For me cooking is more than just a way to feed ourselves or even expand the experience to an art form.  It involves a family, cultural and sensory melange that goes to the very core of the human psyche.  I've always held that the sense of smell is hard-wired to memory.  Some of our earliest memories are of how things smell and taste.  As a child my mother always wore English Lavender and to this day it remains my favorite scent.  I learned how to cook from her and my grandmother thereby carrying on the tradition of food in our family.  It is one of the things I enjoy most in life both for the pleasure and nutrition but also the rewards we reap in making things ourselves instead of buying prepared food and the totally satisfying feeling that someone I cooked for enjoyed a meal.