Something my friend Lauren said struck me as I was cutting cold butter into my dry ingredients for the biscuits component of biscuits and gravy on Saturday morning. She wanted to learn how to make them, and I was talking about how I never realized how much I was over paying for things like pancake mix and refrigerated biscuit dough until I started making them myself. I said, "Now I can't see why anyone buys that stuff after I've done it."



She said, "Most people just want quick and easy."



Grass fed strip steak topped with 4 hour caramelized onions, with mashed potatoes baked with white cheddar and green onions on top. Neither quick nor easy.

I'm pushing myself to create things I never thought I was capable of creating before, and was always intimidated by, like pie.

In that moment I realized what it is that I like so much about cooking. It's not about the final product for me anymore, or the quality of my own cooking. For so long I've seen things like making biscuits to be a cost-cutting measure and a form of laziness (I'm too lazy to go to the store and buy refrigerated dough), but the reason I continue to push to make my own food is so far beyond cost-cutting at this point.If I want to make biscuits, I have two choices. I can pull out a can of refrigerated biscuit dough, open it, place the perfectly formed biscuits on the cookie sheet and bake them. And I have no problems eating the finished product. I really enjoy certain flavors of them, especially the Sav-A-Lot buttery biscuits, which bring back delicious memories of my mom's biscuits and gravy!But it's a different kind of enjoyment than I get when I spend just ten extra minutes time over what the refrigerator biscuits took. I combine three dry ingredients and two wet ingredients, all of which I've never seen a kitchen without, form the biscuits and put them on the cookie sheet. But I was actively involved in the creation of those biscuits. I can point to each raw ingredient in my pantry, and I made the call on whether to add more milk or leave it out. I got my workout cutting the cold butter into the flour, and I lovingly dropped each imperfect ball onto the sheet.In both situations, I'm enjoying an end product. But in one situation, the journeysomething to me. You know how some people say you should accumulate experiences instead of things? I didn't just acquire the biscuit. I experienced and enjoyed the creation of it and then enjoyed the final product. I got pleasure from the biscuit twice, and didn't see the creation of it as a chore. It's what drives me and Nick to spend multiple hours cooking several nights a week, and what drives our relentless pursuit to try new things. Food is no longer about what we put in our mouths - plenty of people do that well already. It's about the path we took to get to the food we put in our mouths. And if we're the chefs, refrigerated dough just doesn't cut it anymore.