Magical Cooking

My NowHaus presentation to the Institute of Design community

I was nominated to give an 8 minute presentation around a topic of my choice – preferably something I felt passionate about. I created a narrative about how cooking has influenced my relationships with places, people, and design, and why it is indeed a magical experience.

Presentation

May 2023

Skills

Storytelling

Visual Communication

Public Speaking

Magical Cooking.

I have always had an intimate relationship with cooking. I grew up smelling fresh bread every day. My dad had a bakery for 10 years and because of that, I learned from a very young age that cooking is magic.

I was always amazed to see that after mixing a few ingredients, a simple dough would magically begin to rise and transform into a perfectly golden, crispy bread.

My dad was always very passionate about cooking, he liked to discover flavors and experiment with new ingredients. Every Sunday he used to surprise us with a different dish.

And thanks to this I learned that even though his job was very hard, he found in the kitchen a place without restrictions, where he could use his creativity to the maximum, where mistakes could be corrected with a little more water or salt. A place that gave him freedom.

My grandma Margarita is an expert in making traditional Colombian dough, whenever I went to her house to visit, she offered me freshly made arepas. When I turned 19, I became more interested in cooking, and I had the chance to learn her personal recipe for arepas and envueltos.

At that moment, I understood that cooking creates connections. By cooking together, my grandma and I formed a strong bond and now our relationship is closer than ever.

During the pandemic, I was living with my parents and since we couldn't go out, I decided that my activity to kill time was going to be cooking, I started cooking different dishes and exploring different cuisines.

I discovered that cooking is therapeutic, it allows you to be present, forget about problems, and focus all your attention on the smells, flavors, and colors that become the protagonists of the moment. It is a form of meditation.

Now that I've moved to Chicago, cooking has become a time machine for me. A couple of months ago, for my wife's birthday, I decided to make a small cake that immediately transported me to my childhood, when my dad used to bake and prepare birthday cakes for me and my sisters.

Here I learned that cooking evokes memory. Every time you cook something, a part of you is transported to another time, and allows you to access important moments in your life.

But cooking not only gives you access to memories, it also allows you to create and crystallize them, like my first Thanksgiving dinner.

Cooking a turkey and sharing the experience with my friends has now become a lovely memory.

As you can see, cooking is a mystical ritual that involves transformation, tradition, and connection.

Cooking is a magical experience.

The power of storytelling

💡Through this experience, I learned that if you create a very captivating narrative that is well told and supported by the right imagery, it can be transformative, keeping your audience deeply immersed in the story and emotionally connected.

So what is the power of storytelling?

💞It is about connecting people through feelings and emotions that they can relate to personally, and that inspires them to move in a different and more positive direction.