As I have progressed through my ILC I have struggled to find the best way to go about these posts. My pre-thoughts often contradict what I want the message of my final post to convey and sometimes feel boring to write, but also the comparisons and pre-notions are often interesting when evaluating my learning process. Sometimes my posts look closer to book reports than reflections, but sometimes I feel my reader is missing crucial detail when I leave things out. I have come to the conclusion that ten weeks is never going to be enough to perfect a learning process, and while I have had months to adjust to my regular ILC format, I recognize the same instability and unsureness I felt when I started my Hypothes.is centric ILC’s in Winter 2022. I also think that I overestimated myself by deciding to do a book a week, I am definitely putting in more hours than I would have preferred for four credits, and still have a final presentation to make. For this reason, I will be reading one book for week seven, and one book for weeks eight and nine combined, with the end of week nine being preparation for my presentation, and week ten being focused on my final eval and reflections. I think my final presentation will be on the changing of my learning process, how to evaluate how you’re feeling about academia itself, and how to adjust your expectations and actions based on that.
I have decided for my last two books I will convey the things I know about the book from the blurb or people having recommended the book, as well as questions I may ask or themes or ideas I am looking for. These may have entirely changed by the time I do my post-reading reflection, but I think it will be beneficial to for sure have themes and questions to be looking for even if they change.
My copy of Cinnamon and Gunpowder doesn’t have a cover, but I found the official blurb available on Goodreads.com. The description promises “A gripping adventure, a seaborne romance, and a twist on the tale of Scheherazade—with the best food ever served aboard a pirate’s ship”, and follows a chef kidnapped by a pirate who demands meals in exchange for his life. The blurb also alludes to a pressure put on the pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot that leads her to overwork her crew and how that changes relationships on the ship. I am going to be looking specifically for how food and emotion interact in parallel to the emotions of Chef Owen Wedgwood and his captor. While Owen seems like he may be the main character, I have a suspicion that because the relationship between the pirate and the chef is also that of a captor and her captive, an element of fear will always be at the edge of their interactions, at least until the power balance shifts. There is also the big question of why a hunted pirate would kidnap a chef, or let him live, and the answer lies clearly in the food. Therefore, I will also be looking at how food is used as a comfort for both the chef and the pirate in their peculiar circumstances.
Post-reading
Cinnamon and Gunpowder lived up to its promise of gripping adventure and seaborn romance, with the addition of bringing to light many issues of the past and present as told through a pirate with a cause. After the pirate Hannah Mabbot and her crew aboard the Rose kill Chef Owen Wedgwoods’ long-time employer, Ramsey, she sits at his table and eats the meal prepared for him by Owen. This leads her to take Owen aboard her ship, offering him a deal that he cooks every Sunday for her “the finest supper”, in exchange for his life. She specifies “You will neither repeat a dish nor serve foods that are in the slightest degree mundane” all of which must be done from a pirate ships provisions. Owen originally casts it off as impossible, but each Sunday he manages to prepare a meal akin to something he prepared in his high-status job for a wealthy merchant. All of this is documented in a makeshift journal Owen keeps hidden, at first to track time and document the pirates’ times, and then later seemingly for his own sanity.
The role of food and cooking as comfort played a huge role, but I think that separating the cooking and comfort from the food and comfort provides a really good insight into the two main characters. Hannah Mabbot kidnaps a stranger because she seeks the comfort he can provide in his cooking, though she at first claims it is about maintaining stature over her crew she makes it a weekly event for herself and Owen, clearly in need of both the comfort of the meal and his company. She allows Owen to question her more than most of her own crew over these dinners, seemingly becoming more vulnerable under the influence of good food. Mabbot also longs for intelligent conversations, missing some of the influences of her upbringing, and delights in engaging in topics of food as intelligent conversation. It is not until the end of the book that we see much willingness from Owen to partake in these meals, but once the event is started he cannot help himself, he too misses the world of elegant conversation.
Owen, used to being a renowned chef for an incredibly wealthy businessman, adjusts poorly to life on a pirate ship. Though resistant to this ritual for a good portion of the book, he pours his heart into his meals even after he no longer fears for his life at the hands of the captain, stating “If I failed in my duties, would my life really be forfeit? Yet I find myself continuing the pursuit of flavor for the sake of my own sanity. It calms my soul.” (p.212). Despite his strong distaste for the captain and what she stands for (until about page 266), he goes to great lengths to acquire ingredients and create multiple course meals that remind him of those he made for his former employer.
Looking at food and emotion, Owen repeatedly uses food to offer an apology or raise morale. On one particular occasion, the nightwatchman has been flogged in punishment for Owen’s escape attempt. He offers the crewman crepes as an apology, and while nothing is said about the prior events it is apparent how much this act of sitting and eating with the crew changes the dynamic. There is always a separation between Owen and the rest of the crew, but as Mabbot acts more irrationally the comfort that Owen can provide to the chef in both his food and his company becomes more of a commodity
This brings me to the theme of food and togetherness which is what this novel really embodies. Hannah Mabbot, searching for her son and soon in love with her captive chef, longs for the unique togetherness that the meals with Owen provide. Owen Wedgwood, grieving his wife, child, and old life, seeks togetherness wherever he can find it aboard the Rose, using food as a tool to earn the trust of his crewmates and captain. Individually the crew were incredibly complex and even those who seemed to contribute little to the main plotline were written in such a way to demonstrate their motivations throughout the whole novel rather than in long explanations. While it would be a stretch to say Owen ever became friends with the crew, they offer back some form of acceptance in the form of sitting together to eat.
Food and togetherness can be a difficult subject for many people like myself with disordered eating habits, often it triggers the idea of being closely observed or monitored while eating. Throughout my recovery my feelings on eating around other people have changed almost with the season, but it’s more complex than a yes or a no. Having my own kitchen table where I could serve my loved ones meals has been a dream of mine since high school, I used to refer to it as my “number 1 domestic want”. And while my desire to bring people together with my food never goes away, I can find it overshadowed by fear of judgment and over-awareness of my body. In Cinnamon and Gunpowder, Owen must use food and togetherness as a tactic to ensure his survival while actively fearing for his life dependent on the quality of his meals. While he is not a protagonist you can fully root for due to some of his nasty 1800s Church of England beliefs, and while I am not being held captive by a pirate, I can relate to the love/fear cycle that he experiences around his cooking and the meals served both to the Captain and the crew.
In my surrounding research I was curious to read reviews that spoke to Owen’s character, as I wasn’t sure how widely held my sentiment would be. I was honestly disappointed to not find as much published about this book as I would have liked, but while I didn’t find anything speaking to Owen’s morals, I really appreciated this NPR article that described him as “… a priest of sorts, practicing his faith in the kitchen, where he has developed a sort theology of food.” (Petra Mayer NPR, 2013)
As far as historical accuracy, this book is almost entirely a work of fiction. Most of the places and events outside of countries seem to be a work of fiction, but that is not surprising as there is also an element of almost steampunk worked into one of the main antagonists. But unfortunately, the Pendleton company was not founded until 1863, and as far as I know, have never tangled with pirates or opium.
I liked this layout of early questioning from the blurb, post-reading reflections, and then research notes, I think it will be a good way to close out my last book. I have a few options for my last book, it will honestly be dependent on which ones I can get a copy of by the beginning of week 8!