The Paradoxes of Cooking

Here is a short narrative that my friend and colleague Roy Chan sent me about his experience growing up with food. Besides being refreshingly honest and thoughtful - and worth reading on account of that alone - it is also ripe for philosophical discussion. Among the many things that struck me, and these are just a few, were:

• The comparison between food and language. Cooking is certainly a form of communication (also, compare to "community" and "communion").
• Is there a cooking gene? Roy seems to have it and some say that I inherited my desire to cook from my mother. 
• Is cooking a paradoxical form of labor and love, as Roy suggests, or do the two go hand-in-hand?
• Why is the word "foodie" nauseating?  

Again, these are just the first few topics of discussion that spring to my mind. I would love to hear what the rest of you think. I'm sure Roy would as well.

Introductions

For those of you who don't know me, my name is Robert Sanchez and I am 29 years old. I teach philosophy at The College of William and Mary and I am currently writing my dissertation (a really long essay on some obscure topic for a Ph.D.). This is my first blog and if you ask those who do know me, I am the last person under thirty you'd expect to start a blog. I don't think I've ever even read one before. But I decided to set aside my doubts about blogging for a couple of reasons. First, I've found it surprisingly difficult to find a group of people who are interested in continuing a discussion about food and cooking, and so I'm hoping that this will help. Second, I wanted a way to keep track of the process of learning how and why to cook, which I plan to do on this blog.