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As I get closer and closer to the end of my time at evergreen, this ILC time seems to get even more precious to me. Over these past ten weeks I have had the opportunity to explore the ways we consume and ingest media related to food and the impact this medium of expression has both on our interpretation of the work, and the ways in which food is utilized as part of narratives and storytelling. Through biographies, novels, movies, short films, TV, and poetry, I have delved into the work of categorizing the artistic and the academic, finding their overlaps and teachable moments and then providing an example of my own understanding. I have successfully furthered my research and understanding of social geography and human foodscapes, explored the idea of telling human history through food, identified examples of food used in written and visual metaphor, parallel, and narrative.  

For each of my categories of expression, I created a work or works of my own that were influenced by the media I consumed through my research portion. These works created my final portfolio and included poetry, fiction, biography, and storytelling through food imagery sections that each include inspirations or direct references to my personal history. My ability to synthesize my learnings within original works that pull from my memories and experiences has only strengthened over the years and with this project I feel I am reaching a breakthrough in my academic writing and creativity.  

With the completion of this project I look towards my final quarter at Evergreen and my capstone project, which will showcase much of my work from the last three years. Having had significant growth in my research, reflection, and synthesize skills, I am feeling confident and tentatively ambitious going into Spring.  

TW: Final portfolio contains references to eating disorders and hospitalization.

Note: Somehow uploading it to WordPress messed with the spacing, apologies.

Movies, TV, and Food (Combined weeks)

I decided to combine these two weeks so I could post something more cohesive, and because I was still working through movies and write-ups at the end of week 8. I’m glad I waited because looking at all of my reflections in the same place helped inspire my final expressive project, and gave me the weekend to better process what I was looking through before beginning new material. I decided to discuss and reflect on specific scenes or lines instead of the whole piece (except for Bao, but that one is 7 minutes), but I’ll mention where I watched each one so you can try and watch it if you’re interested. I decided to split my focus from movies with plots revolving around food, and movies with important themes, messages, or patterns relating to food or scenes of eating.

Bao (2019)

Bao is a short film written and directed by Shi Domme, and released as a Disney short through Disney+. Honestly, this one made me sob, I had to call my mom and tell her I love her even though we already called earlier in the morning. It follows a Chinese mother living in Canada, opening with a beautiful scene of her hand preparing fresh Bao for her and her husband, who eats quickly and rushes off to work. Seemingly alone in the house, she hears a wail before taking a bite from her final dumpling only to find it has come to life. We watch her nurture this Bao as her child, taking care of him when he is sick, cooking for him, teaching him, but always keeping him away from other children for fear of him getting hurt. Over time you see this little Bao grow, hitting puberty and resenting his mother for her overprotectiveness. Before long he is an adult, and his mother’s attempts to connect fall flat as he attempts to move out with his girlfriend, a white woman she has never met. As he tries to leave there is an emotional confrontation between the two of them, in the final moments of which she snatches him up as he exits through the door, eating and destroying him rather than letting him leave. We cut to her crying in bed that evening, her husband looking in on her before nudging a young man into the room. This young man shares resemblance with the mother, father, and Bao, implying that he was in a way the child from the rest of the short, represented through his mother’s experience with her creation. He offers her a baked good we see them sharing in the beginning of the short, and they both cry as they sit eating them together. In our final scene, we see the family sitting together around the dinner table, including the sons girlfriend who is the same woman the Bao brought home. The mother is showing her son how to properly fold his Bao, though he is quickly shown up by his girlfriend’s perfect creations, earning her approval from all around the table.

This movie really highlights the emotions of loneliness, regret, resentment, love, and forgiveness. Whilst the novelty of a living Bao is certainly part of the artistry, the story that centers around her son, who is not revealed until the ending, is certainly where we see the most plays between food and emotion. The baked goods shared in the bedroom in a way represent the act of forgiveness, the pink box and glazed pastries reminding the viewer of an earlier time in which their relationship was easier, and again when they were rejected for the first time, as a teenager on the bus. Watching them cry together on the bed brought me to tears, this movie is backed by music alone, they never talk yet eating these pastries through their tears says so much about the healing happening between them. The final scene of creating the bao together also demonstrates this forgiveness, as well as being the opposite of the opening of the movie in which the mother cooked Bao alone.

The loneliness of the mother seems to be what creates the bao, almost as if she’s subconsciously trying to fill the gap left when her son moved away. Throughout you see her experience the growing up of her son and watching the mistakes, regardless of if you interpret this as the first time through a different lense or some kind of magical redo through the Bao, the regrets of a mother and her son are put to rest with a family meal. I cannot stress enough how emotional I was by the end of this one, the ability to communicate so much of a relationship with no words is truly incredible, as well as the artistry applied to the colors in this movie as they changed with the emotions of the mother and son.

Delicious in Dungeon (2024)

Delicious in Dungeon is a Netflix animated series, and was an incredibly cute show to watch, I really love the art style, and I’m a sucker for anything that makes me think of D&D. The show follows a group of broke adventurers traveling through a multi-layered dungeon and surviving only off the monsters they can kill and eat. I didn’t get very far through the season, but I watched enough to develop a love specifically for the cooking scenes as they are so beautiful in animation and energy; and pick up on a couple of character patterns relating to these unusual meals.

Laios (grey armour) is the outgoing leader of the group, I’d guess he’s playing a human fighter. When the group goes broke it is he who proposes the idea of surviving off monsters alone, to which Marcille (blue robes, elf? cleric) unhappily agrees, only due to the urgent nature of the quest. Throughout, Laios is giddy over the whole idea, excitedly killing and preparing monsters in the first episode, only for them to turn out horribly inebile. He is delighted when a new party member comes along with knowledge and immense skill in preparing these fantastical monsters and plants. Marcille demonstrates her love of fine food, dreaming over a dumpling soup she cannot afford and turning her nose up at these monster meals. Though she is always grossed out, she does always try and end up enjoying the food, and while she never looks forward to the creations, she does find some pleasure in them and their familiar yet strange tastes.

“Is it right to eat what ate one of us?”

Glass Onion (2022)

Glass Onion was an interesting watch, especially as the movie itself is not at all food-centric despite its name. The movie is a multi-layered murder mystery that takes place on a remote island hosting a vacation of billionaire friends. The island is owned by our antagonist, Miles Bron, who has built the titular glass onion in a dome atop his mansion and surrounding his office. Less than the plot of the movie itself, I was more interested in the behavior of the characters during the dinner scene and following events, and to explore a certain metaphor. Before the plot moving murder takes place on the island, Miles has prepared a murder mystery dinner party for his group, which he explains along with the plans for the rest of the weekend, boasting of all the fine foods and drinks they shall indulge in. Despite this, the plates in this scene remain empty throughout, and the following scenes only show hints of characters eating. Though they drink in excess and with the finest of choices, I don’t think I ever saw them eating on screen, aside from perhaps the fitness influencer.

Without giving too much away, one of the key themes of the movie was that this group of influential people, was brought up by one, influential, charismatic, but not overly smart individual that created even more success for himself than the rest of them simply by manipulating them into seeing him as someone they need. And then once he had the money, he had power over the rest of them by bankrolling their endeavors. Despite the riches, he doesn’t ever create anything good, his private island is built for looks and falls apart in function. Despite their intelligence, the group lost their agency to greed. Despite the riches, they ate so much they couldn’t enjoy it.

The Menu (2022)

“For starters, you have taken the joy out of eating.”

The Menu is a must watch movie for those interested in food studies (in my opinion). I find it inspires an interesting conversation in the intentions and emotions behind cooking, and the idea of deconstructing or reconstructing our food. The scene in particular I want to explore is the cheeseburger scene, near the very end of the movie. As the dessert course looms overhead, our protagonist, Margo, makes a final attempt to get through to the head Chef.

“You’ve failed, and you’ve bored me. And the worst part is, I’m still fucking hungry.”

Recalling a photo in his office of him young and smiling while cooking burgers early in his career, she tells him his food sucks and she wants to send it back. Requesting a simple cheeseburger, with American cheese, which he agrees is the best cheese for a burger and gives her a price of $9.95. After negotiating a side of fries, Margot is served the meal she requested and takes a bite as the chef looks on, for the first time seeming to care about the opinion of one of his patrons. When she has swallowed, she compliments the burger, before stating that her eyes were bigger than her stomach, to which the chef seems disappointed, until she asks to take it to go.

“When I eat your food, it tastes like it was made with no love.”

“You cook with obsession, not love. Even your hot dishes are cold”

Having appealed to the side of himself who used to treasure cooking, feeding, and food, demonstrating herself to be different from these others who took the beauty of his food for granted, the chef allows her to leave. Whilst she escapes to shore, sitting and eating her to-go meal, the chef prepares his guests for dessert. Whilst describing his opinions of the inspiration behind this final course, he tells the diners “It is everything wrong with us, yet we associate it with innocence.” One of the final shots of of Margo sitting on the boat watching the island, using the menu from her complimentary gift bag as a napkin to wipe her mouth, choosing to savor the flavors and not the grandeur.

Honorary Mention: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

Everyone knows The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but the dinner scene I find to be one of the best parts of the movie. After Columbia’s lover, Eddie, emerges from his prison in the deep freezer with a song that gets roaring applause and takes the attention from Frankenfurters special moment, he is brutalized and killed. Later at dinner, it is revealed that the “meatloaf” they have been eating, is in fact the remains of Eddie. This seems not only to be a way to punish Columbia for loving someone more than she loved him, but in another sense feels as though it could be Frankenfurter consuming Eddies power.

“That’s a rather tender subject. Another slice anyone?”

My Personal Menu

Inspired by both the symbolic representations of food and emotion I have studied this quarter, as well as the menu project that framed my ILC, the final expressive portion for my Winter 24 ILC centers around the act and art of cooking itself. Each of the scenes I have studied this week uses food as a metaphor or plot device to explain concepts to the audience without using words, something hard to achieve without filming a scene of my own, so forgive me if the presentation of my work isn’t quite what you were expecting with the theme. Instead, I will be writing about the process of cooking and eating common meals in my house, writing about the memory and meaning behind these dishes. While none of them are fancy, I feel they are very telling of my life and my loved ones. And in honor of the subject material, I found some pictures of myself and food that tell stories of their own.

LEFT: Energizing with cup-a-noodles. MIDDLE: Covid lockdown drive and ice cream. RIGHT: Greenery food and cheap tequila.

My Personal Menu

Breakfasts are difficult in our house, stomachs flip in the early morning, dishes from the night before looming over the prospect of cooking. Leftovers are the star of our AM kitchen, offering easy respite from our dishes dilemma. Today I have found leftover breakfast potatoes, ground bison seasoned with sage, oregano, black beans. A small pan offers a quick clean, so I give in and power through a single dish for the sake of fried eggs to top it all off. It takes me less than 15 minutes to reheat and quick fry, timed perfectly for my roommate to be back to the living room and ready to eat and soon we are sat on the floor in satisfied silence. I cant help but praise myself sometimes, even the broken yolk cannot dampen my spirits, and the thanks of my loved ones will push me through the dishes.

When we have company I can’t help but want to impress, but at the same time, I don’t like to spend too much of my time cooking when my friends are in town. Busy lives have made these moments precious, and the slowcooker my best friend. Pork ribs are sold in huge packs at Safeway, $13 for at least two meals of three servings making it an absolute bargain, and when combined with crockpot magic it becomes tender pulled pork sandwiches that never fail to win over a guest. Marinated overnight in a spice blend that turns them a gorgeous red-orange, I place slithers of butter between each slice and chop my hot peppers to lay on top. All I have to do for eight hours is give them the occasional flip, and the melted butter will be used to toast my ciabatta, adding that spicy flavor to the crispy bread.

I hope they can taste my gratitude for them, hot as these fresnos. I picked onions yesterday, sweet yellow with rainbow peppercorns and chili flakes. Normally I would use red onions but beggars cant be choosers. I strain out a little of the butter and fat, toasting the bread and laying out my pork. Everyone picks their own toppings but I like a little Louisiana hot sauce and onions, the perfect mix of spice and acidity.

These moments are worth their weight in spiced, buttery gold. Tonight, there were no leftovers, I almost cried with joy.

Food and Poetry Week 2

Crazy About Her Shrimp by Charles Simic

“We don’t even take time
To come up for air.
We keep our mouths full and busy
Eating bread and cheese
And smooching in between.”

This opening stanza sets a tone of overwhelming desire to consume, in a manor that becomes all consuming. The play between sexuality and food I think is delivered best in the last two lines, as you picture a scene both erotic and a little gross.

“While I chop the hot peppers,
She grins at me”

This feels like a silent communication, a secret message passed between peppers and a smile.

“How good the wine tastes
That has run red
Out of a laughing mouth!
Down her chin
And on to her naked tits.”

I really love how many references to joy there are, the kisses, the smiles, the laughter, it all reads as though the author is truly living every one of his desires with this person.

‘I’m crazy about her shrimp!’
I shout to the gods above.”

In a moment in which she criticizes herself, the author thanks the gods that he is privileged to be with her. This feels like the romance of fairy tales. Also, the shrimp as a metaphor for her body writes perfectly into the pre-existing idea of desire and consumption.

HOT by Craig Arnold

“friendships based on food are rarely stable.
We should have left ours at the table”

This idea of “leaving it at the table” is applied in many contexts, here it is implied as a table one does not return to. What is it about food that creates instability in relationships according to this author?

“where it began, and went to seed,
that appetite we shared, based less in need

than boredom – always the cheapest restaurants,
Thai, Szechuan, taking our chance”

It Invokes memories (mostly recent) of hunting down the best cheap restaurants in Olympia with my friends and roommates, usually they’re in the category of teriyaki, ramen, or curry, the spicier the better.

“entrees? – the first to break a sweat
would leave the tip”

“I won’t be hurt

if you don’t want seconds. It’s not as hot
as I would like to make it, but

you always were a bit of a lightweight.
Here, it’s finished, try a bite.

He holds a forkful of the crisp
green shreds for me to take. I swallow, gasp,

choke- pins and needles shoot
through mouth and throat, a heat so absolute

as to seem freezing. I know better than
to try and wash it down with ice water

– it seems to cool, but only spreads the fire –
I can only bite my lip and swear

quietly to myself, so caught
up in our old routine – What? This is hot?“

I love this, an unspoken contest to survive the spice. I love spicy foods but I was not built for them, I can relate to the suffering of the author. My roommate can withstand much higher heat that I, but I always make sure to get a taste their food, just in case.

“He stares at me, the hollows

under his eyes more prominent than ever.
– I don’t eat much these days. The flavor

has gone out of everything, almost.
For the first time it’s not a boast.”

The use of italicized lines really changes the overall tone of the piece, while there are many unspoken moments, the speech presented in this format feels deeper, even darker in some places.

THE EDIBLE BODY, a poetry chapbook: Food and Sex as Pleasure, Disorder, and Commodity by Lena Judith Drake

NOTE: I am pulling two poems from this longer collection of work to look at more closely but the whole work is relevant to my project.

Age Lines

“i am not old.

a slice of american cheese, drooping edges,
in the palm of my hand. zigzags
from the new squirt-bottle mayonnaise–
so different from my mother’s
runny uncooked eggs and vinegar–
forging perfect white patterns on bright yellow,”

Imagery of foods that are yellow, soft, runny, uncooked invoke the ideas of youth, beginnings, and freshness.

“i rest,
a piece of bread and peanut butter
in the palm of my hand.
then he slaps my hand up against my face.
the crunch of sticky peanuts,
the crunch of my nose bones.
his laughing. the blood making boulevards
along the bread.
we will marry within the year.”

A confusing mash of emotions and metaphors that depict violence, humor, love, connection, overall leaving me just sad? I enjoy this section in its writing very much but I feel bad for this girl. All these poems are based off interviews.

“i am too old.

i get powdered sugar, white like my veil, on me,
and he fits his whole mouth around my chin,
suctioning the sweetness,
pulling my jaw. i push
on his shoulders, but his weight is heavy.
my chin turns purple and black, swells
and protrudes like royalty,
and every night he calls me princess.”

This poem starts sweet, and gets darker, darker, darker, as it progresses, having some passages, like this one, that feel haunting in their imagery. I can feel the disgust, the control issues at play, I am physically uncomfortable while reading at the thought of being in the presence of this man.

“i am too old for acne,

but i rub grease on my chin. clogged pores
will do something.
he would never put his mouth, his hands
on anything unclean.”

Love Sonnet from Armin Meiwes, cannibal

I cannot describe this one properly, here are my highlights. Horrific, graphic, compelling.

“My nipples look forward to your stomach.”
— Bernd Juergen Brandes, willing victim

“Since entering prison, I have become a vegetarian, and vomit every day.”

“When we made love there,
parts of you swelled,
the insides waiting to be outsides, your left eyebrow permanently arched, some of you spilled
already, white on sheets, then aging gray.”

“I wanted to devour you, lover. In both slippery hands, I held
your cold medicine, your one-hundred proof Schnäpse, your sleeping pills, your benzocaine
spray,
until you were ready to bleed in my bathtub.”

“Flesh of my flesh. When I scrape myself raw, it is you that gently covers me–
isn’t this unity? love eternal?”

The Traveling Onion by Naomi Shihab Nye

“When I think how far the onion has traveled
just to enter my stew today, I could kneel and praise
all small forgotten miracles,”

I enjoy this worship of the onion, relevant in both historical and personal contexts. And then we could look at the multiple contexts the onions journey could be taken in, are we looking at its evolutionary journey to the product we now have today? Are we thinking about its geographical journey to populate our homelands, or perhaps the same theory but from farm to table? In any regard there is much to be grateful for in an onion.

“the way the knife enters onion
and onion falls apart on the chopping block,
a history revealed”

Not to sound like I’m quoting shreck or anything, but I can almost picture the layers of an onion depicting the passage of time, the complexity of worlds.

“And I would never scold the onion
for causing tears.
It is right that tears fall
for something small and forgotten.”

I enjoy the personification of the onion that these lines envokes, the onion feels in some way like a small child still learning emotions, or an animal aware but not understanding. The onion is innocent, while it may cause a tear or two, it is really not fault of its own.

“How at meal, we sit to eat,
commenting on texture of meat or herbal aroma
but never on the translucence of onion,
now limp, now divided,
or its traditionally honorable career:
For the sake of others,
disappear.”

The poor onion. The basis of many meals, the most overlooked ingredient. My mother told me a Haynes woman puts a whole onion in every meal. Do not let her be forgotten amongst the crowd.

Poetry Writing

Over the last two weeks I have written three pieces I quite like, and though they are all in the revision phase, I am particularly excited about Gods in My Kitchen. I have been having them revised by friends and class peers over the weekend and this week but I want to make sure I have more time to revise these before I move on to my last two weeks of content, so I have a revising point on Monday of week 8 to look them over with my poetry professor.

I didn’t fully click with poetry writing until a few months ago, although I have taken several creative writing classes, and I’m pretty sad it took this long because I would have incorporated it into much more of my work. Many of my readings over the few years, and more recently the last few weeks, have made me curious to explore the topic of food and sex, but I have always had that very teenage-like comfortability thinking about working on a project centered around the topic of sexuality or erotica. These readings may have been what I needed to get over that fear and dedicate my last quarter to something I have been curious about for some time.

My most recent piece Bitter Rains is still very rough, and though it is not based on any one piece I felt very inspired to write it after finishing my collection of poetry readings. I may add one more poem to the final collection as I started something I really like, I am just having a really hard time coming up with a finished product I like. I will admit I spent probably 6-7 hours working on this unfinished piece so I would really like to have it completed for my final presentation. This is giving me a better idea of how my final project will shape up and honestly, I am excited for this explorative portfolio of my relationship with food.

Food and Poetry Week 1

Corned Beef and Cabbage by George Bilger

“I can see her in the kitchen,   
Cooking up, for the hundredth time,   
A little something from her   
Limited Midwestern repertoire.”

This poem is filled with double meanings and subtle metaphors, his opening line could be interpreted as him watching his mother as a child, or him visualizing her as an adult, and he continues to hold this mystery until the ending stanzas. The overlapping sentence structure also lends to this disorientation of time and place, with many lines in the poem seeming to start in the middle of sentences and run into the following line.

“The red wine pulsing in its glass,   
A warning light meaning   
Everything was simmering   
Just below the steel lid   
Of her smile, as she boiled   
The beef into submission,”

His mother’s anger, repressed behind the smile, is boiling in tandem with her dinner, and I find this metaphor to be visually powerful. He goes on to say he can “feel her anger rising” as he chops a head of cabbage with her broken handled knife, experiencing powerful emotion triggered by food and cooking. This piece makes a strong demonstration of the connection between memory and food. While before I could only guess, his possession of her knife is the first true hint that he is remembering her after her passing.

“Missing her, wanting   
To chew things over   
With my mother again.”

Closing with another double meaning, this short poem made me feel as though I was being taken on a journey through his mixed emotions for his late mother as he cooks a meal from his childhood, and these closing lines demonstrate a tender yet powerful yearning for more time with her, to re-experience his memories with her, and in a way it seems he made this meal in an attempt to do that.

Apples by Peter Heller

“You love apples                                   So let’s speak             Of apples“

This poem is an absolute beauty, Peter Heller seems to be comparing someone he loves deeply to an apple. It is another short one but it is so gently romantic I read it over several times and came back to it again throughout the week.

“Say I were to hold you in my hand       like an apple round and red

And kiss you                                           in bites on the table or“

This comparison to eating and kissing someone you love, or to holding someone you love, reminds me of the discussion of eating and erotica. Our dialect as a species surrounding love and food has so much overlap that it’s an easy parallel to make as we already have so many natural associations. Take the word “lovebite” for example.

“Under the tree                                    where you dropped      tump

And you reached up                             in cool shadow on the grass

And bit back                                            crunch: God“

I am still thinking about the structure of this poem. While I do not know the intention of the three sections in each line, after a few reads-through I began to hear each section in a different voice, almost as if this were three people talking to their lovers. Playing with grammar and structure is one of my favorite things to do in poetry so I think this could be a really fun one to use as inspiration. I also very much enjoyed the idea of the apple biting back, not only did it personify the apple further, but it invoked a level of absurdity that perfectly matched the style and tone of the writing.

Food of Love by Carolyn Kizer

Eating is touch carried to the bitter end.                                             
                                             Samuel Butler II

The opening quote from Samuel Butles II provides a good idea of where the poem is going, and I enjoy the feeling of intimacy it invokes.

“I’m going to murder you with love;
I’m going to suffocate you with embraces;
I’m going to hug you, bone by bone,
Till you’re dead all over.
Then I will dine on your delectable marrow.”

This idea of eating someone you love plays into the idea of love as an all-consuming factor of life, being so head over heels in love with someone that it becomes part of your very being. What sets it apart in my opinion is the violence yet tenderness of the description of killing your loved one to do so, giving the poem a much darker tone even though the idea of eating someone you love in itself alludes to violence. It is an interesting push and pull between the tones of violence and the tones of love, reminding me of “cuteness aggression”.

“So you will summon each dry grain of sand
And move toward me in undulating dunes
Till you arrive at sudden ultramarine:
A Mediterranean to stroke your dusty shores;
Obstinate verdure, creeping inland, fast renudes
Your barrens; succulents spring up everywhere,
Surprising life! And I will be that green.

When you are fed and watered, flourishing
With shoots entwining trellis, dome, and spire,
Till you are resurrected field in bloom,
I will devour you, my natural food,
My host, my final supper on the earth,
And you’ll begin to die again.”

This paints a picture of the author as mother nature in a sense, her loved one is her most precious creation, cycling through life like all things but always coming back to her. I enjoyed the storytelling of this poem, the narrative is open for interpretation but the message of her love and overwhelming, gluttonous desire is unmistakable throughout. I really enjoy the structure but that is probably because it reminds me of the way I like, which may be a good reason for me to try something new with my writings for the next two weeks.

The Love Cook By Ron Padgett

This one is very short so I’m just going to share the whole thing below and give my quick notes. This one is short, sweet, and demonstrates the fine line between food and erotica, it has a cheeky tone that plays with the bounds of pleasure in eating and food. Its hints of sexuality are playful, but ultimately never leave the kitchen.

“Let me cook you some dinner.   
Sit down and take off your shoes   
and socks and in fact the rest   
of your clothes, have a daquiri,   
turn on some music and dance   
around the house, inside and out,   
it’s night and the neighbors   
are sleeping, those dolts, and   
the stars are shining bright,   
and I’ve got the burners lit   
for you, you hungry thing.”

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.”

I love that this poem centers on a kitchen table, coming to college the thing I most looked forward to was my own kitchen table where I would have my own dinner traditions and routines, I called it my domestic wish. I actually find myself eating in the living room more often than not, but my symbolic kitchen table is just as special to me. The second half, referencing needing to eat to live, sounds very much like work I have been doing over the last few years surrounding food, cooking and eating disorders. I loved exploring the layers of emotion poured into this poem, seen through the table.

“The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.”

This line invokes gratitude, Joy, abundance, feelings of warmth and safety. The table feels like a provider and a protector. The meals had on it feel special, more like ceremony than mundane dinners.

“It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.”

This invokes a feeling of respect for the table, it feels like an elder or a respected family member. The table sees you from childhood through adulthood. The childhood has the knowledge to guide the young. Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

“At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.”

There is faith in the table as a confidant, they trust her with their secrets and their pain. They allow the table to see all sides of themselves.

“Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.”

The kitchen table was the number one place to start arguments in my house, not all the memories there are good. Fights of epic proportions happened over family-style dinners that no one wanted to help put away after, and even if you felt like you won the fight it never felt worth it to have to sit back down at the table.

“We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.”

The table almost feels like it’s part of the lifecycle, but in the way the arrow that points in a circle around a life cycle diagram is part of the life cycle.

“Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.”

The style of this is short bites of sentences, the length ranges and the tones shifts rapidly but in a way that is satisfying to the subject and narrative of the poem. I would love to write something in this style, perhaps combined with elements of Apples by Peter Heller.

Poetry Writing

In my first piece, Gods in my Kitchen, I was inspired by Corned Beef and Cabbage by George Bliger. In my writing I generally have a hard time breaking sentences or interrupting flow for sake of narrative, Bliger’s style challenged me to break my thoughts into different sentences, changing the tone and pacing in a way I am not used to controlling. I particularly enjoy my line;

“My spirit came home through the kitchen window,  drifting in on the scent of candied ambition. “

I wanted to capture the image of a pie being set on the windowsill to cool, the sweet aroma drifting through the neighborhood, a warm visible mist like in cartoons. If you have seen Little Shop of Horrors, picture Audry’s dream manufactured home and neighborhood. Somewhere that’s green and all that. I also drew inspiration from Ron Padgetts The Love Cook, trying to add an underlying hint of the passion he inspires in his writing.

In my second piece, Pancakes and Red Poppies I drew inspiration from Food of Love by Carolyn Kizer, her visually use of language and descriptions to paint small images that invoke big emotion is something I really admire, and I wanted to take the chance to wrote something more internally expressive, utilizing this technique. Her descriptions of eating her lover match more in theme with my first poem, but in style I am proud of how much I captured her colorful communication style.

Pancakes and Red Poppies discusses eating disorders so please read at your own discretion.

Both are still in the editing phase, I’m in the process of receiving peer feedback that I will apply starting next week, and I’m hoping to add at least one more to my collection by the end of the next week, although the final edited version will probably won’t be posted until I create my final project menu at the end of the quarter. Each one began with free writing from questions created from research into spiritual needs, human nature, cooking, and fulfillment. From these free writes I identified different themes and ideas that sparked my interest as potential topics, and then highlighting words or phrases I enjoyed to build out my poem.

Fictional readings and magical realism week 2, The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

My writings on The Joy Luck Club will be fairly short as I have realized how long I am going to need to spend on this writing project to get it to a place where I am happy with it. There are a few things I want to highlight about the book and its relevance to my ILC but you can find my write-up from last year on the first post of my Spring 23 WordPress.

The Joy Luck Club rides the line between magical realism and straight-up realism, a lot of the magical elements having to do with ideas of superstition or spiritual tradition. A collection of sixteen stories and two generations of Chinese women, revealing secrets of the distant and more recent pasts of four families. What drew me to the book originally was the way food was used to make major events, milestones, and recurring traditions. “The Joy Luck Club” for which the book is named is the club that binds these women together, the mothers telling stories of their upbringings and immigration to the United States, and the daughters of the original members, reflecting on the way their mothers raised them and their relationships with each other. Not only is food a central theme in most of these shorts, but food itself ties the Joy Luck Club together as a central piece of each gathering. I find this book to be both beautiful in its writing and fluid storytelling, and heart-wrenching as the painful moments within are so dutifully described.

As much of this book deals with themes of cultural significance that I do not claim to be knowledgeable about, I do not want to call these instances “magical” so as not to offend anyone who may be more connected to them than I. I do however want to explore one example from the book that may be described as “spiritual” or “supernatural” if we were to put it in the vaguest of terms.

In Spring 23 I summarized the chapter and I will place it below so anyone who hasn’t read the book will still have an idea of what is going on.

“In “Scar” presented by An Mei Hsu, she recalls how after her mother left her and her brother, An-Meis family referred to them as “two eggs that nobody wanted, not even good enough to crack over rice and porridge”. She is encouraged to forget her mother, to act as if she never existed and when she returns is conflicted on how to approach being around her. Despite having been tossed aside by her family, An-Meis mother returns when her own mother gets sick, to create her a medicinal soup of herbs, medicine, and the flesh of her arm. This relates to food studies in both the act of consuming flesh as a form of medicine/sustenance, but also food as medicine, and the conflicting act of returning to a home that banished you, to draw your own blood for someone who may not do the same to you.”

This idea of consuming the flesh of your children for health is not something I have ever found concrete scientific study on, probably because it is such an unsavory idea for most to think about, but it begs the question of what was the motive and reasoning. Tan gives us some idea, with the line “She cooked magic in the ancient tradition to try and cure her mother one last time.” Meaning that this is spiritually or supernaturally motivated, and within the context of the scene seems to be something An Mei’s mother was well aware of. The way An Mei watches with couch childlike shock and curiosity mimics the reaction of a reader unprepared for what is coming, with discomfort and questions. How can I capture this in my writing? I want to create a piece that introduces the reader to ideas and actions vastly different from those in our world, whilst making it comfortable and relaxed for the characters, demonstrating their ease in this world. And how do I balance that with a sense of realism? Can I create a world of my own or does it have to be the one that already exists? Can the world be ours but altered or can only the beings be altered? Which elements can be touched by the magic?

Another story worth mentioning is from the very first chapter “Feathers from a Thousand Li Away”. The first page gives us not the first introduction to the book, but a Chinese proverb telling the story of a woman and her swan in their journey to America. As the swan and the woman cross the ocean together she speaks to the swan of the life and family she will have in America, of all the things she will teach her daughter. When she arrives un the United States her swan is taken from her by immigration and in the rush of forms and customs paperwork she forgets why she is here. Now an old woman, she regrets that she forgot to pass on her culture and language to her daughter. As we read on through the chapter we can see the connection between this story and the life of our narrator, June. Woven throughout the chapter are references to June’s assimilation to American culture, through her name and diet to name a few. At the end of the chapter, June has a chance to fix regrets her mother may have had that mirrored those of the old woman in the story. How does interweaving mythology or proverbs into writing classify as far as magical realism is concerned? Even though the events themselves were not of a supernatural nature, does the presence of this proverb at the start of the chapter and indicator of the influence that the story holds over June and her family? Or is it simply a parallel?

Magical Realism Writing Project

I won’t lie and say I enjoyed this project, I don’t think I have done any fictional Writing since I was a freshman in high school and that’s because I don’t consider myself very good at it. I chose to write the story I did because I couldn’t think of a more nuanced way of incorporating magical realism into writing about food, as much as I wanted to be more creative than collecting ingredients I think that having a simple concept allowed me to take risks and be more poetic and descriptive in my writing. I’m honestly curious about what the parameters of magical realism are, at moments I felt like I could be sliding too far to either side of the genre and it would be interesting to take a broader look at magical realism syntax and writing rules.

However, after completing it and sending it to a friend to edit, I felt much more confident. Using her notes I went back through and changed language, formatting, and small story details that made a huge overall difference in the narrative flow and readability of this story. The brainstorming, writing, and editing process took me about eight hours total which I think demonstrates how much I struggle with this style, but I am glad I took a few extra hours this week to finish the editing.

Fictional Reading and Magical Realism Week 1, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

For the next two weeks I will be exploring magical realism in fictional works as it relates to food. In the Spring quarter of 2023, I did an ILC entitled Consuming Fictional Literature Surrounding Food, Culture, and Well-Being. I read seven books over those 10 weeks (It was only a four-credit ILC, don’t make my mistake), and among those were two of the books I will be re-studying in these two weeks. You can find my WordPress site from Spring 23 here if you are curious about my prior ILC or finding some fun novels about food.

This week I will be focusing on Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, a novel about food, love, oppression, and freedom, set in 1910 Mexico on a ranch near the US/Mexican border. It follows our protagonist Tita as she documents her life and loves through her cookbook, now being read and narrated by her great-niece. Titans role as the youngest daughter in her family forbids her from marrying her childhood sweetheart when he comes to the ranch to propose, and much of the book focuses on their forbidden romance and fight against the family matriarch that keeps them separated. I did a quick re-read of the book, noting the sections I wanted to come back to explore further, and then re-read those sections in more detail for more complex and complete ideas. Of the chapters and scenes I highlighted in my notes, I created two categories that divided them by their main theme; food being used as a medium of emotional expression, and food being used as a means of escape, freedom, or salvation.

Examples of food being used as a medium of emotional expression are heavy in the book, although the writing doesn’t often tell you these things directly making you pick them up through patterns and hints. In chapter four Tita is preparing quail in rose petal sauce, now the designated cook of the family. Her childhood sweetheart, Pedro, is now in the house with her, married to her older sister after her mother refused the marriage between them. Pedro brings her a bouquet of fresh roses to celebrate her one-year anniversary as the ranch cook, which greatly upsets her mother and sister, who insist Tita get rid of the roses. Not being able to bring herself to trash the first flowers she had ever been given, and from the man she loved no less, she uses the petals and a drop of blood from the thorns in that night’s dinner, creating a meal with seemingly supernatural effects. The meal seems to be infused with Tita and Pedros lust for one another, acting as an aphrodisiac on her sister driving to run away with a rebellion soldier.

In chapter 7, Tita is tending the the cruel-hearted matriarch of the house, Mama Elena. There has never been love between these two in this book, due to Mama Elena’s insistence that the youngest daughter must never marry and instead stay home and take care of her parents in their old age. Throughout the book Tita defies her mother for her freedom and love in small and large instances, ultimately returning to the ranch to tend to Mama Elena when she falls sick. Her mother’s disdain for her seems to cause anything Tita cooks to taste bitter to her, despite having many people taste it for her and forcing Tita to try everything first under suspect of poisoning, she cannot seem to enjoy the food of the most highly praised chef in their area.

This chapter also lends itself to demonstrating my second category, food being used as a means of escape, freedom, or salvation. Tita spends the majority of the book under the control of other people, with her food as her only outlet for expression, and through the magical surrealism elements, her food is what she uses to escape the people causing her harm. Though never explicitly stated, the book alludes to Tita killing both her mother and her older sister when they kept her oppressed. It is not possible when using logic to assume that Titas food killed her mother, Tita tried her mother odd before her every day and was a highly praised chef, yet the woman who holds a deep disdain for her, who tasted bitterness even in the best dishes, grew weaker and eventually died on this same food. Later in chapter twelve, we see an almost identical pattern, Titas sister and her end up in an explosive fight over Pedro and the education of Titas niece. Despite no previous mentions of health issues, Titas sister passed away unexpectedly from digestive issues, leaving Tita free from all the people who held her back.

Fictional Writing

I chose to highlight magical realism in this project because I enjoy the beauty of taking a simple, realistic scenario and just adding a little of the supernatural or surreal to add a vibrancy or change in perspective in a scene. Having spent so much time studying food, emotion, and the varying fields around it, I wanted to study and recreate something with elements of magical realism because I think it may be the best way for me to try my hand at fiction while relating it to my own life.

This week I have been drafting and writing mini-stories using magical realism, I haven’t decided if I will continue this or expand upon one but my final product will be posted next week!

Biographical Readings Week 2, The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

This week I read Chapter 20 The Old County, Chapter 21 Sankofa, and the author’s note of The Cooking Gene, officially concluding my read-through of this book. Since I spent so long on my biographical writing and I wanted to have time to digest the book as a whole I am going to give some overall post-reading reflections instead of the usual in-depth summaries I would normally do for each chapter. This book has given me a growing list of questions and areas of curiosity that could become hundreds of research projects, but I will try and keep to my main takeaways.

1. Tracking the path of human history and human evolution through food

In my first year doing food studies I remember studying how food, specifically fermented fruit, drove humans to leave the trees therefore pushing human evolution to the next stage of survival. This idea stayed with me and acted as inspiration for my ideas to explore my own history through food, but this concept of tracking humanity as a whole was more thoroughly addressed in this book. Twitty demonstrates how ingredients, tools, and techniques can be traced across the globe in a timeline that demonstrates human migration, progress, and in this case specifically the journey through oppression. Can we tell other stories of history through food? Food alone is not enough, what can we learn from the patterns of the earth and the food parallels across the globe?

2. The global food melting pot

Southern cuisine as we know it is the evolution of African American cooking from the time of slavery, the main goal of which was survival. This cuisine was a mix of pre-existing and passed-down knowledge from their respective regions of Africa and knowledge gained from Native Americans also oppressed by European colonization. This leads me to two avenues of thought. The first includes the idea of our food aging with us, of food being “generational”. Generational knowledge is teachings that are passed down through the generations, but what do we call the evolution and what does it say about the evolution of society and survival? The second thought is on the idea that every country, culture, living community, etc. has its variations on certain dishes. Almost anywhere you go you will be able to find a dumpling of some kind, there will be a chip and dip, a well-known dish that resembles noodles or pasta, the ingredients will vary by region but when put next to each other they would resemble if not siblings, then cousins. How did this happen? How has the presence of these varieties affected one another? Can you paint large pictures of history tracking these variations as you could the change in diet?

3. Food and family

This book forced me to reflect on my family and the people, traditions, places, and memories within. As a part of my fall work I constructed the most comprehensive family tree I believe to exist within our family, and I got to engage in some great conversations with my relatives about the foods I grew up with. As a person who doesn’t want kids, I started to think about what it meant to care about family history and food traditions without the plan to pass them on to my own children. It also made me examine the importance of place in my life, the change from England to America and the age I was at had a profound influence on the foods I now eat and cook.

I loved this book, it taught me so much and I am hoping to write a mini-book review for the CCAS newsletter, which I will post as well if it is done this quarter.

Biographical Writing

My biographical writing is similar to the menu project I worked on last quarter, but instead of trying to write in such detail on one memory surrounding one meal on the menu, I took a closer look at the chapter structure Michael Twitty uses and decided to try and demonstrate an arch of food-related change/progress in regards to my life through shorter vignettes that also try a keep of memoir-like flow of time. Writing about these things takes me quite a long time as I often struggle to stay focused when I begin writing about things that make me emotional. To combat this I began by structuring my writing with bullet points, and free writing for about twenty minutes on each point. Doing this on paper allowed me to feel more comfortable to write my more intimate thoughts, and from this free write I was able to determine a more detailed narrative and a rough draft for each section. I continued to edit this draft until I reached this final version that I am really happy with, and while I am nervous to share it with the world I am excited to put it out there and I think I am setting a high bar for my final portfolio of works at the end of the quarter.

This writing is about my experience with my eating disorder and other mental health issues, food studies and academia, and finding healing through food. Part of finding the inspiration for writing this came from cooking pot roast and eating dinner with my roommate while we talked about how food had changed us over the last few years, so I chose to end it with my pot roast recipe. Let me know if you ever give it a try 🙂

I also attended and supported at Tuesdays workshop on WordPress, I had originally designed a mini workshop of my own to teach but due to scheduling I decided to support while the other workshop was presented and I will use the work I did this week to develop my next workshop.

Biographical Readings Week 1, The Cooking Gene by Michael W. Twitty

Chapter 17 – The Devil’s Half Acer

Twitty discusses his exploration into the origins of his name and the relevance of cooking and cooking knowledge in the slave markets. He begins by discussing his research into the Grandfather “Washington” who left slavery with the name Twitty and his journey and life in America. Twitty traces his ancestry back to four Lancaster County, South Carolina, in which five white families owned and regularly traded slaves amongst themselves. Of these five families (the Twitty’s, Stewarts, Cauthens, Masseys, and Blackmons) Twitty finds the records of his great-great-great grandfather’s sale to the Blackmons in 1860, along with his father and brother. Due to the close nature of these families, Washington was given as part of a dowry in a marriage between the Blackmons and the Twitty’s and consequently separated from his father and brother. Having changed ownership before being freed, he left with the name Twitty. I wish there was more personal reflection from Twitty on his name, not that he owes it to I, us his view on his name and how it is associated with his identity could be really powerful. This section got me thinking a lot about my associations with both my first and family names and how they reflect on my family connections and my identities.

Twitty briefly explores the popularity of a slave trained in cooking, particularly English and French-style cooking. He discusses a project created by Chefs Kevin Mitchell and David Sheilds, along with Professor David Sheilds in which they complied newspaper advertisements for cooks for sale in Charleston, South Carolina. Reading through the few Twitty included, I struggled to keep going as it is not often you see the actual words used to sell a human being. I am not going to try and type them out but they are on page 325 of my copy.

Chapter 18 – The Kings Cuisine

“I am still convinced cotton is something only the Lord could have created. What good is its fiber to anything else in Creation, but humankind?” (pg.342)

This chapter is focused on Cotton and its direct effect on the experience of enslaved people. The part if the chapter I found most captivating was also dark in nature, referencing the constant sexual abuse of enslaved women on Cotton plantations, and a specific story including his great-great-great grandmother Sallie. Twitty writes about the use of a very specific tea made from the roots of cotton plants, used in performing abortions in circumstances of rape or incest.

“It was a special tea, meant only for the most vile and disastrous situations; and so well guarded that its use was never told to slaveholders on pain of death, namely because it could literally kill their business of breeding new workers.” (pg.343)

Twittys seems to have mixed feelings on Cotton, citing instances of triumph and oppression that have stemmed from the crop. He claims to see the beauty in the same sentence he seems to grieve the pre-colonial diet he credits cotton with destroying, writing in a way that demonstrates the personification that Twitty obviously has given to plants, one that allowed him to have such complex feeling on a plant that one might have on a problematic relative.

“King Cotton had its own way of eating; and in contrast to the diversity of foodways from the mid-Atlantic to the Lower Mississippi Valley, the stars of King Cotten’s cuisine were maize and oversalted swine, swallowed down with rancid molasses and spoiled leftovers. In the King’s grip, a killer diet was born.” (pg.344)

Twitty goes on to discuss the impacts of slavery on the nutrition of enslaved and formerly enslaved people, specifically those residing on Cotton plantations. Despite having been legally freed, many people were forced to remain in similar lifestyles as they had no money to start a new life. Twitty tells the story of turning his nose up at cornbread sprinkled in his buttermilk and his grandmother’s disapproval before he knew the history behind this historic food habit. Having spent time working and living on a cotton plantation, and eating the meals slaves would have had after a day of doing so, he compares the two meals and habits, explaining that the 1800’s meal was almost inedible without dropping the starch in the milk. The diet of an enslaved or formerly enslaved person was one that left the consumer vulnerable to a variety of malnutrition-based diseases, as many vitamin-rich vegetables, fruits, and protein-rich meats were all but unavailable for most. Twitty also later references the debate about the sweet potato as a dietary staple which I didn’t know existed.

Chapter 19- Crossroads

“Our food was never just food. It was medicine and a gateway to good fortune, and a mystical lubricant between the living and the dead.” (pg.365)

In chapter 19, Twitty explores the relationship between food, religion, spirituality, and superstition by retelling memories and beliefs of his own as well as exploring the role of food in historically spiritually involved ceremonies. I enjoyed reading about his more common superstitious beliefs such as throwing spilled salt, as well as ones that stemmed from his lived experiences. Early in the chapter, he tells the story of a lie to his grandmother that stemmed a childhood fear and an adulthood aversion to piggy banks. Twitty discusses how slavery changed the black experience with religion, exploring the beliefs existing in much African spirituality prior to slavery and their connection to food and existing practices. This chapter has inspired some of my “expressions” work that I have planned for the quarter, and I will hopefully get to recreate the black-eyed peas recipe.