A lot of people think that hobbies necessarily have to involve some sort of product.
For example, if you have a woodworking hobby, people would expect that you would lead them to a special room in your house where you have all these wooden objects of art that you have created using your wood-turning and woodworking tools in your garage.
Similarly, if you have a painting hobby, people would expect that you would lead them to a room with all sorts of amateur paintings.
Well, the term “hobby” is actually more expensive than that. It covers many more activities than simply involving some sort of hard items or objects that people can check out. Believe it or not, cooking can be a hobby.
Now, a lot of people are under the impression that cooking is just something that people do as a skill. They don’t look at it as a hobby. Because a hobby is something that you do in your spare time and something that produces some sort of finished product that you do not necessarily eat.
For example, if a friend of yours is a hobby writer, then they probably would show you a lot of the novels, short stories, and other printed items that they produced on their spare time as they hang out at the local cafe, listening to their favorite music with their headphones on, as they type away at their mobile device or their laptop.
This is the romantic view of a hobby. But the truth is, cooking can be a hobby. And the great thing about this hobby is that the more you do it, the more you enjoy yourself doing it, the better you get and guess what?
The happier people around you become. Why? The benefit is immediate. This is a work product that you consume.
Compare this with painting. So, a friend of yours is painting in the garage. He fancies himself as the second coming of a Jackson Pollock. So he’s out there dripping paint on a canvas. He’s doing a little weird dance and before you know it, he comes up with this amazing looking piece of abstract expressionist art.
Well, as awesome as it is to look, eventually you’re going to get tired standing on your feet looking at this canvas with all this paint. At the back of your mind you’re thinking, “Okay, that’s great. What’s next?”.
Well, if you have a friend who is a hobbyist chef, it’s a completely different experience. There are many angles to it. You can check out of this person as they take stuff out of their storage, out of their pantry and out of their refrigerator.
You’re treated to all sorts of vegetables and other ingredients of varying textures, shapes, sizes and weight. You can even smell some of the more aromatic ingredients like basil, oregano, and cilantro. This is especially true if they’re cooking Indian food. Believe me, you can smell curry from quite a distance.
So, once they’ve assembled all these colorful and multi-textured materials, you can then see them preparing the ingredients.
So in a way, it’s like performance art because different ingredients have to be processed differently. Some have to be ground. Some have to be put through a food processor. Others are better dealt with when you chop them up delicately by hand.
Even others are just simply taken apart and shredded by hand. Whatever the case may be, you’re seeing this person actually doing something.
It’s not much different, really than watching a Jackson Pollock painting being created in front of your very own eyes. There’s a certain dance to it. There’s a certain rhythm. There’s a certain pace.
You have to pay attention to what happens before, what happens during and what happens after. And then, after they do all of that and they apply the heat, they put it in the oven or do what they need to do to cook the dish, the outcome is something that really engages all five senses.
If you don’t believe me, let’s go down the list. First of all, when somebody comes up with an amazing pumpkin pie, the first thing that you can see is that it all started out as pumpkin bits that have been puréed and this can of whipped cream.
And now, you have this nice pie shell filled with pumpkin goodness. So, you can see the contrast between the orange filling, the white cream and the browned ridges of the crust around it.
When they cut into the pie to serve it to do those lucky enough to partake of this amazing feast, what do you experience next?
That’s right- you experience the aroma of the spices that have been put into the pumpkin pie. The cutting engages your ears. It sounds delicious. And then, when you bite into it, you can even feel your tongue getting in contact with the uneven texture that adds to the appeal of this item.
So, all your senses from your sense of smell, your sense of hearing, your sense of eyesight, your sense of taste, your sensitivity to pressure and your sense of touch, all of these are engaged. That’s why cooking as a hobby is really another level.
The word “hobby” doesn’t really do justice to it because it’s an exploration of just how amazing food items can be on so many different levels. They’re fun to assemble. They’re fun to cook. They’re fun to eat. You really can’t get enough of it.