I am deeply suspicious of any kind of cooking that involves countdown clocks, secret ingredients, yelling men or arbitrary rules. Top Chef is absurd. And I’d even say it’s a bit damaging to the watching public, which has come to think that every meal must involve some incredible hurdle to be overcome.

For anyone who feels comfortable cooking, though, the only major hurdle is our own laziness, and maybe the fact that someone else ate that cheese you were planning to use for dinner.

When I finally roll myself into the kitchen, though, I find myself doing a small form of the same stunt cooking that defines Top Chef. No one is yelling over my shoulder about the chiffonade, or insisting that every dish contain cauliflower, but I am working under some constraints: That half-can of tomatoes needs to be used up, and the only meat in the house is bacon. My vegetarian friend is coming for dinner. I’m ravenous and whatever I do needs to happen in the next half-hour.

And the fact is, I love these constraints. They are actually freeing, as they screen out a lot of options and help me focus on what I have. It’s a genius dynamic in which constraints force creativity. And you don’t have to be a Dogme filmmaker to appreciate it. It’s a small art to create something delicious out of a few ingredients. And anytime you live on a tight budget–as I and most people I know have done for long stretches–you’re being a little creative every day. The absence of constraints can actually be paralyzing. (There, that’s your pep talk for surviving the recession…)

This is all getting around to an article on Gourmet.com, Highway Hiking with Michael Hebb. I’ve never met Michael Hebb, though I’ve swapped a couple of emails with him. By all accounts, he’s a charmer and a thinker. He may be some more negative things, and this article points to some of them (like, perhaps he is indeed “a crazy man”). But I appreciate that he’s definitely a big-idea guy.

His idea, in this case, is hiking across Los Angeles and foraging for food (on fruit trees and at Albertson’s), and then cooking dinner on a camp stove in an island on the I-5 freeway.

He presents it as an art piece. I’m not in a position to judge, but it veers dangerously close to stunt cooking. But the food–which I think is the best, most honest way of separating the posers from the ones who really put their heart into it–sounds like it was really good. But almost anything tastes great after you’ve been walking for two days. And does it only count as art if others are watching?

Hebb comes across as a little bit of a lunatic in this piece, and not in a lovable-freak way. That might have something to do with the writer getting in over his/her head in terms of actual physical exertion. But I envy the experience Hebb created for himself.

Would you hike across LA and look for food? Would you go on Top Chef?

(By the by, the kicker of the story involves the very fear I have of people using those white-gas bottles for water! I feel vindicated.)