One of the best things about cooking is the bond it creates between people. People who love food love to talk about food and it makes for an instant connection. I was humbled this week by the remarks from a potential employer (I was interviewing for the job), who said to me in so many words ‘I really like that you cook. It tells me you’re nurturing, dedicated, and creative.’ A passionate cook himself, the next few minutes passed quickly swapping recommendations for food writers, cookbooks and the like. Hopefully he found some of my other talents equally impressive.
In any case, I found it quite gratifying to realize this mutual respect that cooks share. We are nurturing. We cook not only because we love food but because we love those who we share it with. We take great pride in our culinary confections. We are fearless in experimenting with strange ingredients and new techniques, stubborn and relentless until they’re perfected. We are sponges for food knowledge, never complacent, feasting on the sheer joy that cooking brings us. In short, we are pretty cool.
