Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, By Barbara Kingsolver

The biggest change over time in our eating habits has been how involved we are with our food. In the 1700s colonists grew many of their own crops and hunted their own game. Most individual families also had a dairy cow in their backyard, especially in New England. This was a tradition that they brought back with them from England. They would use the milk for cooking steamed puddings, cheeses, and custards. It also provided colonial families with fresh milk in the morning. Preparing meat was very laborious and difficult in the 1700s. Colonists had to prepare a dead animal, not just parts of it. The cookbook we read in class walked us through how to dress a turtle and the entire process of preparing it used to take hours. This shows that food would not have been made every day. Colonists had to grow their fruits seasonally and did not have the opportunities to go out and purchase what they did not have.

Family. What do you picture? Two married parents, their son and daughter, and maybe a dog, all living in a two story house in a nice suburban neighborhood. And who should blame you for picturing that? It’s been drilled into our minds all throughout our childhoods. Through our families, the tv, the books we read. But is this really all true? 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce and of that 50 percent, 46 percent are families. So why is this “perfect” family ideal so widespread? Author Barbara Kingsolver tries to explain this in her essay: ‘Stone Soup’. She claims it’s because society is so traditional and primitive in the way we idealize what a family is supposed to be: two married parents and their children. But that’s not really the case anymore. The main idea of her essay is that the definition of family needs to be reimagined to define more of what a family means, rather than what its terminology implies.

After realizing that all of the food and water consumed by their family was either piped, shipped, or driven to them in the middle of the desert, novelist Barbra Kingsolver and her family decided to pick up their lives and move from Tucson, Arizona to to her childhood home of tobacco and dairy farms in southern Appalachia. Kingsolver and her family intended to spend the next year living in a more connected way to their food and where it comes from, and this book is the result of that experience. Part journal, part academic inquest, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, tells the story of their project to live sustainably in a place “where rain falls, crops grow, and drinking water bubbles right up out of the ground” (p. 3). Their year would consist

Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, English Protestants established a group referred to as the Puritans. The Puritans were resistant to bold flavors and intense ingredients, such as garlic, for these had “Catholic Continental political references”. This led to a distinguishable description of English cooking. (Amelia Meyers) Puritan meals and meal times are different from what we know today. Although the English from this time ate most of the same foods that we eat today, their selection was quite divergent from ours. In fact, citizens back then had an abnormal idea of what foods were healthy for them (Plimoth.org). The Puritans had several meal responsibilities; women were in charge of meal planning, and food preservation

This week materials are mainly focusing on food. The readings are about how food, especially dinner, has an important role in the family, how the way we live affects the way we eat and the regional of our food. As in Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he was explaining how corn is in all of our diets. How it moved from the farm to the feeding lot, to the food lab and into our food. Further analysis of food, and of the sources that describes the food we eat, suggests that it requires a lot of work in the agriculture farm before our ingredients can come together and that mealtime is a great time for a family bonding but the bonding varies with each family due to the different in every families’ culture.

After all the devastation brought about by the Great Depression and World War II, Americans desired and sought for a return to normalcy during the 1950s. With men away at war and women pursuing jobs, the rate of divorce skyrocketed as families were being split apart. Juvenile delinquency rose in great numbers due to the lack of parental supervision during wartime. This evoked fear in the American people that the survival of the “traditional American family” was in jeopardy. Thousands of women were pushed out of the workforce and back into their homes as returning soldiers resumed their positions on the job. Suburban housing flourished as the notion to conform spread across the country. The 1950s was a period of conventionality, when both men and women practiced strict gender roles and complied with society’s expectations in attempts to recreate the “American Dream”. The concept of the “Ideal Woman” created a well-defined picture to women of what they were supposed to emulate as their proper gender role in society. A woman was told her primary interest was everything but herself. She was expected to cook, clean, take care of the kids, and be a loving wife who waits for her husband to come home in order to adhere to his needs. Taking time to care for herself was never in the picture. The idea of conformity trapped these women in suffocating boxes that allowed no room to breathe. The pressure put on women to be the core of the entire family while keeping her husband happy was

Animal Dreams, by Barbara Kingsolver, which revolves around reverence for the natural environment, and Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992, about the Los Angeles Riots of 1992, by Anna Deavere Smith, present different sides of human behavior. Animal Dreams is a novel about Codi, a woman who returns to her hometown and helps the townsfolk protest peacefully against a mine that damages their water supply. The preservation of nature and the ability to make a difference by protesting peacefully are major themes in the novel. Twilight is a play that consists of edited interview transcripts of various people who observed and experienced the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The riots began in response to the acquittal of a group of white police officers who were videotaped beating Rodney King, an unarmed black man who had been driving under the influence at dangerously high speeds. Violence escalated among the people of Los Angeles until it was declared a disaster area only a few days later. Thousands of businesses were damaged, and dozens of people died. Twilight and Animal Dreams have contrasting major themes when it comes to how people will act in response to having their lives threatened. The people of Twilight and Animal Dreams have similar motives but opposite responses. Twilight shows the brutal nature of humanity when motivated by injustice, while Animal Dreams highlights the peaceful nature of people even when faced with powerful, oppressive institutions.

An example of commensality which the majority of people experience first happens within the household among immediate family. Sitting around one table at dinner time as a family became a societal norm during the 1800s. Since then everyday commensality among families has continued to be portrayed as an ideology, especially through the media (Lupton 1996). Such implication influences the attitudes of those in society. This is reflected in a study conducted in Scotland. Findings were that there was a general agreement in that a good meal was prepared by parents, served to children and eaten together around one table (Blaxter M & Paterson E 1983). Although family commensality may be enacted as an obligation to fulfil society’s expectations, its experiencers still have much to gain from it. The effects in which these gains have on a person’s life means that family commensality is a happening of great significance.

Feta and Eggplant Meatballs is a delicious meal to serve during the summertime. This twist on an average meatball serves the right flavor to satisfy any guest at a dinner party. During Mr. Pontellier’s stay at Grand Isle during the summer, this meal would be perfectly fresh as the eggplants and feta would be fresh and ready to cook for any main feast that the Pontellier’s and friends may have wanted to eat. Although this meal does not hold significance to Edna’s relationship, it contributes to the gender roles of society that while men may farm and provide the essential ingredients used in cooking meals, the women ultimately are the ones that have to do the cooking and baking. Many meals in literature are told to be more than just a meal, and

The main meal is almost always in the evening, because most people do not have time to prepare a midday meal and children normally eat at school. Some families eat together, but television has increasingly replaced conversation at the dinner table. The exception to this rule is Sunday, when tradition

Since the start of the agricultural revolution, social structure has moved from egalitarian to patriarchal. Men were stronger, and thus more valuable to handle the labor of farming, while women were left to take care of the house and children. Even though in the past fifteen years society has made great leaps towards equality, society is still far from egalitarian. The oppressive traditional roles from the Neolithic era are still shoved down a woman’s throat from an early age. A woman is expected to stay at home and raise the kids, instead of going off to work and leave the kids with a nanny. The essay, “Turkey’s in the Kitchen”, highlights how women are trained to work in the kitchen, whereas, most men are inept when it comes to anything cooking related. School systems

Fisher (1989) recalls his childhood food memories, were women long ago used to perform their family duties much more than recently women do. He remembered the enjoyable cannings with his mother and grandmother, although his grandmother denied men and children participation and help specifically with cooking as she thinks its prohibited. However, despite the horrible, hot and dirty kitchen they used to work in, the food they cook seems

For as long as I can remember, dinner has been one of the most important times of the day. It’s where the family would get together at the dining room table and reflect on the day. Every time we sat down we would tell new stories and listen to old jokes, but one thing always stayed constant. Our main dish would be some type of meat, usually being beef and turkey, and the occasional turkey. Both of my parents grew up on farms, and both raised livestock. My father would travel around the midwest to either sell, buy, or show cattle. Often times he would buy meat back or have it prepared for him and that’s what kept food on the table when he was younger. We don’t have livestock any more, and It’s been that way for over a decade. We go to meat lockers to get

Mealtime is the perfect time for families to get together, catch up and wind down. This time can be used to catch up with each other and learn new things about the people that we live with and love. Many families feel that there is not enough time in the day to cook and sit down together. In the article “ How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life” written by Mark Hyman, MD he states “Americans spend more time watching cooking on the Food Network, than actually preparing their own meals.” If families are saying there is not enough time to cook a meal and sit down and enjoy it together what does that say about their priorities? Meal time with our families need to become a priority

In my family, when we eat at the dinner table, we talk about our day and build better bonds through our interactions. My mother cooks the meal, my sisters and I set up the table with utensils and place mats and my father is ready to eat. We all sit at the table, no technology, elbows off the table and we give grace. While we eat, we talk about our day or anything exciting has happened and we argue and laugh with each other.