Cooking versus Playing

I've long considered cooking to be an unpleasant prerequisite of eating, and eating something you do to power the more important activities of life. Like dulcimer playing.

It's not that I don't enjoy good meals. I just don't enjoy them enough to waste my discretionary time preparing them.

I especially loathe all the chopping--probably because I'm no good at it.

Oddly, I do kind of like playing with food. I get a kick out of turning food into something of a performance art. Especially if there's no chopping.

For instance, last month I did one of my themed breakfasts for the Friday breakfast club. Red, white, and blue deviled eggs. Red rice, white grits, & blue corn polenta arranged in the 9x13 glass dish to look like a flag. Red & blue berries & white pears. Played my vintage Red, White, & Blue (Grass) CD. Had appropriately themed paper goods.

But, that doesn't really count as cooking. The point is not eating. The point is the conceptual use of food as a medium, the challenge of manipulating edible matter into something that fits the theme.

So, now, in a last-ditch effort to bring health & healing to my hands in order to (hopefully) play again, I've gone to an integrative doc. My brother-in-law the pediatrician would probably call him a voodoo doctor. Among the "voodoo" recommendations: No microwaving. Cook and eat real food. No artificial sweeteners. No white sugar. No high fructose corn syrup. No nitrates & nitrites.

So, it's come full circle: I used to avoid cooking so I could play the dulcimer. Now, I'm cooking in the hopes that I can get back to playing the dulcimer.