Outlaw Cook

I have made a serious commitment (to myself) to post a blog entry every day. But not every day offers a dandy model-building topic for blogging. This is where the random “here’s my opinion” blog entry comes in. You either approve of this sort of thing or you don’t.

Cooking. Many people confidently put “cooking” on resumes and things like that as a hobby. It goes with long distance running and guitar playing as respectable adult hobbies. We all know what a disreputable adult hobby is (no, it’s not porn! I’m talking about plastic model kits!).

Cooking is absolutely respectable. As a hobby for men. As a career. It has all sorts of good vibes around it. But it has problems, too. There is a strong aversion to cooking shared by many women, who associate it with the depraved servitude of the kitchen. Houses now are built with massive “kitchen/dining/living” rooms just to avoid the horrible possibility that someone might be in the kitchen–and not anywhere else. Utterly reduced to kitchenhood, without a hope of redemption.

Oh well. I can’t do anything about that but recommend the work of John Thorne. Thorne is a genius who has written some of the best books on cooking, and has a nifty blog, too. I highly recommend his book Outlaw Cook. HIGHLY recommend it. Especially if you are trying to learn to cook, or improve your cooking.

I wrote a fan mail to Thorne. It was the first, last and only fan mail I ever wrote. In it, I said that I gave copies of Outlaw Cook to friends as gifts. What I meant was, I wanted to give copies to friends. I think every person on the planet should have a copy.

To my amazement and horror, Thorne answered my email almost immediately. He thanked me for the compliment and said he thought it would be tough to give copies of Outlaw Cook to friends, due to it being out of print and had been for years.

Caught! Caught in a foul lie by a personal hero of mine! Oh the indignity! Oh the shame!

I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I didn’t answer the email. Let this be a lesson to you.