Wow, I guess my latest attempt to revive this blog kinda died out again. Anyways, I finally found some motivation to write something on here.
Yesterday at the Welcome Back Jason draft, a disagreement arose mainly between me and a friend about exactly what constituted "cooking". He was eating some pasta that he had made and brought from home, and had heated it up in the microwave. I brought up the point of how I thought it was cool that he cooked the pasta himself, to which he replied that he didn't consider making pasta to be real cooking. "You just add heat and mix the stuff together, it doesn't take any skill at all," was basically how his argument went. Ironically, the first defintion of "cooking" given by dictionary.com is:
To prepare (food) for eating by applying heat.
So I stand by my point. :P
Now, I know that my cooking skills aren't that great, so stuff that would probably seem cool or special for me to cook probably seem pretty ordinarly to most people. I guess my friend might be used to making more exotice dishes, and thus he doesn't consider making simple pasta and meat sauce to be real cooking. I would agree that simple things such as mixing cereal and milk or preparing a sandwich probably shouldn't count as cooking, (though Tales of Symphonia would disagree :P), but I think that anything which requires the use of a stove or oven should be compmlex enough to be classified as cooking. I guess sandwiches could be considered just "food preparation" or something like that.
Under the above definition, however, Wen pointed out that simply microwaving food would also be considered as cooking. Though I think most people, myself included, would reject the idea of microwaving stuff as real cooking, technically it is. You'd be surprised at how many things can be microwaved and still taste good, even if they say on the box that they're not microwavable. :P I usually end up microwaving a lot of my meals even now. Why? I guess it's just 'cause I'm lazy...and want to have more time to do other stuff. It's not that I don't enjoy cooking or anything, I've probably just gotten into the habit of it, and while I'm at school, I haven't really been living in an environment that encourages me to explore the culinary arts. Duy doesn't really "cook" at all either. We used to cook more when Bao was here, but we only cooked once this year, and that was when we went over to Ambrose's house and had planned to cook stuff together with them. I was supposed to do some cooking with Wen and Duy during exams this term, but then it didn't happen due to time constraints, and we ended up playing more Tales instead. :P Playing through the game a second time, it's a lot more interesting when I notice the foreshadowing and other references to things in the story that they player isn't supposed to know about yet. But that's probably a topic for another entry.
So what do you guys think? Where is the line between "cooking" and just "preparing food"?
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
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4 comments:
why must this "friend" be anonymous, and this "wen" (and etc) be not?
Anyway, the definition of cooking seems okay, and I guess there's a different term for not using heat..
as for the microwave, it's just one action, so in most cases I'd say you're "reheating" or "thawing" something.
If you're using the microwave to cook macaroni the "microwave way", I guess you should consider that cooking.
Well, I had thought to keep this friend anonymous, so that people wouldn't be biased when they were answering the question. Anyways, I was thinking too that most people that read this could guess who he was. :P His name starts with a D and ends with a D.
Can you really cook something without adding heat? Is making Jello really "cooking"?
My friend Andrew thought up a cool definition for cooking that I like though. It goes like this:
"The process by which you turn ingredients that you wouldn't eat in their original state, into something that you can eat."
Um, considering the number of people who has time to go to DB's on a weekday to participate in a Magic draft that also likes to bring their own food (instead of leeching food, the way it should be), I don't much see a point in keeping this "anonymous".
I would consider boiling pasta and using a can of pasta sauce as cooking. It's simple/easy cooking, like making instant noodles. Would grilling a steak be considered cooking by you both? The process is near identical, save for the medium of heat transfer (water vs alloy).
Perhaps the term "making food" is more all-encompassing.
And you don't cook jello, you make jello. Kinda like you don't cook cake, you bake cake.
Look, he updated!!
I keep on forgetting that this is an actual blogspot blog. For some reason it still reminds me of your silly xanga blog! ^^
Anyhow, first I want to say that I hardly ever made anything that would be considered anything *near* "exotic"! The closest I might have come to was a feeble attempt at a stir fry, or lemon chicken. .. but that was early on in September, before I stopped anything resembling cooking requiring much effort, after being frightened away from doing so when the tenant living in the basement complained about the noise or something.
As for the topic at hand, be careful :-P Topics about semantics and the gradient nature of definitions and word usage are things that I can ramble on about for hours ^^ . As any member of any minority can tell you (be it an ethnic, sexual orientiation, or disability minority), words definitely have strong personal connotations, and they mean different things to different people.
` The word "cooking" is just another example of this, I think.
The fundamental observation, off course, is that no one "right" definition exists; a word has different significances/meanings to different people.
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Ironically, the first defintion of "cooking" given by dictionary.com is:
To prepare (food) for eating by applying heat.
So I stand by my point. :P
===
Yes yes yes, so you were right, at least in some sense ;-)
Ultimately, when answering this big question of what "cooking" means, the only answer you'll have is that cooking means whatever it means to you.
The word cooking, to me, involves some idea of participating in an artistic process. In this context, an artistic process usually involves some effort, and definitely involves some heightened awareness of the *process* involved -- some pleasure, some attention, some active thought as you progress through such process. For example, there is a certain pleasure in the feel of cutting up vegetables, arranging ingredients, putting in care and attention as you begin to appreciate some wonder in how it works, that process of creating something that wasn't there before.
Boiling pasta, for me, just simply isn't much of an artistic experience, nor does it feel like I've really created anything special. I put no soul or pleasure into it. It's "mere food", not pleasaurable food.
Making a sandwhich, however, *is* an artistic experience for me, and thus I would consider it to be cooking. There is a certain amount of thought needed (like shopping for clothes, actually!) in deciding what to put in, how much, how to arrange it, what kind of taste or style you're trying to create, etc.
Making Jello would also be cooking, for me. (and just as an aside: you DO need heat to make Jello; you have to use boiling water, don't forget!). There is a certain pleasure in the aroma released and the visual change that happens when dissolving those crystals in boiling water. And as I put it all into the fridge, I feel like I'm taking part in some creation.
I just don't feel that way when I'm merely boiling pasta and then plopping in some factory-made pasta sauce and carelessly fried ground beef.. .
Sizzling a steak usually would be considered cooking by me, unless it's a careless effort. But usually it isn't a careless process, and usually it's something of an artistic experience: even if it's deciding what spices to use, or having enough ongoing awareness that allows you to be sensitive enough to how the steak changes as it cooks, so you know when not to overcook it. (and, off course, there is pleasure in the aromas and sounds that is involved when cooking steak).
Admittedly, my own definition of cooking as an artistic experience is a little strange, but then again, we tend to integrate personal defitions of words in a way that affirms or encourages our own identities, so it's not surprising that I take a somewhat artistic/stereotypically-gay-male-sensibility slant on this.
... but if you think *I'm* bad, you ain't seen anything. My god.. first day of auditioning for the gay men's choir, there were quibbles between me and one of the really flamey men there. We had to fill out interests and hobbies on the application form (yes, the gay men's choir had an application form). He had put "sewing.. cooking.. knitting.. interior design" (*rolls eyes* ;-) ), which is fine. But then he went on this little rant about how he couldn't BELIEVE that people buy frozen meatballs and perogies, and that you ought to make your OWN damn meatballs from SCRATCH! And I tried to counter with the fact that just because HE likes to make his own food from scratch, doesn't mean that busy business people had the time to! He got all prissy in response.
I'm not that bad. I'll allow people to have their frozen meatballs ;-) (heavens knows that *I* am well acquinted with the convenience bestowed upon us by the gift of frozen foods!)
We are, after all, University students! :-)
-- Silph
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