Cooking

Last July, after reading Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, I decided to create more things in my life that I could immerse myself in.

Still, even knowing I wanted something to immerse myself in, I had no idea what to actually do. After thinking it over for a long time, I decided to try cooking, since I had just started living on my own. Since consistency was important, I focused not on elaborate dishes, but on ones I could realistically keep making every day.

During the week, since I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner almost entirely at work, it wasn’t easy to cook for myself. Still, whenever I had spare time on weekends, I cooked. Over the course of a month, I made everything from simple sandwiches to lasagna, roasted whole pork belly, mapo tofu, and grilled mackerel.

Cooking itself turned out to be less difficult than I expected. In particular, using tools like the oven let me whip up dishes that looked surprisingly impressive. Roasted whole pork belly was especially easy yet visually appealing, so I’ve been putting it to great use as a homemade dish at housewarming parties.

What turned out to be more of a hassle, rather, was everything before and after cooking. Before cooking: grocery shopping and prepping ingredients. After cooking: washing dishes and cleaning up the mess left in the kitchen. It took more effort and time than I expected. Still, I accept it because of the sense of accomplishment and refreshment I feel once I’ve actually cooked and eaten.

As I’ve grown to enjoy cooking, I’ve come to have some short-term goals I’d like to achieve,

• Cutting ingredients with a knife as skillfully and coolly as a cooking master.
• Being able to look at whatever ingredients are left in the fridge and think, “I could make something like this with these.”
• Being able to season food to the taste I want, even without measuring precisely.

How long I’ll keep cooking going forward is up to me, but it seems like a hobby that suits me pretty well (the kind of thing that goes well if I work hard at it on my own), so I plan to keep at it diligently. Here’s hoping my bachelor-pad fridge doesn’t end up filled with nothing but alcohol!