Why Cooking At Home Is So Damn Amazing.

First things first: I’m a writer by trade. The past fifteen or so years have been a running competition to learn as much about deploying words and sentences as possible. But everyone needs something to enjoy outside of their day job.

For me, it’s cooking.

On Paying Attention

My day job, like many people’s day jobs, has a funny quality to it. At work, I have to juggle multiple projects at any given time; I’m thinking about at least three things at any given second. Obsessive monomania doesn’t get you very far.

But cooking is the exact opposite of that. Every time I grill a steak or make a complicated sauce, I’m dealing with a precise timetable and a very precise set of tasks to do. The laws of physics are immutable, and we end up with overdone steaks or wheatpastey roux disasters if things go wrong.

Cooking has a way of taking revenge on you if you take a break to answer a text message or change the TV channel. You don’t want to do that.

On Cooking At Home

I’ve worked in restaurant kitchens and cooked plenty of home meals. They’re different beasts. In restaurants, you’re fighting an endless war to knock out tickets and get food to customers. It’s cooking on a larger scale; you use a knife and cutting board the same way, but the rhythm’s different.

Cooking at home means constantly switching your attention from different tasks, and creating something you’re going to eat immediately after. It’s short bursts of obsessive monomania — put the potatoes in the oven to roast and begin making the chopped salad right after. Then you turn back and forth while searing the chicken breast in the pan, and focus 110% on not burning the thing.

On Not Burning The Thing

Cooking is a lot like sports, gaming, or playing an instrument: You need to be present in the moment. Get distracted cooking? Your sloppiness makes the food taste a lot worse. Get distracted when at bat? It’s going to be a bit harder to hit that ball. Get distracted playing guitar? Your muscle memory only gets you so far. Get distracted driving down a twisty mountain road? Bad things happen.

And having something like that is crucial. Being focused on one thing, and one thing only, for a limited stretch of time is an awesome thing.

You Need That Outlet

This is where I’d plug in a trendy word about mindfulness or meditation. But that’d just be silly, and both you and me are better than that.

Instead, I’ll say this: Creating situations where you’re forced to focus on the task at hand is a great thing. There’s plenty of time to worry about the rest of your workload, about current events, about family, about the weather. There’s plenty of time for that.

Cooking, for me, does a damn great job of being that outlet. But it can be something else, anything else. All that matters is that you have something like that.

The best part? That email inbox with 3000 unread messages will be waiting when you come back.