{"id":99,"date":"2023-05-11T07:32:05","date_gmt":"2023-05-11T07:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/?p=99"},"modified":"2023-05-11T07:32:06","modified_gmt":"2023-05-11T07:32:06","slug":"love-saffron-by-kim-fay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/love-saffron-by-kim-fay\/","title":{"rendered":"Love & Saffron by Kim Fay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

“I wonder what retrieved your husband’s memory. Was it the taste of the saffron or its scent? And how did the memory return to him? Did it crawl cautiously out of the past, or arrive in one savory burst?”<\/em> (Fay pg.26) <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After my mid-quarter eval meeting I am making a few changes to the way I wrote my posts. I will be writing much less explaining the plot of the book, and instead highlighting the food and effect examples and discussing my learning process in relation to food and pleasure, and reading and pleasure. This weeks book was Love and Saffron <\/em>by Kim Fay. I found this book on this<\/a> Penguin Random House recommendation list, and I was curious to read a book partially set in the PNW. It was written in 2022, but takes place between October 1st 1962, and August 6th 1966. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story follows two women, Imogen Fortier, a food journalist and secretary living in North Seattle, and Joan Bergstrom, a women’s pages staff writer at the Los Angeles Herald Examiner and later, a food journalist and cookbook writer. The book starts with a fan letter sent from Joan to Imogen, and a deep friendship forms out of changing recipes and ingredients via the mail. Most of the book is told via the letters sent between the two women but the vulnerability expressed in these letters is more than enough to get a deep understanding of the characters, there is a deep feeling of desperation underlying each woman’s need for a confidant. Throughout the book these women share dinner recommendations and new ingredients that alter their life events and ways of thinking, as well as acknowledging the limitations that came with sourcing ingredients in the 1960’s and the circumstances of their time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to highlight a particular example of food and effect, the weight of food in relationships, and make a couple of connections to this idea I’m working with of food and pleasure and reading and pleasure. This example involves the titular ingredient, Saffron. Imogen is drawn out of her room by the smell of her husband cooking her an omelet with glazed butter, herbes de Provence, and saffron sent to her in Joans first letter. But in her communication with Joan she does not find the taste of the omelet to be the most extraordinary part of the meal. For the first time, Imogens husband spoke to her about his experience at war, recalling the memory of learning to make omelets in an abandoned farmhouse. Imogen is suprised that the first reference to his time in the military is accompanied by a smile she describes as entirely new to her. I think here, the author is trying to convey that Francis, while reserved about his time at war, wants to be vulnerable and share with his wife, and he demonstrates that through the telling of this story, and the tricky procurement of the herbes de Provence. I think it also demonstrates a much more primal message, that emotional vulnerability can be eased simply with the comfort of a food that’s pleasurable to chew and swallow. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I am evaluating my learning process, this is really good thinking to apply. As I am exploring pleasure through reading and pleasure through food, I am attempting to heal my relationship with academics and reading in general, while also working on my own relationship with food. I read twenty books in three months at the beginning of 2023 after not reading a book by choice since early high school, all fiction that I chose and read at my own pace, all of which I enjoyed and digested. The simple comfort of reading a book I enjoyed reinstated the love of reading I had l had lost so many years ago and made it easy to heal that relationship. One of the main goals in writing this ILC was to bring that pleasure into my academics to try and find joy in learning again, similar to the way Francis uses the joy he finds in cooking that omelet to begin to find joy in remembering his past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This book also helped me reflect a lot on my own relationship, not just with food but also with cooking and my kitchen. I can trace back my eating disorder to specific foods made growing up (among other factors) all of which I found unpleasant before the disordered eating presented itself. I started cooking regularly a little under a year ago and the agency over what I eat has been absolutely life-changing. While there is still a struggle to allow myself to eat them, the foods that I find pleasurable are the most important in my recovery. Again, this can be compared to healing my relationship with reading, bringing pleasure to the front of our lives to heal in the areas we hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next week I am going to read Cinnamon and Gunpowder <\/em>by Eli Brown. I’m working on finalizing what my week 10 presentation will be about, but I am hoping to have a solid focus on this pleasure in food and pleasure in reading idea, and highlight the ways in which an ILC can be used to fight academic burnout. I have also written the first draft of my Summer 23 ILC!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I wonder what retrieved your husband’s memory. Was it the taste of the saffron or its scent? And how did the memory return to him? Did it crawl cautiously out of the past, or arrive in one savory burst?” (Fay pg.26) After my mid-quarter eval meeting I am making a few changes to the way … Continue reading Love & Saffron by Kim Fay<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":392,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"geo":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/392"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions\/101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.evergreen.edu\/foodag-portfolio-sp23-haynes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}