"I thought this was the century of sex, and instead it is the century of cooking." Paolo Poli Once it was called "making food": it was a family business. Then people started saying "cooking," calling food "food" and cooks "chefs." And it was deconstructed, and it was plated, and it was a religion with rituals with strange names but familiar even to unbelievers: the cult is so pervasive that atheists know by heart the liturgy of "served in his bed of." On television we spaddle at all hours, we look for the label "organic" as if it were a grail, and if you don't know Bronte pistachios you can't have an intellectually respectable conversation. How did we get reduced to this?