Hey, cooking is a blast! At its best, cooking is controlled mayhem, a riot of knives, flames and flying objects. Cooking is about making people happy. It's a humble, almost elemental service.

I figure I could have been an arms smuggler or something, but instead, I get to play with food for a living. No one gets hurt. At least, I haven't killed anyone yet! I kid, but seriously, cooking also is about taking responsibility for other people's safety.

The most important thing I've learned about cooking is that it pays to plan ahead. Those old French chefs from centuries past had a term for it, "mise en place," which basically means having everything in its place. If you're going to make ham and eggs, you go to the stove with ham, eggs, butter, salt, pepper, a skillet, a spatula and a plate. You take to the job everything you need to do the job.

Cooking is a mission-critical profession. Once you're in the middle of the dinner rush, you don't have time to screw around. It is also a linear process. Once you put flame to the food, it may be impossible to stop everything or slow things down.

Good cooks are able to cultivate a sense of urgency. It's the instinct to rise to the challenge and move - quickly. Good cooks are able to work with perfection, but they also have to be fast. The best cooks I've known were able to work so fast that it would practically catch your eyeballs on fire trying to watch them.

Some people chop onions the same speed no matter if they're at home or if there's a horde of hockey players in the dining room. These gentle souls drift through life in second gear and are never very productive. I'm sure there are ideal professions out there for these folks, but they don't live long in kitchens.

When it comes to recipes, I'm an open source fan. I've worked with some people who maintain their own stash of secret recipes and are very jealous about the details (which in turn makes me almost insanely curious). They can do what they want with their own recipes, that's fine, and I understand. But the attitude is old-fashioned, and it's fading out. I think this attitude is a holdover from an era when secret recipes translated into job security.

Now, however, anyone can go online and find recipes for just about anything. I respect the concept of intellectual property, in theory, but I also would like to take a peek inside your secret files.