Eating Memoir
“If you want a real encounter with another culture, you have to abandon your cocoon” (Dunlop, 2008, p. 152).
When reading the chapter Sickness Enters Through the Mouth from Fuchsia Dunlop’s Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China, I found myself considering the way ‘cocooning’ affects the way we navigate life during pandemic. Dunlop, who was studying unexplored culinary regions in China during the SARS outbreak, recalls reading a headline which explained that most SARS patients were employed in the food industry and that “Chefs… were the main vectors of the epidemic” (Dunlop, 2008, p. 150). As consumers, we have to put a lot of trust into the food industry. It is not very common these days for people to really know where their food is coming from. This is something I have always been aware of because growing up I always had a strong phobia of foodborne illnesses. This led to me being very careful in the kitchen: washing my hands before touching things when cooking chicken in order to avoid getting salmonella, checking cans for dents and other indications of botulism, obsessively cleaning dishware, etc. For this reason, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I feel very similar to Dunlop when she explains her reasoning behind staying in Hunan China during the SARS epidemic. She writes, “In the course of my Chinese adventures I had been in many risky situations … eaten all kinds of questionable unhygienic foods … I had spent more days than I can remember in Restaurant kitchens with slippery floors dodging chefs who rushed around with sharpened cleavers and unsteady woks filled with boiling oil” (Dunlop, 2008, 153). I don’t mean this in the same fatalist way that she did. All I mean is that much like she experienced, not a lot about my lifestyle is changing due to this pandemic. I am not taking any new precautions by not touching my face after going to the grocery store and washing my hands for a full 20 seconds. These are things that I have always done. The only difference is, for the first time, I am not alone in practicing these things.
Growth can only happen when one leaves their comfort zone. Usually that is the very way that people build up immunity to sickness. Right now, however, we are living in a time when the safest thing we can do for our health is to stay in our cocoon. The parallels of nativism within our country during this time of cocooning are hard to overlook as Donald Trump openly refers to covid-19 as the ‘Chinese Disease.’ This is nothing new. People are still referring back the historic ‘Spanish Flu’ today with no regard for accuracy. Labeling an entire culture as a scapegoat for a global crisis is unfair. If the only way to accurately experience the world as it is made up by other cultures is by leaving the cocoon, then we need to ensure that as we shut ourselves in our homes to protect ourselves, we are still opening our eyes to other experiences. After all, houses do have windows. Luckily, we live in an age of mass media connectivity. This is a great window into the outside world if navigated carefully. It’s how I am sharing this post right now.
Right now a lot of us are fearful, we have every right to be. But that should not translate into prejudice. Foodborne illness wasn’t the only thing I had an irrational phobia of growing up. I have anxiety disorder which caused me to fear a lot of things. I only was able to overcome these fears by leaving my cocoon. It was necessary for my growth as a person. I look forward to this class, as it seems like a great way to leave my cocoon and learn about other peoples’ experiences while I am so trapped inside of my own. This seems like a great way to grow within the boundaries of my home.
Tonight, I ate pasta for dinner. This is a regular choice for me, because I’m vegan and it’s easy to make. It was a mix of penne, farfalle, and elbows with red sauce and spinach. Yes, I washed my hands for 20 seconds, and I would have regardless of the threat of Covid-19 because I’m not crazy.
Drawing Lab
For the illustrations of this memoir, I wanted to use different mediums. I illustrated this post during week 7, but since this post is my first, I wanted to make sure that the images showcased the range of illustrations of future posts. For the eating memoir, I did a digital image of a butterfly to go along with the topic. I also did a digital drawing of the pasta that I ate for the cooking lab.
My final image is a pen and colored pencil drawing of my girlfriend and I, along with our cat and fish, leaving our cocoon in Olympia, Washington and driving to my mother’s house in Idaho. The drive took 8 hours, so I decided to draw us in the car to pass the time. Drawing in the car is not easy, but neither is traveling with a fish tank. We originally just came down for spring break, but as of when this memoir was posted, spring break had been over for 2 days, and we were still in Idaho. As businesses closed And schools went online, we decided that staying at my mother’s house might be the best option until we could work and do school again. When I completed the drawing, I wrote “isolation isn’t so bad with such good company.”
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