 2010)

cos i like it very much. i like to see myself and my family' smilings when eating delisious dishes.


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## chefedb (Apr 3, 2010)

Lets me be creative. Permits me to have a plate act as a test tube, and lets me experiment with different taste, textures and colors.


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## onei (Jun 14, 2010)

I like cooking because I like eating. Cooking something for others that they like is most satisfying!


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