Google “cook food well” and the UK Food Standards Agency tells you “Cooking food properly will help make sure that any harmful bacteria are killed.” Jamie Oliver has his hands full!  Even Pavlov's dogs know cooking well can be learned. Anyone who has eaten Haute Cuisine knows its cooks are the recherché mexicano and guatemalteco immigrants with a combined 7th grade education. In spite of unpopular belief Kate Moss is not an alumna of the CIA. I’m not saying all cooks have to be obese or wear their fat like a diploma. Let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water. Cooks sans baccalaureate can be Haute too. 

The rampage to indulge in forbidden garden of Eden succulents transforms even the grumpiest of callow hobos and slews of shallow celebrity chefs parroting incoherent mumbo jumbo into esoteric elites and demigods; paying tribute to their homage of discovering the fountain of youth, pure essence escapism, and existential meaning of life. They are passing the torch of knowledge of good and evil via crisp clear sound bytes; sumptuously photographed lip smacking goodness of sustenance -- all vibrant in DVD, DHTV and HDTV in 1080i or better yet 1080p. I could spend hours awarding savage alive or posthumous martyrs gone before us. In their homage to confound the wise they collectively become usurped mindless minds, but not you, until you yourself “... have reached your destination”.

Expunging the record of every cable-born rot-gut revelous film fête reminiscent of hunter and gatherer; we must traverse our own way into a meaningful personal offering. We start with a chlorine clean slate to baptize, prepare and slaughter. We find ourselves translating a suckling pig into a sacrificial lamb. I rationalize that if this is sin then the most disenchanted wretched sinner is righteously rectified as a sunny rainbow with chlorophyll rivers beneath an orinthotical oasis on a Sunday morn.

To answer AB, it is a breaking away from our chaotic life; experimenting with food so fresh it’s foreign -- to thankfully honor the flora and fauna that gave it’s life to continue ours. In the Ecclesiastical philosophy of futility that everything in life is senseless; we must seize the day and enjoy the fruits of our labors. Eat, drink and be merry. We must relish the simple life, living as pain free as possible in comfort at our dining hour -- enjoying the courtship, companionship and quiet peaceful marriage of our lives, however briefly that may be. It might not be the richest or rarest; it is the best we can find, the finest we share, and with any luck it turns into a romantic enchanted evening.

To cook food well is to gather, prepare, share and experience food well. “Stolen waters are sweet, and bread eaten in secret is pleasant”. I would rather eat plain bread alone than eat a feast with my enemy. I must share for “I would be remiss in my duties as a decent human being if I did not.”