A watched pot never boils...

Time is a classical trump card in any cooking technique or any process that produces an item culminated out of various elements and particles. No imaginations need to be stretched to comprehend that why this is true. On those more than frequent events that your hand stretches for that saute handle that has been hovering over that burner that wasn't quite off. The paltry nanoseconds that it takes for neurons to convey the protest of your hand is the hare to your tortoise reactions and futile attempts to let go before injury sets.

So when we think of the reactions of heat, cold, sugars, proteins and starches colliding like a blonde cheerleader caravan into the tree that "suddenly was there," we get antsy. We watch with our creations like the annoying soon-to-be fathers pacing outside the delivery room yet to relieve themselves for fear of missing something all important. So we hover, poke, prod, stir the pot and jump the bones to assuage the need to be involved. Some barbed hook clings to our hides trying to provoke us into fucking it all up.

Recently, I have become very aware about how precious time is in relevance to all variables. Think of it like those annoying algebra equations that plagued your nightmares in the 6th grade. Numbers, letters, operational signals and lines squished together by an editor and spewed onto miles of paper and bound for your adolescent torment. Each piece of any cooking process is relative to time based on other variables. An example...

Sauteing and carmelizing onions are too different processes that only to apparent to me when I think of the past. Carmelizing an onion is like sitting in the sun in an attempt to brown but not burn. Applying a layer of fat to a pan and permitting the onions to figure it out on their own time under a low and steady heat. You can't rush it and you have to stop the process at just as your results are fixed. I walk under the sun with full knowledge that prolonged exposure will re-kindle the fire that seared me and roast my muscle tissue to useless hunks of salty primal cuts. Yet I have objectives and purposes just like onions; perfection can be achieved in time, with risk and careful observation.

Risk. Why would I choose to expose myself to sunlight if there are risks? Could you cook an onion with out fire? Yes. Nuking the sorry bastard would cook the onion but what would you have gained? Tastless soggy flesh without purpose in any dish. Would one really want to deprive themselves of the taste of a seasoned pan against flesh? Its transmutation. You must give up something in exchange for something that is desirable.

I went in to the hospital to remove staples holding my legs together removed. I sat in a dark cold room to relieve the pain that blood flow floods my mind. I read. About many things. Beer, wine, bread and many other subjects. I read blogs, stories, articles anything to keep from reaching for pain medications that turn my heart inside out. I wandered across an article by a blogger. She wanted to make bread her bitch. She attributed her impending success, unconsciously, to possession of a text called, "The Bread Bible."

I closed the window on her blog after reading the first half of her account regarding her mission. Useless. Its an insult to think that a collection of books will make you a better cook, chef, baker, brewer, lover, drinker, spouse, person, the list goes fucking on... They can improve your SKILL but without that skill, talent and devotion you are a faceless dime-a-dozen chimp playing simon says in room full of simians. Skill and natural curiosity makes you human, that single most important ingredient in cooking.

Artisan: an adjective attached to products of superior worth, resolve and value because of the effort they are imbued with by skilled people.

People spent the majority of their lives sowing their bodies with the skills and senses to reap perfect loaves, cakes, fondonts and all sorts of collections of starches, saccarides and yeasts. Maybe it was the subtle frustrations working their ways from the depths of my soul along my blood to vapors of thoughts leaving my mind that with all of the sacrifices I have made for these things and still be sitting alone afraid of the light. For everything I have learned and bleed for, I still find myself thinking myself the fool searching for those edges, loopholes and intrinsic relationships in cooking to exploit and make something beautiful.

Maybe I am that bitter salt that makes the sea sting and different from fresh mountain stream of clear water. I would rather be barely digestable and an element to be savored as an experience than something sampled, bottled, distributed and used because it is predictably following a worn common path.

Excuse me, I have doughs to knead...