On Love and Food...

Food is sexy. If you don't think so, then I would just hate to see what you're eating. I've spent the last week in a glutinous love affair with food, wine and friends, and I emerge from it grinning, a bit of a picky hedonist and just plain exhausted. I have always found myself drawn towards the things in life that immediately influence the most emotion and sensual stimulization. Eating, talking about food and cooking play into an array of sensory experiences that just light my world up.

...Smell/Olfaction: I would perform cooking demonstrations in Washington, and I could talk louder than anyone, start chopping with as much Morimoto as I can channel or start banging pots and pans...and still, people would shy away. Though, add a little butter to my pan, and start sautéing garlic and onions, I'm the Halloween house that gives away full size candy bars; cats are COMING.

...Sight/Vision: The displays at the farmers market are like an Adult book store for me. I find myself sweating a little and holding little private conferences with a voluptuous bundle of beets or a handful of sweet, meaty figs. The glossy pages of Bon Appetit, Art Culinaire or a new cookbook, give me a touch of fever that can only be cured by a gastronomical orgy. I also know for a fact, that I look even more sexually attractive (if that's at all possible) whilst cooking some food for a young lassie.

...Hearing/Audition: One of my favorite Chefs in culinary school was a huge preponderant of cooking with your ears. It allows you to hang out with multiple jobs, and be aware of each items status from a distance. One particular day, I was caramelizing a rondo full of onions, (picture a 4 foot circular pan with no doubt, 50 onions) and Chef Wong pulled me away. "Just listen, you know they're sexy and happy when you hear the muffled little pops...Hear anything different, you've got issues. Low, slow and listening, that's sexy cooking baby." I think I owe him one for bringing the word sexy to my food.

...Touch/Tactition: Working on a farm for the last year brought a whole new appreciation for the touch of veggies. The satisfying scrunch when ripping the feathery tops off of our carrots while standing in 8 inches of quicksand mud, giving each of our beets a little thumb press to ensure that the root was solid and delicious and the feeling of dirt grit in your teeth when eating a sunchoke right out of the earth...I could lay in the bins of veggies and feel like I was laying in a pile of lovely friends.

...Taste/Gustation: and of course, time to get those buds involved. I think of a fresh piece of burrata and a salted tomato slice sliding over my tongue, a chunk of butter poached fish or the first warm leaf of basil in the spring...Taste is the manifestation of all food foreplay. I have no edit button once something is attacking my taste buds, my "tasting tourettes" comes on in full effect, and whatever comes up, comes out. I can't think of something more sexy than feeding someone a concoction from a spoon, their eyes closing, a hand on the chest or fist on the table, followed by a resounding..."Fuuuuuck! That is DELICIOUS!" This why I cook. This is why I eat.

In closing, I just love to love. People, food, music, art, kissing, falling, flying, cooking, growing, sleeping, life, love........

Sometimes it's almost too much to handle.

Breath.

It's just enough.