“From the human labor of animal and plant husbandry, to the multiple life forms that must make space for agriculture, eating cannot happen in isolation” (Davis 2003)
My first reading was “The Wonder of Bread: Teaching University Students the Cost of Eating with Their Hands” by Eric Pallant, it’s a reflective writing published in Gastronomica, written about a class that seems akin to one that may be taught at Evergeen. I was interested in this reading specifically because it was tagged as “experiential learning” which has come up a few times over the last few quarters as a piece of Evergreen’s future planning.
Pallant started his garden of wheat in the Spring with help from the grounds gardener and worked with students through the summer to tend to and grow the plants. He mentions their beauty when they start to harvest noting “The small sheaf of gold I held bunched in my hand splayed like fireworks, each tiny seed bundled in a husk peaked by a single, spiky awn.” It really felt as if he held his crops in high regard, he was not only proud but in awe of his crop. When students in his class would complain about the heavy labor of the many stepped ordeal, he would inform them of ways the job has already been made easier for them with modern inventions and community support.
We are walked through the story of this crop, from early spring to it’s summer harvest, each step the students take to prepare it to be milled to flour and then combined with salt, water, and Pallants 1893 sourdough starter. After noting that fresh flour defiantly makes a difference, we are offered this mouthwatering description.
“Glenn, our cultivar of hard red spring wheat, must have produced extra sweetness because this bread wafted molasses and possessed a brittle crust and caramelized bottom. The smoky sweet overtones and dark, almost pumpernickel-like color appealed to the dozen students and colleagues who made very short work of it”
While not a long read, Pallant tells a compelling story of his class and their journey from seed to fresh bread, noting not only what surprised his students but also the places he surprised himself, or could not answer their questions. I appreciated not only his genuine tone and radical honesty for what he was still learning, but also that he was so wholly student-focused in ways in which they may not yet see or appreciate but that they will be grateful for in the future.
My second reading was entitled “Chewing the Fat: “Unpacking” Distasteful Encounters” by Suzanne Hocknell. The keywords tagged in this one included “distaste” and “visceral”, and the abstract at the top of the page was very promising “I demonstrate that for my research participants the distastefulness of a yellow fat did not rest in any straightforward way on a visceral disliking of the flavor of that same product.”
This journal article reveals the findings of Hocknells’ research study, in which she uses “planned discussion groups” (PDG’s) to bring out natural conversation between the research participants. The groups were groups of five and selected based on their relation to each other instead of in a random selection pattern, I think to ensure the best conversation and the most “unpacking”, a term the author makes much use of throughout. The one specifically covered in the article had two people with a preference for margarine, two for butter, and one who didn’t use either.
While taste seemed like the obvious driving force of choice, Hocknell quickly picks apart the statements of the group member, observing their body language and tone when they talk about their preferred or not preferred members, and pulling out instances of the participant sharing related details of their lives that influenced their opinion on one spread or the other. One of the participant, Ruth, shared a story that I felt was highly relevant.
“Ruth described the experience of eating margarine as “horrible,” “synthetic, really fake.” Yet Ruth did not experience distaste because margarine had made her sick, nor because of a primary reaction to the flavors, texture, smell, or appearance of margarine. Indeed she explained that “as a child, we just never had butter, so I never really, just, we had Flora, and I was fine with that.” In the intervening years something had shifted in Ruth’s experience of her embodied encounters with the stuff of margarine”
In week 1 while reading Cohns Skim, Dive, Surface I read a metaphor for a child’s enjoyment of reading.
“one source—probably the primary source—of positive reading attitudes is positive reading experiences. This phenomenon is no more complicated than understanding why someone has a positive attitude toward eggplant. You taste it and like it” (Willingham 2017)
Reading and enjoyment, eating and enjoyment, they’re both things that have to be nurtured correctly as a child or we won’t carry it into adulthood. Digital reading is to books and physical texts, is as the search for a balance of all kinds of health is to eating. I hope to further refine this metaphor but I feel it’s a good start.
Next week will be my last full week of reading, and week 10 will be for finishing up final writings, evals, and working on my Spring ILC.