Cooking

You have been given the materials to bake cookies. There is the slightly bitter chocolate, gooey eggs, dry flour and salty butter; there is even an oven burning at 450F. Now the question remains, are you going to reject each of these ingredients based upon their individual taste, or will you endure it all and bake a wonderful pan of cookies for your friends.

Everyday we are given lots of crap by those around us and by circumstances surrounding us. It is only natural to feel downtrodden, and disappointed when we are confronted with such unpleasantness. But should we throw down our shovels, saying "to hell with it all" and forgo the chance of planting a beautiful garden? Or can we step back and realize that everything that is seemingly bad is in fact an ingredient to making something better?

The past few days, I have been cooking and cleaning compulsively as means to avoid certain pressing issues in my life. Cooking and cleaning has a calming affect upon me, and for a long time I don't quite know why. Friends have often joked that they are convinced that I am gay whenever they see me cooking and later cleaning away in the kitchen. I don't know, there is much simple pleasures working away in the kitchen. I love it when the chemistry works, and the ingredients blend together to emanate delectable aroma. I love the heat radiating off the stoves, soup boiling in the pot, the bubbling steam as ebullient as my heart. I like the squeaky noises that dishes make when they are cleaned. I love the feel of warm water upon my skin, and the sense of accomplishment that goes with cooking a great meal and cleaning everything up afterwards. 

Perhaps it is because the kitchen allow me to practice that controlling side of me that few has come to know. I may be easy going on the most part, but there is nothing I like better than feeling like I am in control somewhat, and the kitchen offers me that security. In it, I can guide the destiny of each dish I prepared, I have the ability to wreck chaos and later restore order. I am a sorcerer given the power to turn the most bland or foul ingredients into a delicious meal. Onions, olive oil, eggs and various herbs are thrown into a cooking ware to bring out the best in nearly tasteless vegetables and bloody meat. From fermented yeast and lots of gas I can rise dough to make bread. Give me a pinch of salt, a clove of garlic and some intense heat, and I can cook you a dish you will not soon forget. It is a wonder to see new recipes at work, to learn new ways to complement ingredients so that they produce amazing results.

The kitchen becomes my little fiefdom where I can learn about the facts of life under a controlled environment. Through it I have learned that you don't always need intense heat to cook something, but rather let things slowly boil at decent temperatures (often on a back burner) until the right taste is coaxed out. I have learned to be patient, to acknowledge that when the recipe says it takes 10 minutes, it will probably take me 30 minutes to get it right. I have learned to be experimental, to understand that what is written in cookbook are merely guidelines. They are somebody else's rendition, and that if I are take some poetic license, trusting in my intuition, chances are I will be surprised by awesome results. When I step back, I realize what is important about cooking is not just the final product but the process itself. It is a great plus if there is a well cooked dish at the end of all the preparation and hard work, but by the time I am done cooking, I realized that part of my hunger is satisfied just by the smell alone. Later on, when I go ahead to wash the dishes, it is the same. There is not a whole lot that you can not wash away with detergent, a good sponge and healthy does of elbow grease. The strong smell of garlic can be easily washed away using salt and hot water. That is also true in life, there are ways to rid yourself of the stink that life's garlics clung onto you. 

In many regards, life's lessons can be learned by spending time in the kitchen. Having hide in it the past few days, I have come to a couple of revelations on how to deal with several of the problems that affronts me in life. The reality is I may have been handed some awful standalone ingredients. They are not all that pretty, but it is up to me to find a way to utilize them to bring out the best. Who knows, out of all that is fishy, stinky and seemingly fermented I may perhaps dish out some grand concoction. So bring it on, give me heat, give me burning ginger, stinging onions and malodorous garlic; I will strive to make them work. Just remember, we are always handed the right ingredients, it is up to us to concoct something great or throw it all down and quit the kitchen.