OH, that's why I hate to cook...

In TheKitchn blog, poet, Zen master, and masterful chef Jane Hirshfield very artfully explains why I don't like (borderline-hate) to cook:

The only way to answer the question "what else" is to imagine a range of possibilities, and then, before adding one in, taste them first in your mind and then with your nose (the miraculous kitchen organ of first-draft preview, since, unlike words on a page, ingredients added can't then be removed). It’s the same with a poem, of course—you may have some starting direction of thought or feeling, but the actual poem will be made by its "what elses"—the details of world and word that make it the only possible way to say what it says.

Yep. It's that whole ingredients-added-can't-then-be-removed thing that disturbs me so.

In writing, there's editing.

In gardening, there's weeding, pruning, uprooting, replanting...

But in cooking, there's toss it in, and then like it or lump it.

I think I'll go out for lunch now. 

~Diane Stresing