Hi there!
During my class time this week I wanted to hear people's stories and connections with food. I think storytelling is such an important way to understand people and where they come from, and I'd like to get to know you all better!
I think I've always been fascinated with people making food, and the stories that come with chefs or recipes. As a kid I would always watch cooking shows if I was home sick, and have sat through perhaps an embarrassing amount of competition cooking shows.
I love Netflix's series called Chef's Table, where they explore the chef's behind some of the world's best cooking. If you have some time feel free to check an episode or two out, they are beautifully filmed, and will likely make you drool over the unique and gorgeous food creations. A couple of my personal favorites include: Niki Nakayama (season 1, episode 4), who runs a sushi cafe in L.A. that is completely staffed by women; and Grant Achatz is another interesting chef who runs a restaurant in Chicago that creates food illusions, such as serving plates on pillows that release odor as you press down to cut the food, or floating edible balloons, he is incredibly creative and innovative.
Questions to respond to:
What stories do you think people tell through food?
As food/food prep is narrowed into microwavable boxes, fast food, or going to restaurants what stories and traditions are lost?
What does preparing food mean to you? Do you cook? How often?
Brainstorm some stories about connections with food to share on Thursday.
Here's some possible topics that you may have a story attached to: your favorite taste, your least favorite taste, your favorite memory in the kitchen, your least favorite memory in the kitchen, what cooking means to you, how you learned to cook, the first meal you cooked, the last meal you cooked, who do you cook with, shared meals, moments where food brought people together, food as a universal language.
I would love to use my class time on Thursday just to pass around stories surrounding food.
Hope you have a good beginning to 8th week! (DOGL Wednesday?!!?)
-Amanda
I think food is interesting because it is a beautiful intersection of pragmatism and art. I've worked in the restaurant business with some really talented individuals for years now, and tried to soak up everything I can, as well as watching a plethora of cooking shows and interviews. But when I watch shows like Chef's Table I can't help but feel that the featured chefs have gone beyond mastering the skill of preparing food; they are looking at items fro ma perspective that most of us can't even conceive of. As an example of this, I would like to mention Christina Tosi's "Cereal Milk Panna Cotta" or the "Not Miso" that Rene Redzepi was able to create with his kitchen staff. I think the lack of real cooking that happens now detracts not only from stories and traditions, but from our ability to think and combine and play with our food to do new things.
ReplyDeleteWork was where I truly learned to cook. I was especially fortunate that the restaurant I worked at would feature at least 2 special, multiple course meals a month; one paired with a new brewery each month, and one with a new winery. These were always my favorite shifts of the month, because the food we made was always something new, and always a good chance to play around. As I accrued time at the restaurant, I got to be more and more involved in these special dinners. I loved listening to the planning meetings between our chef and our guests, figuring out what we would make and how. The last chef I worked with even brought me and some of the cooks in to suggest dishes or recipes, and to help refine his ideas. Doing that, and being brought up to be recognized with the rest of the kitchen staff by our guests, as well as the brewers who trusted us to present their products, was an incredible experience. It was just remarkably validating to look back and see that I came from someone who could barely scrape together simple dishes, to someone who was doing such amazingly cool work. Many of my most memorable food experiences come from my time at the restaurant as well, and I think that cooking for me is the same time that I get to play around and try to express myself as when others create visual art, or make music.
Food has the amazing ability to bring people together, even in times of strife. Food can connect people across different languages, ethnicities, and philosophies. In many countries, certain dishes have cultural value and stories associated with them. Thus, preparing, cooking, and eating a meal is more than satisfying a visceral need; it may involve family, community, and an appreciation of the earth.
ReplyDeleteI do not often cook, and I think my unhealthy eating behaviors reflect Western ideology towards food. The Western working world is obsessed with productivity and achievement, which inevitably produces individual stress. Eating is one way to relieve this stress, as we compensate higher standards with lower food restrictions. This explains why most new college students fall victim to the “freshman fifteen” weight gain. In an environment where people are always eating, and a culture that prescribes food as a tool to help us meet our goals, I found plenty of external influences to justify my eating habits. The physical environment can also promote overeating. Fat and sugar-saturated snacks are accessible any where in vending machines, whereas one has to intentionally seek out a salad. Americans’ limited attitudes toward food (as a substance that is just consumed) exacerbates our unhealthy behaviors. Thus, it makes sense that food/food preparation is narrowed into microwavable boxes, fast foods, or restaurants. American loss of knowledge, tradition, and relationship with food represents just one consequence of colonization—our attitudes toward food are part of larger dysfunctional systems.
Growing up in the metro Detroit area, I have become accustomed to a diverse community of food. I think food is a way the community connects with each other and attempts to understand one another's cultures. It really allows people to have a commonality with each other and acts as a mode of communication. I can think of countless examples of communicating through food throughout my life. My grandpa's whole family is from Poland. His sisters were some of the most incredible cooks I have ever known, but they spoke almost no English, so it was very hard for me to communicate with them. At every family event, they would graciously force feed us their home cooked Polish meals and I never felt more connected to them and our heritage. In my family, family recipes are a way to tell stories and keep traditions alive. When we eat certain dishes we are reminded of the people that have kept them alive and we connect with one another over the stories that we share of those family members. I find that most of the food I feel a connection to are ethnic foods, those that have traditions and customs that are not common in many traditional American communities.
ReplyDeleteMore than I think the actual process of food preparation is important, is the process of consumption. Traditionally, food is a centering moment where family and friends gather around a table to share a moment in time. I think the physical effort that goes into food preparation makes people more liable to share their labor with their loved ones. I appreciate that within my family, presence at dinner meals was always emphasized as a place to catch up on each other's days.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with instant meals, in my mind, is that they don't emphasize community in the same way as traditionally prepared meals. They emphasize instead a culture of fast-paced living; if you don't have time for personal nourishment, what do you have time? A fast food dinner is eaten in your car, a microwaveable dinner, alone in front of the TV. By denying ourselves the simple time to eat, we deny ourselves our community and our personal time we subconsciously tell ourselves that food is an obstacle, to be circumvented in the shortest possible time, not something to enjoy together.
My family takes food and its consumption very seriously, and I grew up cooking with my dad from the time I could walk. I've never learned formal 'cooking skills,' like how to dice onions so that they look uniform, because my dad's recipes were mostly passed down from his grandmother, who didn't believe in uniformity, so "a handful of salt" was all we knew for measuring. Food could also directly influence our behaviors: whoever found the bay leaf in their bowl had to do the dishes that night (but it seemed to land in my bowl a disproportionate amount; I suspect foul play by my brothers). Food is also central to storytelling in my family, as my brother and dad and I can usually remember much of what happened during a day if we remember what we ate that day. Especially good meals act as time stamps in my life. Recipes were usually passed down with a story or two about days in which whoever is making the recipe had eaten that dish, or some particular thing that the maker of the recipe did for good luck. I've noticed that in recent years, though, even our family reunions have fewer homemade foods, as the younger generations (i.e. my generation) have not learned enough from our parents to reproduce their traditional reunion food. More and more I've been realizing that knowing how to prepare food, and having the time to prepare food, is a luxury that not many can afford when our society seems to stress productivity over human connection. I've come to consider cooking a relaxing activity rather than a necessity, which means that when I don't have time to cook sometimes I forget to eat or else scramble to find whatever ingredients I can eat raw/prepare quickly. I would love for our society to value cooking as a community activity more, and to provide time for it in our expected schedules. Since this is not the case (yet), I find myself trying to cook with friends as much as possible when I have any time to see them, because eating is a necessity and cooking has become a luxury in my mind. Because of this, I've discovered that some of my friends have very different tastes than I do, learned some of their recipes, and learned how to adapt some of mine so that they are more palatable to others' taste buds.
ReplyDeleteThroughout my life, food has always been central during family gatherings and has acted as the source of bringing us all together. As each family always brought a dish to distribute, it was the efforts and cooking of all of us as a whole who made the food come together to be a meal that all of us could share. So, in my case, I feel like food tells the story of family because it has been central to some of my most cherished family memories. To this day, even after long periods of time without seeing one another, we always know that we can come together to enjoy a nice meal together as a family and catch up.
ReplyDeleteI am ashamed to say I do not cook as often as I should. Especially since I have started college, cooking has been harder and harder to get myself to do. I think my cooking habits very much depend on where I am and what I have access to. When I'm at home in the summers or on breaks, I find that I cook more often. One reason I believe I do this is because my mom has so many more ingredients available to her than I do as a broke college student at school. I never realized how many spices my mom has collected over the years that I have always had access to, but, since I have been in college this has become more evident to me as I have only had a few to work with. Also, at home I always know that the meal will not go to waste, as my mom, brother, and sister in law are there to share it with me. At college, I often find it kind of a waste to cook an entire meal for just myself. I also think that the college culture overall, in which we are expected to be working and studying for long periods of time to keep up with classes, rent, tuition, bills, etc., it become more and more time consuming to cook. Through this, I feel like a lot of connections are lost because I believe that food really gives people a reason to come together.
For my experience, I think people tell stories through food as a form of communication and ritual. I grew up in a Latinx community where the idea of making food was an essential thing to do, for the purpose of family bonding. Dinner was the common time where food was a way to channel emotions through and a way to transition into storytelling. My dad would tell us stories about certain dishes that remind him of his childhood. When we have guest coming to our house, this is the time we sit down, eat and get to know them. As food preparation is narrowed into microwaveable food boxes and fast food, I think it strips out the sense in community. When I eat frozen meals from commercial dinners boxes, it fills my tummy for the moment; however, I eat and isolate myself in my room. This school year was my first time that I had to cook for myself. I like preparing my food because I often make to much of it that it can last for a couple of days. Often times, if I see one of my housemates having a long day, I prepare them and myself food. I let the food do the talking, while I prepare my thoughts and words through our time eating.
ReplyDeleteFood and food prep was an integral part of my childhood. I used to hate going to the store with my father; he would take forever to sort through all the fresh produce, meat, and bread to find the perfect pieces for dinner. It was like watching a mathematician at their work. He knew the rhythms of sales at Vons: the best deals for particular products. That is where the visioning would begin. I miss the meandering we constantly did. We would then come home and start the process of marinading, cutting , and laughing. We had fun in the kitchen! We would also argue in the kitchen, it was the place my dad had dominion over. I always wondered what wisdom he had to just know what to put into the mix. There was always one goal though when making dinner: finish dinner before my mother would come home. He would always make sure she had something to eat when she returned from a long day of work. We would wait for the sound of the front door jiggling and her opening it to greet us. And the house would smell in layers, with every stage of the food prep having its own distinct scent until you crossed the threshold into the kitchen. Everyone eats in the end. We would give thanks to all the blessings we had with the food that sat in front of us.
ReplyDeleteI believe that as humans have become more advanced we have also lost touch with the story that food tells within each of our own unique cultures. Growing up in a greek household food was everything. I learned how to cook and prepare food from a young age. Through this process I learned how and why each traditional dish came to be. This allowed me to stay in touch with my ancestors and to learn about them through taste and preparation. Currently, I cook 90% of meals at home because of the way I was raised. I am very grateful for my upbringing and I will most certainly pass that onto my decedents.
ReplyDelete