17 Jan 2023
I love food.
And with it, I love cooking.
I know that I can add cream, cheese, basil, tomatoes, and chicken stock to a pan and make a great sauce for salmon.
I know that I can put avocados, tomatoes, onion, lime, cumin, salt, and pepper together to make good guacamole.
I know that I can slowly brown onions, add wine and beef broth to make some tasty onion soup.
It’s all replicable and I can zhuzh it up however I want. Not just salt to taste, but modify to taste.
I’m not a painter or a sculptor; I can’t draw or do photography - but I can cook.
It’s a transient art.
One that doesn’t last forever but is to be experienced.
It can be reproduced, but it won’t be the same meal.
Artful transience. Here for a brief moment to be enjoyed, and then gone.
The same kind of ethereal nature as the sand mandalas created by monks.
The art is the doing, rather than the end result.
In the same way that those mandalas are swept away at the end of their creation, so too are my meals.
I enjoy dismantling my art.