i remember i used to kinda roll my eyes at the whole sentiment of "the secret ingredient in cooking is love" (5 years ago ferns: pffft love can't be tasted. actually the secret ingredient is glutamates (ferns now: glutamates are good, but also kinda overblown tbh)), but i've increasingly come around on it. even if love itself obviously isn't a direct ingredient, it's still an important component of the cooking process that has a huge impact on how a dish turns out! love just translates into taking my time with whatever i'm cooking and really making sure i get the utmost out of every step of the cooking process. it's the motivation to keep from cutting corners and really stay focused on getting the best result i can.
take the usual weeknight meal for instance. i'm likely just throwing together a quick and easy standby that i've made dozens of times. mentally i'm probably already thinking about whatever i've got planned for later in the evening, and am just kinda autopiloting through a familiar cooking process. odds are i'm gonna turn out a B- version of whatever i'm making (not a knock at all! my B- is pretty tasty). not a whole lot of love there, because my goal is mostly a utilitarian "make something quick and easy that's tasty enough that i'll still want leftovers tomorrow but doesn't need to wow me".
whereas if i'm making something that does have a strong aspect of love in it -- say cooking a meal for a friend or making the first batch of soup of the fall, i'm going to be much more inclined to really slow down and take care with every step. taste for seasoning in every component at every step of the way, take the time to chop all my veggies uniformly and carefully sautee them in batches so they each wind up at just the right level of doneness, break out chicken carcasses i'd been saving in the freezer to make a homemade stock with, and so on.
and ultimately it's nice walking a balance of the two. putting a lot of love into a dish is a really richly satisfying experience. it's one of the most rewarding things you can do in the kitchen. but also it's not something i can expect to do every day. for a while i did spend a couple years trying to really go all out on every meal i made week in and week out, and while it was a lot of fun at first, it eventually burned me out on cooking, plus over time i just got accustomed to all my food having that level of care and it stopped feeling special.
after spending a bunch of time really going deep on getting better at making spectacular dishes i put a ton of love and care into, it's been really refreshing this last year of instead just finding ways to get better at throwing together some nutritious and reasonably tasty stuff for myself in 30-45 minutes without a ton of mental overhead.
also damn this sure is a "guess i really am in my 30s now" ass post, huh?