A Freezer Preserves Food, yet Food Preserves a Relationship

In Jessica Harris’s “The Culinary Season of my Childhood” she peels away at the layers of how food and a food based atmosphere affected her life in a positive way. Food to her represented an extension of culture along with gatherings of family which built the basis for her cultural identity throughout her life. Harris shares various anecdotes that exemplify how certain memories regarding food as well as the varied characteristics of her cultures’ cuisine left a lasting imprint on how she began to view food and continued to proceeding forward. she stats “My family, like many others long separated from the south, raised me in ways that continued their eating traditions, so now I can head south and sop biscuits in gravy, suck chewy bits of fat from a pigs foot spattered with hot sauce, and yes’m and no’m with the best of ‘em,.” (Pg. 109 Para). Similarly, since I am Jamaican, food remains something that holds high importance in my life due to how my family prepared, flavored, and built a food-based atmosphere. They extended the same traditions from their country of origin within the new society they were thrusted into. The impact of food and how it has factors to comfort, heal, and bring people together holds high relevance in how my self-identity was shaped regarding food.

Thomas Foster explains to his audience that authors only take the time to write in detail about an event as boring as his or her characters eating a meal to show how the characters get along; either in a positive manner or a negative manner. It is a tool that authors use to connect different characters with a common activity: eating. If the meal is finished without hassle, then, Foster explains, it shows that the characters have an equal footing which is a good sign. In the case in which the meal is interrupted, then the reader can assume that there is a negative connotation and that something is wrong.

We discussed the significance of food within the novel. Prior to the interactive oral, I thought the notion of food was only alluding to wealth. Although, through class discussions and due to food being a central part of the Vietnamese culture, I learnt that it is also shows one’s social status, which can also

Food, has a specific meaning to all of us; for some it is a form of nourishment, for others it is a cultural act,

In the selected passages from Paradise of the Blind when Aunt Tam has a banquet, Duong emphasizes that food, reveals one's status in the hierarchy of the social order. Similarly, food is used often as a powerful form of human expression that is used to show

Food is an essential component of many social events: it brings people from a wide variety of society together, it provides nourishment, and in modern and globally interconnected times in can even be used to share different cultures’ ideas of good food in a relaxed setting. Humans require food to survive, but the different ways that food is prepared and served is highly varied among cultures. Even how these cultures utilize food in larger social settings is widely variable. Sometimes it’s just a small gathering of families sharing food, other times it’s specialized food preparers providing food to a large number of people. Here we’ll look at one of the latter events where food plays a part.

According to a famous Chinese proverb, “Foods are the most important to the people (民以食为天)”. Specifically, food is an important element in Tampopo by Juzo Itami and Eat Drink Man Woman by Ang Lee because it can be related to work and pleasure. With regard to food as work or pleasure, there are three essential levels. In the first level, food is primarily work. Cooking food as an occupation is shown in both films, where the characters obtain no pleasure from the food itself directly. For the second level, food is presented as a tool to enhance sensual pleasure, which includes gustatory enjoyment, personal indulgences, sexual pleasure, and mental relaxation. In the third level, food can be seen as both work and pleasure at the same time; it is a balance between the two extremes. Reflected in the movie Tampopo and Eat Drink Man Woman, food can be seen as work and also a tool to enhance sensual pleasure, depending on different characters’ individual interpretation of food’s function.

Using food as a metaphor, the couples wine and dine their way through their marriage troubles, as they learn food can nurture their troubles and each other, or it can poison them and pull them apart.

This paper will discuss the multifaceted relationships among food, and culture. I will be looking at the relationships people have with food, and explore how this relationship reveals information about them. Their food choices of individuals and groups, can reveal their ideals, likes and dislikes. Food choices tell the stories of where people have travelled and who they have met along the way.

Have you ever experienced that euphoric sensation after eating an absolutely delicious food? You are not alone. Many have experienced this feeling and refer to it as a “foodgasm”. These types of connections between food and sex have long been established, but from where do they come? Do we make these connections through our cultural experiences or are they biologically programmed within us? In Like Water for Chocolate, the author, Laura Esquivel, portrays sex and food as being connected in a cultural sense. The basis for this conclusion rests largely in her use of tradition and her depiction of a Latino family strongly based in their culture. This cultural foundation, paired with the interactions between characters, food, and sex, gives

In Edward Yang’s filmYi Yi (2000), the audience witnesses the Jian family over the span of about a year and can be marked by three events: a wedding, a birthday, and a funeral. These events are built with traditions and social functions, and are meant to be a gathering of family and friends around tables, sharing in food and memories. We can potentially understand the table is a metaphor of life, as it represents in a direct and exacting way both membership in a group and the relationships defined within that group. How then, can we understand a film such as Yi Yi, which centres around the gatherings of a wedding, birthday, and funeral, but makes little effort to show the food, consumption of food, or even the successful gathering of the family without bickering or trauma? Through understanding the lack of on-screen food, but with a film still focused on food-based events, we can look at what food in Yi Yi signifies in a larger thematic scale. In what follows I will explore three ways of understanding the consumption and absence of food in Yi Yi, namely, food as function, food as language, and food as perspective.

Food shows our culture and brings our memories. The taste, texture, and smell of food define our culture. Some culture gives emphasis in sweets where as others in spicy. In “Eating Together” Li – Young Lee lists the ingredients like ginger, sesame oil, trout symbolizes his Asian cultural food. Food brings his whole family together in the same table which shows the practice of eating collectively as the part of his culture. Most of the people are proud of their food and enjoy it. They pass these traditions to new generation. Despite of the loss of his father, Li’s family still cooks the same delicious food as before and share the same values. Traditional food brings the memory not only eating food itself. As Li witnesses, his mother taking

According to McAllister (2006) food and drink “must be viewed as part of a broader social and cultural context” (p. 281) in order to understand the anthropological and sociological meanings of food and drink within society. This essay will apply an anthropological and sociological lens to explore the relationship between food, sex and gender. It utilises examples from anthropological and sociological literature to further explain the relationship between food, sex and gender. This essay will focus how food and can be a marker of identity, and how food and drink express gender roles.

Food is very much a part of pop culture, and the beliefs, practices, and trends in a culture affect its eating practices. Pop culture includes the ideas and objects generated by a society, including foods, and other systems, as well as the impact of these ideas and objects on society. For example, Mcdonald's is another of the thousands of fast food chains that populate our cities though they often use the term “popular culture” only to refer to media forms. Their popularity has also increased internationally. Although all humans need food to survive, people's food habits and how they obtain, prepare, and consume food, are the result of learned behaviors. Mcdonald’s, like other food chains, has made an effort to ‘localize’ its products so that they will be more successful in each different cultural context. These collective behaviors, as well as the values and attitudes they reflect, come to represent a group’s pop culture.

This means that the way we understand and we relate to food, food practices, is always related to our identity, in the deepest manner” (1). The contrasting food preferences between the two continue, and this leads to a heightened sense that the relationship is in trouble. After the couple finishes two very different dinners, Singh states, “They sat in silence facing each other across the table; she chewing her leaf—almost like a cow chewing cud, thought Sen. He, lost in the smoke of his long Cuban cigar. It was oppressive—and the barrier between them, impassable” (302). Singh’s use of the smoke here acts as metaphor for the cultural barrier between the Sens. Food plays a role in our identities, and Mr. and Mrs. Sen could not identify with one another. This phenomenon is certainly not restricted to Mr. and Mrs. Sen, and “The Wog” does a great job at displaying the fact that food and drink can have a tremendous impact on relations between cultures around the world. Food and drink not only have an impact across cultures but also have an impact on areas such as religion and gender roles within cultures around the world.