Cooking Away Dementia Risk?

Interesting short bit.

Interesting. I have dabbled in lots of different stuff in my life, usually beating it to death and then moving on to something else. Cooking has been different. It's the only thing that I have consistently done my entire adult life, even though I never did any cooking growing up. I have always loved to cook and always try new and different dishes. I made a Baked Alaska once just to say I've made one. I have some walnuts soaking right now which I'll put in my dehydrator tomorrow morning and then make spiced nuts with. Maybe always trying new stuff (during COVID I got into making pasta, learned sous vide cooking, etc) will give me the same benefit as the inexperienced cook who struggles.

I sort of got the notion that the benefit comes when cooking isn't "mindless" due to experience and expertise. If so, then novelty in dishes, ingredient preparation, cooking methods, etc. ought to provide similar benefits.

But probably anything beats being "nursed" by somebody else, eating out, ordering delivery, popping packages into the microwave oven, etc.

I'll bet many kinds of gardening might have a similar benefit. It sounds like the key is frequent novelty and juggling decisions, holding information in your head, observing and adaption actions, etc. Maybe even a little pressure of timing and sequencing actions might be part of the beneficial experience as well.

I wonder if this extends to things like taking on learning song lyrics and singing mixed with taking up and practicing on simple musical instruments? I can imagine things like a flute/recorder or soft-stringed ukulele? Just something cheap just above "toy grade" that you might sit in the evening to fool around with. Maybe some sort of lower-end Casio Keyboard, etc. The important thing being to learn some basics and then focus on learning tunes and songs.

Of course for us manly men we'll be learning old sea chanties as we loaf around the docks, raunchy logging' camp songs when we stop and build a small fire when hiking through the forest.

Come to think of it, those little folding steel hikers' stoves that you feed twigs and chips of wood into might be interesting to have. Nothing like a bit of smudge smoke to keep the skeeters down. Just don't do something stupid like putting poison ivy on that fire!

Jacob Petersheim said:

Come to think of it, those little folding steel hikers' stoves that you feed twigs and chips of wood into might be interesting to have. Nothing like a bit of smudge smoke to keep the skeeters down. Just don't do something stupid like putting poison ivy on that fire!

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I have a couple of them, and they work great for cooking and heating water. Not much good for anything else, though.

Ken Anderson said:

I have a couple of them, and they work great for cooking and heating water. Not much good for anything else, though.

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Sometimes it's about atmosphere, connecting to your inner caveman. Probably safer than open fires and working with just a little found fuel with no chopping. In cooler weather a hot cup of coffee, tea, etc. don't sound too bad.

Jacob Petersheim said:

Sometimes it's about atmosphere, connecting to your inner caveman. Probably safer than open fires and working with just a little found fuel with no chopping. In cooler weather a hot cup of coffee, tea, etc. don't sound too bad.

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They're great for one night stops in the woods or when it's too warm for a campfire. While I enjoy sitting around a campfire, if I simply want to prepare something to eat and get to sleep, it's nice not to have to gather a bunch of firewood.