For some reason I love listening to food shows on the radio. The ones on TV don’t do a thing for me, but for some reason driving around and hearing 20 different things to do with macadamia nut oil just makes me happy. Maybe its because cooking is its on kind of story, only unlike writing, cooking stories are all short and end (usually) in comfort. They are a quick emotional fix, maybe a more earthy fix. If a short story is like a complex five course dinner, then cooking is like a cookie. Short sweet, and easily forgotten.

When you eat a good meal that someone has prepared for you, they have literally allowed you to live that much longer. They have nourished you, kept you from starvation. And the euphoria one feels after a good meal is nothing to laugh at.

And yet hearing about cooking on the radio is very removed from the more earthy action of eating. In that sense it is almost a tease. It leaves me with nothing but ideas, and most of those I quickly forget anyway.

You see, while I like to cook, I am also darn lazy. I don’t get the thrill from cooking my mother and sisters got. They can enjoy the making of a meal––the challenge of putting something together new, or well––almost as much (if not more so) than eating it. For me cooking is work. Even when I’m trying out something new, and being creative, it is still work.  So while I love to hear about 20 uses of macadamia nut oil, the truth is I don’t want to make any of them. Oh I might want to taste them, but to the thought of cooking them leaves me uneasy.

Yet when I am driving down the road, and someone is speaking knowledgeably and passionately about making food, I love it. It transports me to another place, another time. Just don’t ask me to remember what they said. And don’t ask me to cook.