I can't cook?

I think that I am more competent in the kitchen than a majority (not all, but more than half) of my college classmates. I am pretty sure that Jocco and Chinzi were both more competent than me in the kitchen, but I felt fairly competent in a culinary sense compared to Caleb and Jamie. (Okay, I felt kind of like a culinary God compared to Caleb, but he set the bar pretty low. Sorry Caleb) Of course, I assume that these people have learned things since graduating, while I have spent a year eating at cheap Chinese restaurants and munching on lunches provided by my preschool. So what good does a skill count for if I never use it?

When I was at the WWOOF farm go, the perception of me as a person who can't cook might have been exaggerated by the humility with which I readily stated that "I know very little," "I can't cook many dishes," "I am a novice in the kitchen," etc.. This might be a culturally Chinese thing that isn't done here in Europe. Chinese people often deflect compliments, denying one's skill or ability (藏龙卧虎, anyone?). Where as a Chinese person might not may as might attention to such statements knowing that they are mere humility, perhaps the people on the WWOOF farm took them at face value. This will be a difficult part of adjusting to a new culture for me: tailoring my behavior from what I am used to to what is considered the norm here. Another factor was the ingredients and the tools that I was familiar with using simply didn't exist there on the farm. So does the skill exist if it is never used?

The folks at the WWOOF farm also had an assumption that I do not know how to prepare food I because I lived at home for a long time. This is false, though. Even though I was younger than most of them, I stopped living with my parents full-time when I was about 16 years old. I also factually disproved it by asking the Italian girl how long she had lived with her parents (which ended up being much longer than I lived with mine) and if she felt she could cook (which she could). For me, at about 16 I left home for a boarding school, Perpich. Throughout my time at Perpich and at Kalamazoo, I would usually make use of the cafeteria, or if need be I would make simple meals for myself. I remember intensely saving money, during the weekend often eating a single meal a day in order to save money, and often subsiding on nothing more than ramen noodles. This wasn't due to a desire to not cook, but rather to a desire to not spend money. At Kalamazoo college I usually ate in the cafateria, although ocaisionally I would make simple food for myself. I made simple food not because I was afraid of the kitchen or some nonsense like that, but because it didn't take much time to make, and the less time I spent cooking the more time I could spend studying (or doing whatever else I prioritized more).

During my junior year in Beijing I would eat in either a cafeteria or in restaurants, never making anything for myself beyond and an occasional 方便面, which is basically ramen. This was for the same reasons of simplicity and time. During these years cooking and eating was just something that I wanted to get out of the way as quickly as possible so I could go back to reading, studying, or something that I considered more important and enjoyable. During my senior year at Kalamazoo I cooked for myself considerably more often, only eating in the cafeteria for special reasons (language practice, personal sloth, schedule, quality time with people that I wouldn't see often enough otherwise, or some special event). In retrospect I think that I ate there too often, and therefore wasted money on it. Usually, though, I would make food for myself. It is true that I did eat a decent number of frozen food-style meals, which I would place at about 50% of my meals. But I often made very simple food for myself, such as pasta, burritos, stir-fried rice. Due to their portability, I nearly always had sandwiches for lunch. Nothing else strikes me as so appropriate for a Tupperware container.

None of the foods I regularly made are particularly impressive. In fact, the only reason I would have to make an impressive meal would be to impress a date, perhaps one of the reasons I can make a number of breakfast foods: on Saturday or Sunday morning we needed to eat something, and munching on cereal is fine for myself, but not something I want to do with a date. Whereas a meal together on Friday or Saturday night would more likely be at a local restaurant or made with friends, I consider myself fairly competent at making “morning-after breakfasts,” which were always a hit.

In general, my philosophy of food has been aimed at something quick, cheap, and simple; something that needs to be done and not something to spend a lot of time on and to enjoy for it's own sake. Perhaps this is due to a busy schedule, or perhaps it is just because of my desires to do so many things and the reality of the limited time that is available to me. Regardless of why I have this concept of food, this is very different, perhaps completely opposite, from people who enjoy food for its own sake and spend a long time at the table on a regular basis. My experiences this past summer may have started to change this a little, and I hope to have a full kitchen in Albacete (In Beijing I didn't even have a kitchen), which will provide the opportunity to spend more time cooking.

I hope to do a lot more cooking for myself this year. With Sean Bennet and Nolan as models (and with the help of the internet) I hope to learn how to make a number of tasty dishes. Isa has already showed me a website with videos of how tomake Spanish dishes, and I hope to find more resources from other friends.

Ironically, when I was in Chicago hanging out with Isa we made several meals together, and she thought that I was a wonder in the kitchen. During one breakfast (This breakfast was banana pancakes with slices of apricot and peach mixed in, with a topping of Nutella. It looked and tasted pretty good, if I may so myself) she told me “Joe, this is happiness.” Seeing that this was just a few days after other Spaniards felt that I couldn't make anything beyond mashed potatoes, I guess that my cooking skills were really judged from different perspectives and based on different samples of my skills. The philosophical takeaway from this: the tools available to me significantly shape the utility and the result of my skills.