Why Cook?

Hiring Gen Z is quite an eye-opener. Just yesterday you were one of the younger employees at your company and now you are rubbing shoulders with people who have never listened to 50 Cent, know Pamela Anderson through her Substack (not her…um…rack), and were not even alive for 9/11. Being around these infants has certainly made me feel older but it’s also made me feel wiser.

This, my friends, is a first. According to the dictionary wisdom is the ability to use knowledge and experience to make sound judgements. You’d think hangover number 5,000 would be considered both knowledge and experience to cut the drink. You’d think agent rejection number 155 would be considered both knowledge and experience to let my book die. You’d think baby number one would be considered both knowledge and experience to avoid number two. Wisdom, clearly, is not my forte.

Yet the other day I felt wisdom welling up inside me. True, unabashed, wisdom. It all started with a harmless pizza order for the office. Three pies - one plain, one chicken parm, one pepperoni. When the pies arrived I grabbed two slices, scarfed them down, and headed into my office for a three-hour meeting. After the soul-sucking concluded, I came out hungry. I needed a third slice. This is usually not wise. A third slice is nap inducing at this old age. But I was adamant. As I lifted each box, I found that all the pizza was gone.

“Damn, you guys ate all that?” I asked the Gen Z’ers now crowding up our office.

“No, there’s some left over,” one said.

“I think two pepperoni,” another shouted.

One employee kept his mouth shut but he shot me a side eye glance coupled with a squirely smile. Keep in mind I am the boss’s son. There is an unearned fear employees have of me every time I speak. As much as I try to just be a normal employee it is impossible for them not to look at me as someone who could ruin their life. It’s sad. I am not that person. But it does have its advantages.

“Is there any more pizza left?” I asked the silent employee.

“Um, I packed two slices up for dinner,” he said.

“What? For dinner? Didn’t you just eat it for lunch?” I said, laughing. Inside I was fuming. The company paid for the pizza and you’re wrapping up the leftovers? Fucking Gen Z, amiright!?

“I hate cooking,” he said. “This is so much easier.”

“Hate cooking?” I asked, pulling up a seat next to him. “What do you mean?”

“I’m so tired after a long day. Cooking is so much work. It’s a waste of time. It takes an hour to make something that I could have just ordered. I’d rather be playing video games,” he said.

I was flabbergasted. I’d never heard such defeated language out of another human’s mouth. In one instant all the goodness in life was sucked into a vacuum of doom and gloom. Cooking, a waste of time, video games? It was all too much. Instead of pulling this youngin’ aside and sharing my wisdom with him, I went the ribbing route. I poked fun at him a little bit, he poked fun back, the office donned him a new nickname (Chef), then I went in my office, closed the door, and cried.

I’ve never really worried about the younger generation. Maybe this is naive or maybe after having two kids of my own I automatically have some stake in the future. I assume every generation looks on their predecessors and successors and sees stupidity, but I am not confident enough in my own assertions, nor cocky enough about my own life choices, to assume the older or the younger generation have it right or wrong. I’m just surviving here.

But this…this made me lose hope for the youngsters. Forget their cell phone addled brains, their lack of work ethic, their inherent whininess, giving up cooking was a bridge too far. And to replace such an act with video games? Hopelessness set in.

The reason for my despair is that cooking holds a special place in my heart for several reasons.

First, the physical act. Is there anything better, after a day of work staring at a computer, than a semi-mindless task? There should be something called chopping therapy. Taking an onion, cutting it in half, peeling off the skin, smelling the pungent sweetness only an onion can produce, making a slice into the width of one side, getting a little sting in your eyes, then slicing thin lines in the top, and then finally dicing it is so therapeutic it should be used by shrinks the world over. Just get a bunch of anxiety-ridden Gen Z’ers in a room who think they have ADD, ADHD, and depression and instead of doping them up with the latest drugs, have them chop a few fucking zucchinis and watch their worries float away.

Or how about this…give them about twenty garlic bulbs and have them frustratingly smash, peel, and chop a hundred cloves. Their hands will be sticky, there will be garlic sheaths everywhere, but at least they will have completed something with their hands. We can even add another dimension. Put a glass of wine and a cigarette in front of each of these poor souls. After they have cut the garlic (which has probably taken them hours) reward them. There are studies that show the combination of wine, cigarettes, and garlic can drastically increase your testosterone levels (these studies were done by me). Just THINKING of that combination - the smells on my hands, the first sip, the first puff - are making my pants a little tight if you know what I mean. At the end of their work, cigarette and wine in hand, looking like Serge Gainsbourg, these Gen Z’ers existential dread will dissipate and they will have become real human beings. I can admit that cigarettes and wine are probably not good for your overall health but I assure you that combination is better than whatever chemical cocktail their physicians have currently got them on. Chopping therapy will imbue these children with a purpose. Purpose has more health benefits than a measly glass of wine and cigarette can negate.

As these youngsters begin to prepare a meal they will realize, if they haven’t gone full Kendall Jenner, that they are doing something worthwhile. Something real. Something that involves actual work. They might even realize, if they are as wise as me, that they want to do this again on their own and not in chop therapy class. This is where problems may arise. I can relate this to writing.

It’s not easy coming up with a plot for a book, or writing the first sentence, or writing a million sentences after that, and then going back and making sure all the words fit in the right places, and then doing that again and again and again. But it’s this act that makes the end product all the more special. Yet, we live in an age where people actually believe typing a prompt into an AI generator like “write me a short story about a man, while cooking a meal for his family, begins to ponder how scared shitless he is that the world is too much and too frightening to be raising a family,” means you actually created the story the AI spits out. (I’ll actually write this story one day). Like

Anthony Marigold

’s latest piece (The Novelist in the Age of AI) highlights perfectly, soon we may not know if what we are reading was made by a human or a bot. This will never happen in the case of food. Of course you can order in, but there is no mistaking whether you made that meal or not. Of course you can google a recipe. Of course you can subscribe to one of those pre-packaged ingredient companies that set you up, step by step, but you still have to PHYSICALLY cook it. If there ever comes a day when a robot can cook an edible meal out of plastic, when soul food is replaced by soulless food, I pray I am long dead before then.

The best part about making a meal is that my mind tends to wander while I’m doing it. It looks out the window, it semi-focuses on the task at hand, it thinks about the day, sometimes it doesn’t think at all, but ultimately, it all comes back to who I am cooking this meal for. These Gen Z’ers desperately need to get out of their own selfish heads and this act, no doubt, will do it for them. As you cut the ingredients, then sauté them, then start timing which things go in which pot when, then raise or reduce the temperatures as needed, you begin to lose yourself. You are no longer you. You are worriless. You are just cooking. And then the real magic happens. One of your daughters or your wife breaks the spell and yells from the other room, “Is it ready yet? It smells so good.”

Cooking is inherently about bringing people together. God damnit that sounds corny but sometimes corny is true. There are no worthy human gatherings without food and every memory I have as a child revolves around it. I can’t remember any Substack note or Instagram post I’ve scrolled by in the last hour but I can remember my sister’s 3^rd birthday where there was a huge pig roasting with an apple in its mouth like it was yesterday. Cooking requires you to put the phone down. To concentrate. To be around people you love sans devices.

But besides the memories and the gatherings, the real reason I love to cook is that it’s tied me to my roots. For all intents and purposes, I am a white boy. My skin is white, I was raised in the suburbs around a bunch of whites, and if I happened to be walking down the street at Columbia University no doubt the students would think there goes another entitled white male again. But the reality is more complex than skin color (the horror, I know!) My grandmother was born in the Dominican Republic. My sperm doner grandfather, who I never met, is Cuban. I am a half cast. But maybe because of my skin and where I was raised I never truly got indoctrinated into Hispanic culture. I can’t speak Spanish, I can barely dance bachata, and I certainly don’t know how to properly smack a domino. The only way I’ve ever connected with my Hispanic side is through food. Eating and cooking it. My grandmother taught me. My grandmother still teaches me. My mother’s step-dad, her defacto father, was a Cuban restaurant owner. Tragically, I never got to meet him either, but he taught my grandmother how to cook all the Cuban dishes and in turn, she taught me. So cooking has become the one thing I have that connects my gringo ass to my family history.

Lechon. Pernil. Empanadas. Ropa vieja. Cuban sandwiches. Tostone. Maduro. Sancocho. I’m so white I don’t even know how to get accent marks over some of the vowels that require them in that list. But I can cook each one of these dishes and many more. Cooking and eating Hispanic food is what I know and what I love and every time I do I thank my grandmother and the Caribbean.

So, after I cried in my office, and thought about these things, I came out of the office a new man.

The employee said, “You can have those two slices if you want, I’ll just order something else for dinner.”

I replied, “You can take them. I’m cooking tonight and I want to be hungry.”

How’s that for wisdom?

P.S. – Shoutout to

Peter Shull

for the title inspo. Go order Why Teach? Now.

P.P.S. – Go cook this recipe tonight for your family. It’s easy as shit. ALWAYS USE THIGHS INSTEAD OF BREASTS. Thank me later.

Half Baked Harvest You Bastahds (Gangsta Grillz voice)

P.P.P.S – If you like cooking or food or wine or half casts or cigarettes…Hell or Hangover…out in July.