TEEN TO TEEN PERSPECTIVE

Here's my last survey. It's from a teenage boys perspective, so hopefully it's a little bit different from the last two. I'm just putting the survey and my response together so as to save paper down the road. Here it is: (his answer first, my response second)

Cooking Survey

Name: Geoff Ginter

Age (roughly): 17

1. Do you like (i.e. enjoy) cooking?

Yes, it’s fun and besides, who doesn’t like eating?

Saying it like it is. I’ve always love his logic.

2. Are you the main meal provider in your house?

No.

He is a fan of stating the facts and nothing else. Not that that’s a bad thing per se, just gives me less to reflect on. I kind of saw this coming (I was surprised when Caiti said she provided some meals, so I really had no hope of a teenage boy, call me a sexist).

3. What is your favorite meal to make?

Fettuccine alfredo or grilled cheese.

These seem like they would be relatively easy, which makes sense to me because I feel like he’s a teenage boy who cooks so he can eat and he doesn’t want to wait to do it. If that made sense, then great! If not, I’m sorry for the run-on. I’m pretty much just trying to say that these two meals fit his personality (to me at least).

4. How old were you when you first started to cook?

About 12.

Was it cookies? A fried egg? A beef brisket? Tell me, Geoff, because this gives me very little to work with. Okay, since you gave me so little, I have to imagine what happened myself. This is what I imagine happened (just go with me): So, it was a normal Tuesday for little Geoff. He was sitting in the kitchen doodling on his notebook and watching his mom cook dinner. Being the curious little boy he is (and wanting to avoid his homework, that to him is easy but useless), he asks his mom if he can help. She is thrilled that her little Geoffykins wants to cooking with her, and agrees waving him over to the kitchen counter where she is chopping up some veggies and chicken from the previous night for some delicious chicken and vegetable soup. She hands him the cutting knife (albeit with some hesitation) and instructs him on how to hold his fingers in to avoid chopping them off too. Little by little, he cuts the celery and carrots. When he is finished, he dumps them into the little pot brewing on the stove. That night at dinner, his family praises him for his perfectly cut veggies. That night was the night he fell in love with cooking. The End. So, that’s what I think happened. Hopefully he won’t read this and ruin my story with the truth.

5. Give me the lowdown on an average meal:

Usually a meal had a protein as the main dish with a carb/starch and vegetables on the side.

He took the same (very literal) route as Caiti, with slight (manly) variations. Maybe they both answered like this (and my mom answered me more like I meant to be answered) because I was there when my mom answered it and I told her specifically what I wanted and the other two did it during seminar when I was busy with something else. Either way, it was a good answer.

6. Do you think there’s a difference between cooking and baking?

Yes, cooking is combining ingredients and preparing them through various methods. Baking is usually for yeast based food (i.e. bread, cakes, etc.) and always involves an oven. So I suppose it could be said that baking is a subdivision of cooking.

Always so literal. Can you tell that he’s a science guy? I can. He likes to break things down and so it makes sense for him to make baking a subdivision. I guess it is, but only in basics. Baking by itself is completely different from cooking it many, many different ways.

7. Do you express your personality through your food? How?

Not especially because cooking well requires a lot of patience and I am not an especially patient person.

Ha. Geoff is a funny guy. I, however, don’t agree. I feel like he expresses his personality through what he chooses to cook (i.e. – grilled cheese). It shows his priorities: he doesn’t need to make something fancy and time consuming, he just has to eat.

8. Do you feel that having to cook has affected other aspects of your life?

Yes, it has improved my interest in experimentation.

This is pretty much the same as the first two participants. Cooking (when people are confident in what they’re doing) is experimenting with foods. This makes me think of people at the beginning of time having to figure out from scratch what goes with what and, more basically, what is edible. That must have taken a LOT of experimentation.