Not entirely

A little while back, I was asked to write down my hobbies for a company facebook. Setting aside the absurdity of such a venture, it did get me wondering what my hobbies are. I don't make model ships, run marathons or take photographs, so nothing sprang to mind readily.

Perhaps a better way of going about this might be to think about not what I do on a regular basis, but what I enjoy doing. The simple thing that springs to mind is eating. I like to eat, as must be obvious. I believe that part of the formula for a happy life is to eat often and eat well, without excessive regard for things like calories and cholesterol. We all die at some point, so why not have a happy grease fire instead of a foul flame of dried twigs?

I like good restaurants. I have to admit that I am not a fan of extreme innovation, since it rarely tastes as good as the familiar done well. Experiments are all fine and good, but the objective of a restaurant, aside from the monetary aspect, is to feed people, and have them leave happier than when they arrived. In some cases, that might be accomplished by foie gras lollipops, but in all likelihood, a skillfully roasted duck beast will do the job much better. I do not wish that experimentation with food ceases, but that others suffer the brunt of the failures. I am content to be in the second wave of adopters.

Similarly, I am not a snob when it comes to food. All I ask is that it does well what it sets out to do. A light, crispy prata possesses the same value as a little pot of meltingly tender veal cheeks, although by that logic I would be hard pressed to explain my willingness to pay 50 times the price of a prata for that little pot. But the principle holds, that execution is crucial. Flair and refinement are secondary to the simple idea of a meal being cooked well. The finest ingredients in the most splendid setting cannot compensate for ineptitude in the kitchen.

Enough about eating. I weary of a random lecture about some topic that interests no one. How about a reflection instead on the reason I enjoy cooking? I am not good at it, by any means. I have no instinct for heat and flavours. When I cook, it resembles an operation, focusing on getting everything just right, rather than trying to make the end-product. The process consumes the result in my mind.

So why then do I get a kick out of it? Well, the simple answer is that I find it therapeutic, relaxing. Something to do with working with my hands, scalded as they are by bubbling oil. I spent two and a half years slogging through the mud for the army, and that has been quite enough outdoors activity for the rest of my life. So I cook. By forcing my mind into a mode where I simply strive to follow a predetermined procedure exactly, rather than attempt to adapt on the fly, I remove myself from an analytic role. I avoid implications and improvements. It is a way to let my brain relax, in a manner of speaking.

Alright, enough babbling.

Just a note. Observation is not a difficult thing. When I have seen a person play frisbee, it is not hard to see the lack of comfort with sports, but contrasting that with the obvious, if not huge, measure of athletic poise, coupled with the strange tendency of females of that particular ethnic group to participate in a certain way in some performances in college, a hypothesis that dance might be something that is done, and perhaps enjoyed, on occasion is not entirely unlikely.