About

Keith and Michael are two humans, and, as is true of most humans, food is a central component of their day-to-day routines. On some occasions, the food is prepared in as rapid a fashion as possible. But on other occasions, making food is a time- and care-intensive process.

Keith, an Electrical Engineer and programmer, and Michael, a Master of Theological Studies and writer, really like food. They cook food, think about food, take pictures of food, and write about food. Often. Usually taking it as seriously as Midwesterners take tornado warnings.

Why do you cook?

KEITH: On a technical level, I’m of the opinion that if something can be made, then I should also be able to make it. (Within reason.) I can’t replicate an assembly line, but I can take a pot of something off the stove and put it into an oven and pull it out after ten minutes and let rest at room temperature, and that should be about the same thing. This is wrong on multiple levels, but close enough for a good lunch.

Cooking is also incredibly relaxing. I am an anxious person, and while I can stress out six ways to Sunday (and itemize in triplicate the stress for all the days in between), when something is cooking there’s nothing I can do about the stressful task I have coming up, so I might as well focus on the task at hand.

MICHAEL: I’ve always loved to cook. I loved helping my dad make dinner; I loved trying to replicate my grandma’s chocolate chip cookies; I loved dreaming about the bakery I’d own when I grew up. One time, a friend and I baked enough cookies of different kinds to fill two backpacks and unsuccessfully tried to sell them around our neighborhood. (This is a cooking blog — there has to be a sappy backstory in here somewhere, right?)

Cooking comes easy to me because I inherited my dad’s ability for intuitively tweaking recipes to get them to the next level or to make them my own. To me, cooking is a “just right” level of challenging, like a video game on hard-but-not-impossible mode. And like any good sandbox game, even though the basic components are the same, cooking is always new, can always take an unexpected twist, and will always be fun.

But the other guy?

KEITH, WHY DOES MICHAEL COOK? Michael is an incredibly expressive person, and cooking gives him an artistic outlet. He and I are both cooks who intuit what must be done or added to a dish, and the feeling behind his adjustments is a creative act.

That said, while I fully believe that comment, I also think it’s too sappy for either of us, and I think “because he gets hungry” is also a key motivator.

MICHAEL, WHY DOES KEITH COOK? So, a bit about Keith. He’s passionate about his work. He’s dedicated to challenge himself and always improving his skill set. He reads math and engineering textbooks and research papers for fun, but it’s not what he would call relaxing. He’s a kinesthetic thinker. He’s endearingly protective and caring.

Cooking is something he can enjoy without too much effort — I won’t say without trying, but without undue concentration or frustration. Like me, Keith cooks intuitively, so he can experiment and push both his and the recipes’ boundaries. It gives him space for hands on work, and it gives him a result that he can share with others (he enjoys sharing the food just as much as making it). For Keith, the act of cooking is meditative if not cathartic, and the results provide profound satisfaction.

That, and cooking provides so many opportunities for puns.