[Sca-cooks] Rant: And speaking of cooking equipment...

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Apr 3, 2007, at 1:26 PM, Vitaliano Vincenzi wrote:

> In a step that will surely get me chastised again, I will share my
> philosophy of what the word "hobby" means to me:
>
> Hobby: noun - an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or  
> relaxation
> and not as a main occupation
>   - as stated at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hobby
>
> Ok, so with that definition we can derive that I enjoy cooking as a
> hobby, as I gain nothing but pleasure from it. For ME, cooking is a  
> hobby.

Fair enough. For me, I'm not sure about it.
>
> Now, Adamantius is still a chef, as Saint Phlip stated below, so while
> Adamantius is working and earning a living as a chef, it is NOT a  
> hobby.

I'm not doing it for a living now, but I'd like to think I could do  
it again and that my skills haven't suffered from inactivity. I  
deliberately practice my knife work, and so forth. It's about a heck  
of a lot more than turning out a meal for three once a day, probably  
five or six days a week.

> However, cooking at home or at an SCA event, or at a friends house, or
> whatever while NOT getting paid for it could be considered a hobby,
> based on the definition above. But wait, there's more...
>
> If Adamantius uses those times, cooking at home, events, etc., as
> practice for cooking as a profession, or to use friends and other
> SCAdians as guinea pigs for new recipes to be used at work, then it
> certainly is not a hobby. It gets difficult to discern if cooking is a
> hobby for this particular person.

Hence the question. But it was more than simply use of the word  
"hobby"; it was "hobby" used with "expensive", suggesting that the  
impact of hobbyists on the culinary arts has been to cause equipment  
prices to rise. I'd like to have a better impact than that.
>
> However, this whole discussion sprouted from Adamantius getting upset
> because someone said "it is an expensive hobby." Sure, for  
> Adamantius it
> may not be a hobby full time, but to get upset over someone commenting
> that it may be a hobby seems a bit over the top for me.

See above; it wasn't just that.

> But then again I
> am not a professional chef, and certainly not in the same league as
> Adamantius, so perhaps I just don't get it.
>
> Oh well, off to cook something for lunch. I really do enjoy my  
> hobbies.

Saffron rice pilaf as a substrate for reheating leftover braised  
octopus is almost done, as we speak...

A.



"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread, you have to say, let them eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04