I enjoy it because it requires a variety of skills, senses, and creativity…and you are almost immediately rewarded for your ability apply those skills. It stimulates your most senses throughout the process and can relax with a full belly afterwards. Just fuck doing the dishes afterwards, much respect to dishies bc I hate the clean up.

I love it personally, it’s creative and fun, plus the results are delicious, what’s not to like?!

Because you start with an overall plan and the constituent parts, then it’s a skill game to prepare them all in the appropriate time windows, and with appropriate skill.

Because of the variability inherent to cooking and ingredients, it’s also our real-time challenge of figuring out what’s going wrong, and how to get it back on the rails.

It’s extremely satisfying to understand the different aspects of preparing food, herbs, vegetables, meats, etc, and then using that knowledge to make something so tasty that people’s eyes bug out when they eat it.

I find it extremely satisfying to take something that people consider to be not tasty, and just with a little core technique, make it into something they can’t even believe they are tasting.

Because it puts me in the flow. I can forget the entire world and simply be in the cooking. Then I get a lovely meal after.

I very much enjoy the extraordinary nexus of art, science, technology, and technique afforded by cooking. And how this all occasionally comes together into something delicious and beautiful.

But what I really enjoy most of all is feeding my family and friends, and seeing the happiness it brings, if that doesn’t seem too twee.

I also can not abide washing up, so I enjoy the division of labour where I cook and someone else does the dishes.

It gives me a socially acceptable excuse to do a lot of drugs.