I like to eat, but I love to cook. Cooking is as much a form of creative expression as shaping words into a poem or lyrical essay; painting a landscape or portrait with colorful pigments; sculpting an image from stone or wood; inventing a machine; or, discovering a new drug.
The kitchen is a cook's studio or laboratory. The media are fresh vegetables and fruits, meat, herbs, spices, and oils, bread, cheese, fine wine and beer. The implements are pots and pans, knives, chopping blocks, mandolins, blenders and stoves. Boiling, simmering, roasting, frying, basting, baking, steaming, grilling, and browning are the techniques. A delicious, carefully and lovingly crafted meal is the art piece. The plate is the canvas. A finely set table is the gallery where the work is displayed. And, while distinctive tastes and aromas are elements of a a meal, we also eat with our eyes.
The ancient Greeks believed that there were ten Muses, the goddesses of inspiration of literature science and the arts. Perhaps there is an eleventh Muse, the Muse of Cooking, and when she speaks, I go to the kitchen.
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