Cooking, the Extravagant Spell With an Eye Toward Transformation.

At the end of the day cooking is the way I decompress.  I love the way that a recipe gives you hints about magical discoveries that you may find, but doesn't really require your fealty.  I love the way that returning to recipes time after time gives you opportunity to experiment with ingredients, cooking techniques, pans and pots.

I love that the evolution of dishes happens not across one evening of cooking but across a long adulthood of cooking.  And I love how every recipe takes on the associations of the people who gave it to you, the people you've served it to, places, stories, long streaks of laughter or outrageous debates full of good hearted ribbing.

I sometimes feel like cooking is like production design in film and theatre.  Once all the costumes and paint and fabric swatches and hairstyles and music selection and locations and scheduling problems.  Once the lenses, the electric and rigging, the transportation, food services, technical rehearsal, camera rehearsal, light grids, specials.   Once those fragments are pulled together the magic begins. 

Cooking is a journey toward a meal and a meal is a stop on a timeline of friendship, love, memories, shared ideas and shared feelings.

Cooking is an extravagant spell cast toward deepening shared meaning.

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