unpack.

One of the most important aspects and benefits of cooking is that it is so therapeutic. I cannot emphasize this enough. I think we all know that feeling when you get home after what felt like the longest and most challenging day of your life, only to realize that you have some more homework to do. Then you get stressed out and panic about how much stuff you have to do. The next thing you know, it’s two in the morning, and you have not eaten. You’re tired and hungry, but it is too late to order food, and you have no groceries because all you have been doing is ordering food.

Now imagine this. You get home from that same long day, except instead of overworking yourself all night, you open your fridge. You take some time to cook yourself a tasty meal with your favorite music playing in the background. While cooking, you have time to unwind, relax, and think. During this time, you will probably realize that you do not need to stress yourself out and can calmly focus on your homework. The more you cook for yourself, the more time you have to slow your brain down. This is how cooking can be therapeutic. Cooking can be your time to think about things with a clearer head or get your mind off something and think about something else or nothing at all. We all need this time to clear our heads and organize our thoughts. Without this, our heads are jumbled, we can’t think straight, and nobody wants to live like that.

Cooking can also help you to realize things about yourself that you may not have known before. See, I love cooking. But for most of my life, as a conscious human being, I have hated cooking. My dad went to culinary school, and my mother’s side of the family is Italian, so I grew up eating great food. Even though I have always loved food and always had really appetizing food around, I never liked the cooking part, and my mother always said I was a picky eater. I liked the food that I liked, and that was really it. I used to wonder why I should try new foods if I already loved the food I ate and didn’t desire anything else.

On top of that, it just seemed to me like cooking was a lot of work, and then you had to set the table and clean up after the fact. I was correct in thinking it might be quite a bit of work, but it was in my senior year of high school when I realized the work was worth it. And boy, was I wrong to be a picky eater. I do not remember exactly how it happened. Something must have just clicked in my brain that made me say, “Hey, dad! I want to cook this super cool and delicious thing you made for me that one time!” And the rest is history. I was opened up to an entire world of flavor, comfort, love, and beautiful, beautiful tastes and smells.

The more we cook, the more outgoing I believe we become. To me, cooking is an art, and the art of cooking can translate into many other things and influence different aspects of our lives. For example, trying out new flavor combinations, such as merging Italian and Chinese flavor profiles, is what the basis of being outgoing is. You are trying something new that you had not heard of before. Maybe the flavors blend really well together, and you realize you love being outgoing and trying new things. I have realized that playing background jazz music while making and eating French food makes me feel something I cannot feel from any other experience. If you try cooking naked, you may realize that you actually love your body which might have been something you did not know before. Your outlook on your life might change for the better. Or you will find out that you need to change a toxic habit.

Maybe you will realize you want to open a café that doubles as a used bookstore where you sell your favorite sandwiches that you have come up with over the years, and your coffee is always brewed fresh. You have live jazz bands playing there every Saturday night, and you can hear the music from the street outside. It always feels like you are in Vincent Van Gogh’s painting “Café Terrace at Night.”