My appalling thought for the day

[swan_tower]

Musing to myself this morning:

Yeah, I just really don’t like cooking. I don’t know what goes on in the heads of people who do like cooking, that makes them enjoy the process. I just get bored

People like desperance probably think about writing while they’re cooking.

You know — kind of like how you think about writing while you’re driving, and because of that, you actually enjoy being in the car for an hour. Why can’t you do that while cooking?

Well, because I have to pay attention while I’m cooking. Whereas while I’m driving –

Uh.

That didn’t come out right.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[starlady]

Lolololol. I actually don't have to pay attention when I'm cooking at this point--it's the only thing I can do and listen to Welcome to Night Vale at the same time, except for cleaning.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure whether to be impressed or afraid. *g*

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Honestly, it probably says more about my incompetence with kitchen tasks than anything to do with my driving. I have no autopilot whatsoever with chopping or measuring or frying stuff.

. . . but yeah, it's still a bit of a scary thought. <>

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

I am terrible at cooking, since everything takes so much attention. And I have a terrible tendency to get distracted. So I sympathise.

(I don't drive, because other road users terrify me.)

[brooksmoses]

Sometimes I have autopilot when chopping stuff. Then I wonder whether we really actually need anywhere near that many chopped onions and peppers....

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

Cooking for me at least takes a lot more attention--way more multitasking and juggling cooking times. You're not supposed to multitask while driving.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Speaking as someone who does enjoy cooking...

Partly it's because I'm good at it, and people generally like doing things they're good at (pace Petrova Fossil).

Partly it's because cooking is a form of creativity, and as such, it's a very satisfying activity for me (pun entirely intended!)

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

See, I don't have the creativity angle on it at all, because I don't have a good enough grasp of basic principles to improvise much at all.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I don't feel that I need to be improvising in my cookery for it to be creative. Even if I'm making something I've made a million times before, or I'm following a recipe that someone else wrote, it's still a creative process for me. I'm taking raw ingredients and creating dinner from them!

Of course, it's more exciting when I invent a new recipe, but making an old favourite is also satisfying.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Mmmmm, that raises an interesting point. Why do I feel like I'm being (moderately) creative when I play piano from sheet music, but not when I cook from a recipe?

(I suspect the answer has a great deal to do with "interpretation," i.e. I feel like I'm putting my own stamp on the music as I play it, but not so much with the food.)

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Well, that makes two of us . . .

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's much autopilot in my cooking. Mostly I'm thinking about the food, in the context of what I'm doing: the slicing it, the sizzling it, the spicing it, whatever. It might be kind of zen, come to think. I am holding it at the heart of my intention, hoping that total focus will help it to come good.

Which is what I do when I write. Come to think.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

See my more recent post: I suspect you do have autopilot, for things so basic you don't even think about the fact that you do them on autopilot. It would horrify you, the stuff I have to work at in the kitchen. <g>

[kurayami-hime.livejournal.com]

It *is* harder to set your house on fire while driving. I won't say impossible because, you know, challenge, but the point stands.

You can rely partially on muscle memory while driving and not really at all while cooking. See infra fire.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Much harder to kill yourself, your family, and strangers (http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=2587) in flamey mangled death while cooking... car deaths about 33,000/year, kitchen ??? I've seen 480 for kitchen-started homefire deaths.

Probably easier to casually injure yourself in the kitchen, with all the knives and hot surfaces.

[kurayami-hime.livejournal.com]

Driving is infinitely more dangerous, no question. But I stand by my comment that it is much harder to set your house on fire while driving than it is to set your house on fire while cooking.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Muscle memory and, as I said to yhlee in the newer post, spatial reasoning. Both of those are things I'm very good at.

Cooking, not so much.

[benbenberi.livejournal.com]

I think that, when people who enjoy cooking are cooking, what they are mostly thinking about is cooking. It's just that it's something they like to do and like to think about. Not much autopilot, but engaged focus (with a reasonable expectation of good results based on previous success).

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

When I'm cooking, I'm thinking about cooking-- not about chopping, or measuring, or sauteing, or kneading, which are autopilot tasks for me. Actual thought is reserved for the creative parts-- flavors, textures, how to combine them and show them to best advantage.

I've never managed to learn to drive, but I well remember from my last attempt how horrible it was having to notice everything, and pay attention to it.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Yeah -- see my more recent post. There's autopilot in driving, too, but until you acquire it, driving is hella stressful.

[ellen-fremedon.livejournal.com]

It is obscurely comforting to know that driving is stressful for other people. I get panic attacks as a passenger in motor vehicles, and though they're much less frequent now than they were when I was a child, I still wouldn't want to get behind the wheel without having Ativan in the glove compartment and a route planned where I could pull off the road to recover at any point along the way.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I don't think most people find it stressful to that extreme of a degree -- but it was definitely nerve-wracking to learn. Eventually the car starts to feel like an extension of your body, rather than a separate thing you're trying to control, but it takes a while.

[brooksmoses]

It's an entirely different kind of attention, though, except when the driving involves navigation (which, for hour-long trips that aren't through quasi-rural Massachusetts, it mostly doesn't).

Possibly it's not so much "attention" as such, as active short-term memory and decision-making apparatus that's involved.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Good point re: short-term memory and decision-making. Those are definitely aspects of what I think of as an automated process.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

There are nine and sixty ways....

Like some of the other cooking enthusiasts here, I am thinking about cooking when I'm cooking: the subtleties of spice and flavor balance, whether the texture of the thing is going right, etc.

I think that what people who are not cooking enthusiasts sometimes overestimate from my perspective, however, is how much of cooking is cooking. Pretty much all of driving is driving. But between "I think I'll make a chicken pie for supper" and "here is the chicken pie," there may be several hours of preparation, but most of them are not spent in cooking. Letting the pie crust chill and letting the pie bake are the obvious parts of this, but for me there are also great swaths of the time when I'm, for example, stirring the filling and letting it finish, that are not real cooking and allow me to think of four things about what to do with the end of my revisions, which is why I came out of that with not only supper for that night, a quarter of a pie in leftovers, and some filling to put over pasta a different night, but also a bit of the notepad next to the grocery list notepad with those four things written in a floury hand.

And I am an experienced enough cook that I knew when I could leave off paying attention for awhile and do that and when the attention needed to come back again. That's one of the things I feel experience buys me: knowing when the soup will benefit from having its maker wander off and think of biscuits or salad or setting the table or short stories for awhile instead.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Right, see -- to me, stirring the filling is still cooking, because I'm not experienced enough to do that part without paying attention. I hover. I check. I watch pots boil. <g> I'd say that is still cooking in the way that driving down a straight road without you or anybody around you changing lanes or speed is still driving; it's just that in one case I trust myself to do the work without active attention from my brain, and in the other I don't.

[klwilliams.livejournal.com]

I get so much plotting done when I have a commute where I drive. It's better to just give up, stay in one lane, and think about writing. On the train, where I used to get a lot of writing done, now I just try to stay awake. Probably a good thing I no longer drive to work.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Driving is right up there with showering for good thinking-time.

(I'd say "also for good singing time," except that I don't actually sing in the shower.)

[ramblin-phyl.livejournal.com]

Same here. there are too many more interesting things to do than cook. Or clean house. Like read a book. Or write one.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

Sometimes cleaning is therapeutic, at least for me.

[ramblin-phyl.livejournal.com]

Cleaning is useful when I finish a draft and need to separate my mind from the next project. The one time a year my oven gets cleaned.

[auriaephiala.livejournal.com]

I hate having to deal with people while I cook. I don't want to have to check over my shoulder that I might bump into them when I head for the stove or sink. I don't want to have to talk to them and concentrate on that. I don't want anything in the foreground except the cooking.

On the other hand, I find it very soothing to listen to good instrumental music or to an audiobook while I'm cooking. Either of those I can turn off if necessary and they're not in my way.

I also have learned that sometimes the best thing to do if I'm getting overloaded is to turn down or off that burner & let the pot sit, or even to take the pot off and turn the burner off. It de-stresses me if I know that that item will not burn while I do something else. If I have to leave the kitchen and I have something which requires attention (as opposed to, say, rice cooking or a cake in the oven with a timer set), I will probably turn off the burner as well.

But if I can control my kitchen in that way, and tell people to go away, I really quite enjoy cooking. It's generally predictable and produces yummy results.