To cook well also involves wanting to eat well, or eat better, but better than what? I think it has to do with wanting to eat differently than before, which means what we were forced to eat during childhood, during a time when things started growing out of our bodies from nowhere, when we were wanting to grow into each other's bodies, before coming back into our own. Coming back into our own is a lifelong process, for we really don't know what we are or who we are until we seek it, and what we seek is something “better”. Not the unachievable “best”, but better, and “well” is better than eating... maybe unwell is not the right word, but in this case fitting.

There's a hip-hop song which spoke about the key of knowledge, and those who want that key of life want to be shown the lock so that more can be unlocked. It's our human curiosity that makes us want more, or at least become aware of that more, what's different, what's unique. All of us are children of industry, we grew up knowing food in a box, can, or a box with symbols like ®. ©, or ™ with sinister clowns. To eat well is to not want to eat what cartoon clowns eat, and that goes beyond class, race, wealth, and status. Going beyond this is going beyond an establish standard, to discover who we are as individuals and who we should be. It might be hippie-dippie to say it's about seeking a worldly conscience through food, but it is the one thing that brings us together, the one thing that takes us to the dinner table, the picnic bench, or the lauhala mat and makes us express many emotions without fear.

Eating well is being passionate about what we eat, it's wanting to know where the food comes from, who prepares it, and why. Food can be the spark towards that key of knowledge that opens the door to countless stories and possibilities, simple spice blends and textures that create fantastic edible mash-ups, just like the cultures that have traveled from country to country in order to want and demand a mind state of non-existent boundaries. Food, like music and art, is a mission possible, in times when things feel insecure and uncertain. When you want to eat well, you want to cook well, and there are very few Earthly pleasures equal to the sights, sounds, and smells of watching culinary science evolving into something incredibly delicious.

Culinary science: that's exactly what it is. It's the unknown defined into the known, which leads back into wanting to know what we consume, and the curiosity of knowledge leading into answers, which will always lead to more things to discover. Eating well leads us back to us, wanting to know more about us, who are are and who we need to be. The meaning of life, explained through our taste buds. Open wide.