A Review of Cooking

I'm not very good at it, but I know how to follow directions so I can get by. Baking is more my style. But cooking helps to give people a cultural identity (or a reason to be really mad when you assume they like food from that cultural group).

Things I like: There is a correlation between age and cooking that is seen in few other things. Your age compared to your cooking skills directly relates to how cool you are. A little kid cooking? Cute! A young adult that cooks seems refined. But an adult that cooks? Expected. If you're over 30 and can't at least cook some chicken and rice than you're lacking basic survival skills.

There is an entire television channel devoted to it. But, they have to disguise it by calling it the FOOD network so dudes don't feel weird watching it, and so they don't have to make excuses for putting things like eating contests on there where the actual cooking part is least important. It's really the only domestic activity that could pull off having its own show, let alone channel. The laundry network doesn't really have the same ring. I'm sure the housekeeping network may get a few early followers (weird dudes with high hopes) but once they realized the girls weren't in maids outfits and that cleaning is kind of gross, they'd probably give up. Now that I think of it, gardening has a few shows. But lets be honest, are they serious? No, I don't care how beautiful and big our hydrangeas grew, I'm going to flip back and see who can eat an 8 pound burger in under and hour.


Things I would change: It takes a million ingredients to make anything (if you use any recipe besides boring white people classics). I think this is why frying is so popular. "No I can't find soy paste or llamas milk. Just throw the darn thing in the deep fryer!"

It's one of the only activities in which its often cheaper, and almost always better, to pay someone to do it for you. Which takes some of the fun out of doing it. Unless you're one of those dumb people who goes out and buys the $12 dollar PB&J from Panera, or the $16 salad with no dressing, cheese, croutons, or anything not green, in which case you're just wasting your money (I'm guilty of this).

And finally, cooking is dangerous! Fires, burns, explosions, amputations! Just think of all the threats. Anything requiring fire and knives should require some sort of training badge first. There are people in this world who should never try.

What it makes me think/feel: It makes me think that we've come a long way from the days of hunting and gathering, when a feast was a giant piece of cattle. And thank god for that. Look how great our population has turned out now that we've introduced the french fry, and people are so desperate for grapes all year round they'll ship them across the world. These things are certainly better for our bodies and environments.