Cooking

I'm about to embark on another one of my cooking adventures. Sometimes I wonder why I keep trying, since the results are usually unpredictable, and the food is occasionally inedible.

Part of the problem is my unwillingness to use recipes. Cookbooks are for wusses, and real men make things up as they go along. Well, actually, real men just barbeque, but since I'm not a man, I'll let my statement stand.

My dad always told me that cooking was biochemistry and baking was microbiology. He has a point. However, I did exceedingly well in biochemistry, and I'm nowhere near as good of a cook. My baking is nonexistent - I never did understand the concept of yeast very well. That said, cooking is fun, as long as you treat it as a science experiment. Although with my cooking style, I'd have to say it's more like organic chemistry.

Biochemistry requires a certain degree of precision. And this is my cooking downfall. I cook like an organic chemist - it doesn't matter what I add as long as something, somewhere in the pan/pot tastes OK in the end - the cooking equivalent of recrystallization. Even if 29 out of 30 pieces of chicken taste awful, if one of them tastes right, then I've succeeded.

Now I'm going to go and attempt yet again to cook. I've got about a 50-50 chance that it will turn out all right. I'll just try very hard to think as a biochemist and hope that the mindset will give me the necessary karmic qualities to make a good dinner.