“Chefs, open your baskets.”

On Tuesday evenings, I will often find myself settling into my living room couch in front of our jumbo-sized TV screen for my favorite show, Chopped. On Tuesday evenings, the Food Network will feature a new episode along with older episodes in a veritable marathon of culinary creativity and expert nit-picking.

I normally don’t like Reality TV. Reality TV shows tend to be mean-spirited, frivolous, and – well, not very real. Watching Chopped is a sort of guilty pleasure for me.

Host Ted Allen starts the show by introducing a panel of judges, veteran chefs and successful restaurateurs. Then they provide pre-recorded vignettes highlighting some back story on the evening’s competitors, noting where they’re from, what kind of cooking styles they tend to employ, and offering a hint as to why they want to compete; what it would mean to them to be a Chopped Champion. Early moments of the show will also include close-ups of the competitors’ almost teary-eyed faces as they explain what they would do with the $10,000 prize.

Seeds for some later drama can be sown here. I, myself, have often picked a chef to root for based on a personal story of battling back from cancer, or wanting to go back to Singapore to visit a dying father, or a wish to renovate their restaurant, or a desire to make a child or spouse proud.

The show pits four chefs against each other in preparing a three-course meal from ingredients supposedly a mystery to them until the baskets are opened during the competition. Each course must be prepared in a ridiculously small amount of time and efforts are judged based on creativity, presentation, and taste.

Why am I so enamored with this show that I can watch back to back to back episodes? What is so entrancing about the studio kitchen’s ultra-contemporary stainless steel appliances and homey wicker baskets of ingredients that I would never in a million years think of combining? (Razor clams, lemon flavored jelly beans, canned lychee nuts and fresh matzah – What the __?)

But I love the show. I do.

Creativity in any form makes my heart sing. Culinary creativity is a special delight because a wonderful dish will appeal to my eyes, and nose, and tongue. A really innovative offering may even appeal to my sense of touch. When chefs create dishes that feature complementary textures, I have to consider it almost a tactile quality.

And I guess I like the time element of the competition. We all are given the challenge of making the most out of our lives, making the most out of the mystery baskets of our personal qualities in however much or little time we have on earth. I like how the show allows you to see the bustling activity involved in cooking while the audio runs the different chefs’ voices explaining what they’re trying to do. What an interesting experience, being privy to someone’s inner dialogue!

I also like the surprises that take place in the kitchen as the clock for any one course winds down. Each show has pans full of ingredients that don’t work as they were intended or were burnt and then are thrown in the trash. In each show, there will be a cut finger, or clash between two chefs who want to use the same kitchen device at the same time. You can also witness a kind of ballet that goes on where each competing chef is acutely focused on his own agenda yet choreographs his way through the kitchen, past the burners and utility tables and racks of plates, so as not to disturb the other competitors.

And here is where Chopped meets The Four Agreements; The Four Agreements being Don Miguel Ruiz’s primer on ancient Toltec wisdom. The first three Agreements (Be impeccable with your Word, Don’t take anything personally, Don’t make assumptions) are probably not applicable, but the joy of Chopped is summed up perfectly in the Fourth Agreement; Always do your best.

Whether a guest chef executes his intentions perfectly or not, whether he wins the $10,000 prize and can go home to Singapore or buy a new stove for his struggling tapas bar, it doesn’t matter. I don’t cotton to the cockiness of some chef contestants whose egos are focused on crushing the competition.But when a culinary contestant opens his mystery basket and applies all his imagination and technical training to make something unique and flavorful, when he can express himself fully in the preparation of a meal that can sustain and delight, I can’t help but be impressed.

Anytime you give all you can give to something you love, it’s no small thing.