Annotated Bibliography: The Gastronomical Me

Thinking about the importance and significance of food respective to our health, ethnic culture and society can cause cavernous, profound, and even questionable thoughts such as: “Is food taken for granted?”, “Is specialty foods just a fad or a change in lifestyle?”, and even “Is food becoming the enemy.” Mark Bittman, an established food journalist, wrote an article called “Why take food seriously?” In this article, Bittman enlightens the reader with a brief history lesson of America’s appreciation of food over the past decades. This history lesson leads to where the social standing of food is today and how it is affecting not only the people of America, but also the rest of the world.

Anthony Bourdain is a critically acclaimed chef, writer, and television star. He has appeared in shows such as “Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations”, “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown”, and “Top Chef,” and published works such as “Don’t Eat Before Reading This”, “Medium Raw”, and “The Nasty Bits.” Trained at Vassar College the Culinary Institute of America, Bourdain is known for his love of food. In 2000, he wrote a book called Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, and his first chapter is entitled “Food is Good”. In the chapter, Bourdain discusses his trip to France with his family, and how the trip transformed from hating the exotic food to loving it. Through his structure, descriptive language, and childhood stories,

Some say food is an exploration of culture, and taste evokes lush memories of the past. “ In An Island Passover” by Ethel G. Hofman, she described her life in the Shetland Islands. Every year, Hofman’s family celebrates Passover- a traditional Jewish holiday where time and effort to prepare a meal is like painting, and it takes months to reveal a masterpiece. While Hofman had a positive recollection of her family’s traditional cuisine, author of “Fish Cheeks”, Amy Tan did not share the same experience. Tan felt ashamed of sharing her traditional cuisine with a pastor's son whom she was in love with. Tan strived for her crush’s approval because she did not want to be deemed strange. Hofman and Tan had striking differences in

Ann Hodgman starts the essay with rhetorical questions in order to draw the reader to learn about her experiment. From the Gaines burgers taste test, to Cycle 4 foods, Hodgman described the dishes in an attempt to create a feeling of disgust in the readers mind. The Gaines burger had a “horrifying rush of cheddar taste, followed immediately by the dull tang of soybean flour…” (8) – just the parallel description of ‘horrifying rush’ and ‘dull tang’ emphasizes the abhorrence in Hodgman’s writing. Her experience with tasting dog food seems like an odd and not a topic many can relate to. In order to connect to her audience Ann Hodgman compared the taste of Cycle 4, canned food for senior dogs, to baked beans. Using descriptive tactics, Hodgman was able to show the obvious issues that hide behind the labels.

Anthony Bourdain, world renowned chef and television personality, in his autobiography Kitchen Confidential (2000), conveys his experiences working in the restaurant business-high tension and new stressors at just about every corner. More specifically in the chapter “Food is Pain,” he convinces his audience that the abilities to maintain concentration, handle stress, and keep pace with the quick movement of a high-pressure environment are extremely important. Bourdain shapes this through an anecdote of his past experience working under boiler man (Tyrone) at the Dreadnaught, with his development of ethos, use of imagery, and manipulation of syntax to not only draw in but appeal to a wider audience.

Food can partially shape a person's cultural identity. Geeta Kothari explores the cultural nuances between American and Indian food in the essay, “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” She expresses this through the symbolism of food, growing up and living between two different cultures. Kothari begins her story as a nine-year-old child curiously wanting to eat the same foods as American children: tuna salad sandwiches and hot dogs. She does not have the guidance from her mother regarding American food and culture. Kothari’s mom curbs the curiosity by reluctantly letting her daughter indulge in a can of tuna fish. Kothari describes the open can of tuna fish as “pink and shiny, like an internal organ” and she wondered if it was botulism (947). The way

Dorothy Allison, well-known author and essayist, begins her essay by discussing how she remembers her mother’s gravy and the process of making it, including the pounding of the meat in order to flatten it out. She adds pathos by saying gravy is the “most memory-laden dish” she has learned how to cook and the comfort it brings. Instead of calling it country-fried steak as others normally do, Allison’s mother calls the savory dish cube steak, a more underprivileged name. Allison says, “It was not until I was grown that I understood

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.

McCorcle, Jill. “Her Chee-to Heart.” Food Matters: a Bedford Spotlight Reader. Boston and NY: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014, pp.31-36.

“When you got to the table you couldn 't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn 't really anything the matter with them, -- that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.” (Twain, 1)

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.

Moreover, Ferris talks about how throughout the history of the south, the politics of power and place, have lead to the establishment of a cuisine that includes both privilege and deprivation. Thus, continuously impacting the food patterns of the modern day south. Ferris states, “In food lies the harsh dynamics of racism, sexism, class struggle, and ecological exploitation that have long defined the south; yet there, too, resides family, a strong connection to place, conviviality, creativity, and flavor” (Edible South, 1) . This is exemplified all throughout the text by many accounts of antebellum cuisine influenced by that of African and Native Americans.

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.

Today, my copy of Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, by Julia Child and Jacques Pepin, nearly killed me, falling off the top of the refrigerator and onto my head. Perhaps this is a terrible place to store my cookbooks. I’d found it at my local thrift store, among such titles as Cook Yourself Skinny and Fat Blasting Bible and The Cancer Survival Cookbook. I frowned at them, shelves and shelves of cookbooks that prey on our dissatisfaction with who we’re told to be, this morality that we’ve assigned to cooking and eating, life and death and the power over them, contained in these pages. These books promise miracles. If you cook with this book, you will be skinny and you will be happy. If you cook with this book, follow these recipes, your mother

According to Delaney (2004) suggests that food is not biological, it is cultural. The food that is consumed shapes culture and culture shapes food and intern shapes our identity (Delaney, 2004). Counihan (1999) agrees and suggests that food is a “product and mirror of the organisation of society…it is connected to behaviours and meanings” (p. 6). The way in which food is produced, distributed and consumed illustrates power relations, gender and sex within societies (Counihan, 1999). She explains that each society has a distinct food way which structures the community, personalities and families within the society (Counihan, 1999).