My aim is creation. I love the idea of giving life to nothingness. Were I another person in another time, I might spend my whole life tilling the land. Just like the earliest farmers, the sight of dirt giving rise to carrots and tomatoes at my whim feels like a miracle. I like to randomly burst out in song. I like to shake my body. If I could I would be a pianist and a poet and a painter and a politician. Unfortunately, in all these disciplines my ability can't meet my enthusiasm. Where I can create, and break tired codes, is in the kitchen. With unlimited time and resources I would become the best pastry baker and the finest chef in all of the eastern seaboard.

I really like food. On some drab school days I cheer myself up thinking of the dinner awaiting me in the evening. Often I do a 24-hour fast to ready my stomach for a huge meal. Now, being served this food is fine. It's usually restful and rewarding to sit down after a long day to someone else's careful work, whether they be parents, grandmothers, or Little Caesar. But I've noticed a dull glaze in the eyes of those who cook every night. They're doing it not to forge the uncreated conscience of their race, as a hungry James Joyce might say, but out of sometimes love and sometimes duty. I know cooks whose "old standbys" wow me every time, but they haven't any pleasure in their labors. Care and duty are NOT why I want to explore food.

I love the whole culinary process, from seedling to grocery to refrigerator to oven to table. At each stage the elements grow more complex and my work far more deliberate. Peeling and coring an apple takes more intellection than planting a row of seeds. Yet I think I shine where order fades away: beyond rules and recipes, in that zone called It's Up To You. I decided to throw in a cup of yogurt instead of butter to my pound cake. No one told me that lentils, carrots, and a bay leaf would make a great salad. I just felt them together. And there was a unanimous vote -- me -- to add cumin and coriander to the spaghetti sauce. Sizzle. Bubble. The creation is imminent.

Someone like me needs to stand over that stove. I need to see the joy in my eaters' eyes when they say, "This is really good! How'd you do this?" Their simple joys are my creative release -- the critical acceptance of newness. In life and in the kitchen, I want to be the best in my field.