Everyone has a passion. But not everyone lives passionately. People who live passionately sometimes are so caught up in that thing they are most passionate about - ballet, curing cystic fibrosis, teaching first graders to read - that they sometimes forget to eat, or eat garbage, for days, weeks, months.
Yet the best food, the most amazing meals, the most innovative cooks, and the most daring pallets that I've encountered have all been people in the arts. I've learned to cook because I've been in the company of artists. I have friends who can be so poor they can't pay their bills, who still seek out the best Chevre, the freshest bread, spend a day hunting down the specific imported ingredient that they must have.
I went to a dinner with a horde of actors. There were about 20 of us. We drove in three cars to the far reaches of the city for what two friends had discovered to be the best Thai food. The small restaurant had only one other pair of diners when we walked in. The noise from our table was the hideously self-indulgent babble that you'd expect from artists in a large group. Then the food came. Everyone shut the fuck up. After a significant passage of silence, someone uttered something about the food making them high I mumbled agreement. After dinner, everyone else wanted to go to a movie and I had a date. they figured out how to cram into two cars. I was stopped at a red light, singing along to the radio at the top of my lungs. Laughter from the car next to me. A car load of actors with breath reeking of peanut sauce and green curry, laughing, pointing and making faces.
Also, I know where to get a good black truffle oil or champagne syrup, and where the cheapest saffron is at.
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Topic: Passionate Cooks = Passionate People? (Read 2563 times)