Every bowl is an experiment — the quiet midnight kitchen scientist
The ITP's real food life happens off-menu. The kitchen at midnight, the substitution that changes the whole ratio, the question of whether the dish would work with a different base — this is where their interest actually lives. Other people eat to fuel or to socialise; the ITP eats to understand, and understands by doing. The experiment that fails is still informative. The one that works produces something that couldn't have been planned.
Food that's genuinely unusual because it comes from genuine inquiry rather than recipe-following. The ITP's meals carry the specific interest of someone who has thought carefully about what they're making — not reproduced it. This makes eating with them an experience of discovery rather than consumption.
Most people's food range narrows as they get older, settling into known preferences. The ITP's widens because curiosity keeps them in the kitchen asking new questions. The accumulated result — a repertoire of things they've actually figured out rather than memorised — is genuinely worth having.
When the process matters more than the result, feedback from actual enjoyment gets filtered out in favour of analysis. An experiment that technically worked but wasn't particularly pleasant might still feel like a success to the ITP. Cooking that's primarily for the cook rather than the eater is a tendency worth examining occasionally.