why I cook

Just yesterday evening, I discovered that my granddad cuts his high blood pressure/diabetes/high cholesterol pills with the paring knife I use to slice my fruit. This, in itself, is not the most shocking thing of course, seeing how pill-cutters are not the most elderly-friendly pieces of equipment due to their miniature size encumbering slightly rheumatic hands. What alarmed me was the fact that the knife is never washed after the pill-popping ritual, leaving behind a trail of white powder on the blade for the next person to ineluctably consume, potentially disrupting the balance of hormones in our bodies resulting in sustained damage to our nervous systems over time.

This is only the second theory I have thought of to explain the general feelings of gloom in 2009 though.

The first one lies completely in the fact that I have to travel to Bedok every school day and spend most of my waking hours in drudgery, wallowing in a hot and steamy cesspool with hundreds other indifferent individuals. I guess I may be mean and merciless in my condemnation of this entire part of Singapore at times, but it's true that I've loathed having to trudge through the early-morning sludge of human traffic since Day One of my misery, and visiting this area for random events in my secondary school life had only sowed the seeds for extreme dislike for the years to come.

I've professed my deep dislike for Bedok so many times already, I'm beginning to feel quite adept at expressing my disdain. But give me about 30 years of absence and perhaps I will return with a faint sentimental attraction to this neighbourhood. The keyword here is "faint".

Anyway, to answer my title, I cook because it helps me calm down, and the act of creating something nourishing alongside tactile, olfactory, gustatory, visual and aural stimuli is a very rewarding process.

I cook, also, because if I don't, I'll end up with heart disease by the time I cut the triple-layer buttercream-frosted cake for my thirtieth birthday. Without the autonomy of making informed dietary choices, I'll be repeatedly force-fed processed food drenched in oil, or so-called traditional ethnic cuisine swimming in lard and clarified butter. Every dish later on in life becomes
a gamble with Death, a sorry state my forebears had to put up with.

I like to cook also because I treasure the moments spent sitting down to eat without anything else on my mind. My breakfasts are spent walking briskly to the MRT station with a sandwich in one hand and a frown that I attempt to cooly drape on my face, to match the agony I smell in the air. There was a nightmarish period in my life when dinners were waffles and stale bakery buns that I would peel and chew at 9 PM while running away from the horrors contained behind me. I love to sit down at the table and smell the rosemary and thyme, not caring for the idiocy that seems inherent in everything else, while peeling a tangerine and scooping seeds out of passionfruit as the phone rings on silent mode in the far-off recesses of time and space.
It's also a nice feeling to see that meals still retain their importance in the midst of the madness without having to become intravenous nutrient drips.

So there, this is my manifesto for the more important things in life. I'm going to blaspheme epistemic principles by saying that I know I exist not because of my consciousness, but because food you put effort into creating is just so darn tasty. Just sayin'. I need to satisfy primal needs.