I worked from 12 to 17, six years in a bakery. I was a pastry cook.
There are as many attitudes to cooking as there are people cooking, of course, but I do think that cooking guys tend - I am a guilty party here - to take, or get, undue credit for domestic virtue, when in truth cooking is the most painless and, in its ways, ostentatious of the domestic chores.
Protein was the most valued ingredient 250 years ago: It was the rarest thing. Now the rarest thing we have is time: time to cook and time to eat.
Cooking is the showy side of domesticity.
My diet is mostly composed of whole-grain cereals, legumes, beans, lentils. Lots of cooked, baked, or steamed vegetables. Lots of spices like curcumin or cumin that help aid digestion. Some superfoods.
Even though Czech food is traditionally a bit heavy, especially for a climber, I can't resist some dishes: sveckova, for example, is beef in a creamy sauce with celery and dumplings. It's probably fortunate that I don't know how to cook it myself.
There is enough going on in Olympic year without having to do my own cooking and washing.
I always hated watching cooking shows where the chef would use ingredients that I couldn't get my hands on, cooking implements that I couldn't afford, recipes that I could never have access to.
As a self-proclaimed cooking disaster, I try to makes things that I think I can easily master.
I like having a duty. I'm a terrible cook, but when people come over, if I'm falling between the cracks socially, I can always run away to my job.
