FOR THE LOVE OF FOOD
We all have those stories. You know, the ones you grow up telling people, and the ones you’ve grown up with people telling you. It’s the idea of how food creates community more than any other art does. For thousands of years, holidays and life have surrounded food. It’s surrounded food much, much more than any other medium.
As a writer, and an avid foodie, I wanted to share how my love of this medium is more than a medium to me, and is more than just community. It’s one of those parts of life that have molded me more than anything else, and has created who I am more than music, writing, or whatever arts I began first.
For me, wanting to learn how to cook was inspired by my gluttonous need to practice every type of art form. What it turned into, is knowing how each type of art meets different necessities of daily life. If you don’t eat, you die. It’s what feeds you, and nourishes you, from the inside out. Good food? You’ll be healthy. Bad food? You’ll probably make yourself ill.
As someone who loves exploring art forms, this was one of the ones that threw me through a loop.
Until I started really understanding food, and really understanding what I was doing in the kitchen, I was a terrible cook. I might have been able to put out a good plate of scrambled eggs, but it was learning how important this form of art was to life that allowed me to open my horizons.
Once I realized that cooking was about taking care of people, and wanting to take care of people by feeding their souls with my soul on a plate, I became a better cook.
No other art is like this.
For the most cases, each medium is solely about self-expression. It’s about making a connection by finding people who understand what you’re trying to say. This is especially true about music and fiction-writing, and poetry. It’s about showing your insides on your outsides. This is what home decor and personal style is about. But cooking? Cooking is about being able to create a meal that echos who your insides are, and being able to nourish people’s minds and bodies with it… rather than just nourishing their minds. You’re putting something in someone’s body that has a specific purpose. There are multiple purposes for any other genre of art, but not the culinary arts.
This new segment, For The Love Of Food, is an exploration of what this medium is to me, and all the ways the culinary arts have shown me the world.