I’m in Europe where restaurants and food are generally better regulated.

Ah, gotcha! That right there is an enormous game-changer, and I’m agree with everything you say here. The US food chain is straight-up toxic. You may know this already: the US allows food treatments that are outright banned in most other countries. My travels in Europe were a revelation; I can eat things over there that invariably sicken me here, most notably bread and raw eggs. I would probably dine out more too if I lived in Europe. :D

Totally fair and thank you for the elaboration.

Trying to learn by own practical experience in this day and age seems like a bit late to the party, though.

I’ll counter this point with: I think we’re in a golden age of home cooking. YouTube alone is a gold mine for technique development and refinement. That won’t do anything for your lack of interest though.

So tired of hearing this dumb fuck argument. Ordering food =/= fastfood.

Well that’s good, because I’m not talking about fast food; I don’t eat fast food. Ever. My point was about knowing what you’re putting into your body, knowing how it was sourced and prepped. Dining out is at least three layers of abstraction from that knowledge. I’ve spent a lot of time working in restaurants, including high end ones. Apart from zero-compromise, prix-fixe, tasting menu establishments, recipes are always built to a price point. More restaurants than not use Sysco, First Street, or other nasty industrial sourcing. Most restaurants source their meats directly or indirectly from IBP/Tyson because they cornered the market on meat at scale*. And that’s before factoring in time-saving shortcuts, like not washing produce and using Sysco bases. For just one example on the sourcing risks, at high end restaurant where I worked the pantry cooks had to wear gloves to receive and sort the produce because the pesticides and container treatment gave them rashes.

*IBP used to be a reliable, quality source despite being CAFO meats, and what I used in my own charcuterie business. After the acquisition by Tyson, shit went downhill almost overnight. I closed up operations because sourcing at that scale was no longer possible for me.

The amount of people that seem to think their little bit of homecooking can compete with professional chef’s is laughable.

A chef is a cost engineer and inventory manager. But I get your point: Sturgeon’s Law absolutely applies to most people’s kitchen results.

How does it not? It’s just a boring activity.

I sincerely asked, and I assume you are similarly sincere in asking.

For me, it’s an absolutely quotidian task, every aspect of which I approach mindfully and joyfully. Using a good knife, decent pans, a halfway decent grill/range/oven… the joy of using good tools skillfully cannot be overstated. I mean… where else in our days do we get to play with knives around people and they love the results? :D Woodworking, I guess, but you can’t eat those results.

I love everything about cooking:

• sourcing good local and seasonal ingredients
• prepping the ingredients properly and with the least waste
• layering flavor profiles
• creating a full sensory experience for myself and my circle
• understanding the underlying physics and chemistry at every step
• creating even a simple dish that appeals to all senses
• did I mention playing with knives?
• then getting to feed, nourish, and sate people with my craft… The experience of cooking takes the necessary and workaday task of sustaining ourselves and elevates it to an alchemical and spiritual level.

From a holistic, connected-to-the-land, tree-hugging hippie context, cooking takes the alchemy from Shit Wizards (AKA farmers) and transmutates those inputs into magical energy. Food nourishes the body; good cooking nourishes the soul. Gathering tribe around a meal that I made is even more fulfilling than the literal billions of people who, directly or indirectly, use the software I built.

From a biological context, knowing the provenance of my food is the culinary equivalent of using open source software. From an ethical living context, knowing that my food providers are using fair labor practices, compassionate animal welfare, and good land stewardship enables me to make food that I eat and share in good conscience. Also, garbage in, garbage out on every level. This is stuff you’re putting in your body. The body that carries around your brain, both of which ya kinda need to do other things you enjoy. Food is medicine, and so many ills I see, physical and otherwise, stem from poor food sourcing and prep.

From an efficiency, conservation, and creativity context:

• turning “waste” material into an amazing stock
• turning leftovers into an entirely new dish that utterly slaps
• that on-the-knife-edge, tuned-up feeling of bringing a meal together… it rivals playing live to a sold-out crowd
• doing more with the least amount of everything… give me a good knife, good cutting board, good produce stand, a saute pan, and a shitty butane burner, and I will crank out a meal for you that will get YOU laid :D
• the mind-body connection of skillfully wielding my tools in pursuit of an explicit and relatively immediate goal; it might take me years to build software, but it takes just an evening to make something that feeds my tribe

In the grand scheme of human experience, there are few things that everyone can do that fire on all sensory cylinders while delivering the spiritual high of creativity manifested. Cooking is something everyone can do.

Why does cooking suck for you?

Casual AF. I’m here to get shit done, not take any shit from my OS, not pay permanent rents to run my computers*, and do things my way. Protecting my privacy, fulfilling the promise of general purpose computing, and lack of DRM are just icing on the cake.

*Totally happy to donate on the regular to the open source apps I use!

The tuxedo kitteh is channeling Ron Swanson.