a. Why do I love to cook?

Why do I love to cook? I cook in order to enjoy what I am preparing afterwards. I cook to share with family and friends. Most of all, I cook for the deep satisfaction the process of cooking itself gives me, more today than ever, even if I can’t fully explain why this creative and meditative activity has become so important to me.

It may be because it is a uniquely human ability. For all unprejudiced observers of nature, there is indeed a fine line between man and other animals that many scientists and commentators have tried and still try to qualify. At turns, speech has been heralded as uniquely human, or tool making, only to be contradicted by other experts… or experience. 

However, no definition is at once more accurate and more pregnant for me than the one given in 1791 by James Boswell, a Scot who was certainly generous with quotable gems:

My definition of Man is, a ‘Cooking Animal.’

Going further, in a recent book, Catching Fire, the primatologist Richard Wrangham develops a new, very seductive theory of human evolution, made possible by early mastery of fire and cooking more than two million years ago. This may remain controversial for some time, but there is a large scientific consensus on the more recent past, 70,000 or 80,000 years ago: a few Homo Sapiens left Africa and gradually migrated all over the world, mastering new environments, finding new plants and animals to cook, eventually learning how to grow their food, raise livestock and develop new cooking techniques.

Without the recent scientific knowledge we have today, humans, particularly women, intent on feeding their families and ensuring humankind’s survival, learned how to combine starch, fat, fruits, roots and proteins. And they found ways not only to survive, or even to thrive, but to get enjoyment out of prepared food. No wonder we are assailed by an amazing range of wonderful flavors and combinations wherever we go on earth.

To some extent, my home cooking represents who I am (or try to be) as a person, with my personal combination of experiences, clearly originating from one place but open to others, curious, eager to understand and marvel at this wonderful world and the great flow of life.