Cooking

A smile, a laugh, a quick thought, starry nights, walking in warm rain storms, chocolate; these are all things that make me happy. It is different for the person sitting next to me in my English class, but everyone feels it. happiness is an emotion that is the product of an object or an event. It is something that makes a man in his years of aged wisdon stop, smile, and think of happy times. To me happiness is like a piece of chocolate, it is something that everyone wants, something that we sometimes have to work hard for, and something that is always worth the risk os acting in order to have it. Everyone wants chocolate. The food of Gods! Chocolate covered cherries, chocolate cake, chocolate mints, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. As it is plain to see, chocolate is a happiness for me. The way it melts in your mouth like heaven and coats your teeth and warms your belly. For those who do not like chocolate it is the same concept. There is something out there that an indidual person cannot get enough of, just one of those little things that makes them happy. It does not matter if it is chocolate, sports, shopping, or holding the hand of a loved one. Everyone has something that makes them happy, and everyone deserves to have that feeling. That warm fuzzy tingly feeling. “ We all live with the objective of being happy, our lives are different and yet the same” Anne Frank. Everyone wants happiness, everyone wants chocolate. As much as I do love chocolate, if i sat around eating sweets all day to make myself happy, I would soon find myself unhappy do to the unwanted weight gain and laziness. So to find a happy medium I learned how to cook. I figured this was more of a “artistic hobby” and could feel less guilty. I soon became enfatuated with cooking and spices and the way it would make my house smell. I gained a sense of pride when my dinning table looked like wolf gang puck and been to my house. As I started cooking more and more I decided to start reserarching the hystory of food and cooking. When did people decide that the less amout of food on a plate ment it should cost more money' Why do some foods make you happy and some foods make you sad' Why does a certain color plate make you want to eat less or eat more' I wanted to learn everything there was to know about the psycoloical meaning behind food and cooking. I soon learned that food, cooking and whatever related to these themes are usually considered as an art because food is an everyday item that has a wide meaning for all people. Food can be considered as an art; for example: the decoration of a food, the way a food is constructed on a plate, or even the way many different foods are being mixed in order to create a new food. Sometimes even people consider the arrangement of plates on a table as an art. The is called Table Art. I Soon found myself with my nose barried in a book I had picked up from Barnes and Noble called The Physiology of Taste by Brillat-Savarin. Finally a book I was actually interested in! In his book, “The physiology of taste” he states that cooking is the oldest of all arts. He says that Adam was born hungry and even a new born child first looks to be fed by his nurse right after he comes to the new world (physiology of taste, pg 300) He also believes that cooking and food is the finest art that has had the most influence on humans’ civilization. (300) Food is one of the fewest things in the whole world that almost everyone becomes satisfied with. When people eat, a kind of satisfaction and pleasure make them happy. Whatever can make a person happy could be considered as an art. I then learned that gastronomy is the knowledge and science of whatever related to human’s nourishment (physiology of taste, 51) Savarian believes Gastronomy is a part of cookery. The way dishes are adapted and arranged on a table and the way a food is tasted or enjoyed by your senses make the food an art work. (physiology of taste, 51) Savarian by his philosophical look explain the joy and sadness that a food can cause by its taste. He says that a taste gives us the greatest joy because eating is the only thing which is not followed by regret. I personally feel that is up for debate but i chose to humor him and enjoy the 8 topping 4 cheese deep dish pizza I had made for dinner that night telling myself I was not overindulging, I was savoring a masterpiece of “art”. After I had the worst indigestion around midnight for my gigantic piece of “artwork” I had earlier I decided I should probobly read the whole book and not just the chapters that tell me to eat everything insight because it’s “beautiful”. I wanted to know what else about eating was beautiful and satisfying. Was it the family conversation it brings' Was it the sense of comfort it brought me when my house smelled warm and welcoming like the holidays did' I then learned that the preperation of food is just as important as the food itself. Only a good cook can prepare a food in its best way and the final product is what everyone would like to try. A skilled cook can make a fish that becomes an immense sense of pleasure. Sometimes only professional cooks can make an astonishing dish because everyone does not have the skill and techniques the average single white female, or Mr.Mom does. For example my husband and I went to a restaraunt one evening and he wanted to try the ear part of a pig. he found it alittle disgusting before he saw the dish, but after the chef prepared the dish and presented it on a beautiful porcline plate he said “ The culinary art, I guess often involve artifice. Things are cooks to disquise their ugly origins. An oxtail, for example, doesnt look like an ox’s tail; it looks like brown glazed and beautiful, like a slow roasted half loin” After that night I decided I wanted to get more and mroe creative with my cooking skills. After reading several cooking articals and several cooking how to books, I learned many different ways to use and alter something as simple as sugar. In a book called everything but the squeal it talked about how the most skillfull cooks should be able to completly change the taste and style of a meal with sugar. Almost as though it was considered a lifeline, or secret weapon. For instance, sugar mixed with water that is refreshign and healthy mixed with wine priduced cordials, but if mixed with flour and eggs makes sponge cakes or muffins. After playing with all this sugar I soon learned patience and attentiveness is a vertue in cooking. Turns out when sugar burns it smell like a dead body cooking in your oven. I thought for sure this would be my husbands last straw in my cooking extravaganza. Then after the fire alarm stopped going off and the smoke cleared the room I thought about all the instinces in the book Julie and Julia where she cooked one of Julia Child’s recipies every day for 365 days. Her fire alarm went of a million times! And who can count the amount of times she let a frowzen bird slip from her hands and fly accross the kitchen as though is was still running from the hunter.