Book introduction first draft (&the importance of carbonara)

Because the book that I'm planning to create for this project may have some contrasting styles and imagery throughout it. I feel that it is necessary to write an introductory paragraph to explain my thought process behind it whilst still leaving some ambiguity for the viewer to fill in with their own mind. Anyway, I started to write the introduction as the ideas came to me as I was trying to get to sleep at about 2 in the morning. So some of this seems generally all over the place but is just a first draft for now:

'I've always had a funny relationship with food. From the age of around 3, until I first started to work at a restaurant when I was 16, my diet consisted mainly of peanut butter sandwiches and potato smiley faces. This seems even more strange when my father was actually a chef, and a rather good one I'm told, for his entire adult life. working as a head chef for dozens of restaurants whilst I grew up. But in the past few years of my life, strangely since my dad passed away, my love for food has blossomed. I now work as a chef, and spend a lot of my spare time either watching YouTube videos, tv programmes or documentaries related to cooking just for fun. One of the most pleasing aspects of living on my own has actually been the fact that I cook for myself from scratch almost every night. But living on a student budget means that sometimes I have to stick to the simpler dishes just to get me through the week. One such dish is Carbonara. I am in love with it! It's delicious, cheap, simple to make yet hard to master (which I totally have done by the way 😉) and takes a total of 10 minutes to complete. needless to say this is a meal I make with alarming regularity. It actually became a running joke within my family and friends how often I bragged about the quality of my carbonara with no evidence to back me up. So I decided that I would make it for my mum one night when I was back home. As she ate it she told me that my dad used to make this quite often when I was younger but due to my relationship with food at the time I never tried it. Then she told me of his 'secret ingredient' every time he would make it. It was at this point I realised the power that food could have. It's not just something we consume to keep ourselves alive. It's a method of communication. A showpiece. A talking point. A way to show people just how much you care for them. Since that day I have made sure to use my dad's recipe for the meal I thought I had perfected by myself. and every time I do I feel a connection that unfortunately we never had when he was still here because of my fussy nature. Food isn't just something that sustains us physically, it is about taking a piece of yourself, putting it on a plate, and sharing it with those you care about. This is what I wanted to explore within this book. By having my very closest family and friends cook a meal that means something to them I wanted to open a window to their soul for everyone to see. The following pages are basically a recipe book without the recipes. On one side of the page you will see everything that has gone into each dish. On the other you will see the final representation of the individual who has cooked it'

I also decided after writing this that I was going to make a timelapse video whilst I made myself a carbonara. I just felt it was relevant to show this dish that basically sparked my idea for this project and after reading up on Rirkit Tiravanija and his project 'Untitled(free)' [article] it felt like showing a person cooking could be another way of communicating the intimacy that food brings. Cooking, just like art, has a certain rythm and flow to it whilst it is being created and in a video like this parallels can easily be drawn between the separate processes. 

The only unfortunate thing is that my phone was slightly unstable during the recording process hahah

Link; video