Personal Narrative: My Soup Got Burned

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.

wrote the article “My Mom Couldn’t Cook”, argues that point by being the sole cook for his wife and daughter. Junod was inspired to cook for his family, by growing up eating the food prepared by a mother who he realized hated to cook and a later understanding that led him to the realization that she did not know how to cook. Tom Junod writes an entertaining piece, his credibility is built through the personal stories he shares and his emotional appeals have a way of keeping the audience interested, but his language becomes distracting and overall it takes away from his argument.

My mom always commanded, “Don’t take your emotions out on food.” In her essay “Young Hunger,” M.F.K. Fisher uses three anecdotes to prove her argument about the hunger young people have for love and attention. On the other hand J.J. Goode through “Single-handed Cooking” writes about the difficulties that a disability such as having no arms could introduce even with small chores such as cooking. Food represents struggles in the lives of both M.F.K. Fisher and JJ Goode. Fisher and Goode are both lacking something that they are trying to fill with food although the result they obtain is different.

Jenkins shares involved the things her family did when she was younger. Mama Nan, her grandmother, grew fig trees in her yard, which was near a field of berries. She would get her fruits and vegetables from the local farmers’ market in Luling. Mrs. Jenkins remembers canning figs and peaches with her mother. When Mrs. Jenkins moved to Houma, her mother would go to Dugas, the local market place, located on Division Street, to purchase her fresh fruits and vegetables. Mama would make a rustic vegetable soup with her fresh cabbage, shallots, corn, parsley, and snap beans; adding a little tomato sauce for color and some noodles for extra starch, Mama’s soup was the ultimate get well dish. Aunt Ducky made homemade pies: apple, lemon, and sweet potato; her pies made for the best of desserts. These days many fruits and vegetables are shipped internationally to our supermarkets, where we can find frozen pies and canned goods including fruits, vegetables, and even readymade soup. Though commercialization has helped save time, the quality has diminished and the title is still held in the traditional preparations. It is as if you can taste the

have hope that the society’s views will change. Food is what brings people together in this

In the span of a few months, I have had the privilege of helping with programs that work toward ending hunger in Northeastern Ohio. I worked at three places, and they all have a great impact on the community they serve. Working with the people there, I gained a better understanding of how people become food insecure and how important these programs are. The kindness I was shown is astonishing, and being shown this affection made me build strong emotional connections to those I was helping. Volunteering at these centers gave me a lot of hope that diminishing hunger insecurity is possible.

In an attempt to end the fight against hunger one must experience it in some way, shape or form. Whether that be through personal experience, the stories of others, volunteering, research, etc. you have to have some understanding as to how individuals are effected. This important in finding the right course of action or the right solution. These past few weeks have opened my eyes to many different experiences and I am inspired to be more active in the fight against hunger, locally, domestically and worldwide.

So much for my hunch. Carl is starting to get a little irritated with us at the moment, but as I’m standing next to him showing my phone, I saw a charred remains of a notebook in the tin box, somehow wedged itself so it was stuck, possibly forced in when Carl hastily placed those papers inside. I point over to it and ask “What is that?”. Carl, sees the charred book and shuts the tin case before I had a chance to reach into it.

In order to increase the capacity to nourish low -income families and to enhance food purchasing and preparation skills, a six-week cooking program, Cooking for a Cause, will be implemented in the local food pantry, Christ the King Food Pantry, in Concord, NH. Studies have shown that community nutrition intervention leads to a significant increases in self-reported knowledge of food preparation, positive food purchasing practices, and confidence in following a recipe and carrying out basic cooking skills. The Concord community is largely composed of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) beneficiaries and low-income individuals who are faced with the challenge of inadequate health, education, and resources. The goal of Cooking for a Cause is to increase capacity to nourish low-income families on a budget and to enhance food purchasing and preparation skills. Short term objectives for the program are that during the first year of this program, at least four, six-week programs will be conducted.

“Neither of us can cook either.” Was her hasty reply, hurrying to contain the slowly advancing disaster. Indeed, she had never had an aptitude for it. So when I expressed an interest in the culinary arts, it initially came as a relief to her, until my projects proved too extravagant, and cleaning up after them was just as arduous an effort. In a way, the male side of my family seemed blessed with a passion for artistic pursuits, even if the talent behind said passion was in lesser supply. Though with her new job paying better, I may get a second chance at pursuing that passion. For now, I had to be thankful we had slowly, but surely moved onto brand name items. I always found it troubling that the only positive thing they could say about “Great Value: Mustard.” Was its lack of

My mama Nila took some of her precious time to teach me how to cook. I remember that at first, I learned to heat the oven to 350 and then, heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. That temperature is very high so, I was afraid of getting burned. But my grandma made it easy for me because she just held my little hand and turn on the oven. This made me feel more confident, and secure because she was next to me. Next, I learned to add onion, celery, salt, and peppers to pan; sauté 6 minutes or until onion is tender. Then, Mama Nila taught me how to combine cornstarch and beef, tossing well to coat. I tried to mix the ingredients with a circular motion until well blended, but it was a little bit difficult to blend because it was my first time doing it. So mama Nila told me to be patient and keep do it until I get all the ingredients in a uniform consistency form. I kept trying it, until I got it right, and that makes me happy because I learned how to blend the mixture

People always complain that they don’t like the food that they were served on the table and then throw away that food. But they don’t think about the people who wonder if they even will be able eat any food. The hungry usually have to resort to soup kitchen and just beg for money to buy food. That’s why I think volunteering in a local soup kitchen could positively change the world by feeding the hungry.

Bushwick Cooks aims first to prove the power of connecting the dots, so that members of struggling communities have access to the healthful diet and lifestyle enjoyed by the wealthy and upwardly mobile. Further, it aims to show that this is economically sustainable, because it dramatically lowers public health costs for fragile populations while building local businesses, creating job opportunities, expanding marketable skills in the local labor pool, and knitting together a powerful community around food. Bushwick Cooks’ parent agency RBSCC is built on the premise that when we are effective in creating opportunities for the most fragile among us to thrive, rather than displacing or ignoring them, we can generate sustainable value. Bushwick Cooks exists to prove this premise when it comes to access to healthful food.

According to Jim Sollisch’s article, cooking is an outlet of expression and is not limited to one gender (Sollisch, “Cooking Is Freedom”). Sollisch communicates of how his newfound interest and love of cooking came out of an act of rebellion to allow the enrollment of boys in Home Economics classes (Sollisch, “Cooking Is Freedom”). He effectively uses an informal tone and an abundance of short, simple sentences appropriate for his audiences of New York Times and blog post readers. His copious amounts of personal anecdotes provide credibility in the subject. His use of incomplete sentences and colorful, easy-to-understand word choice puts him in the level of the reader establishing a personal connection.

Will that child grow to crave cookies or apples? French fries or roasted broccoli? If the right habits are not being demonstrated in the household, such as cooking healthy meals, children have no way of learning an alternative way until they are adults when the task becomes exponentially more difficult. For this reason it is imperative for children to be educated in the ways of cooking by any means necessary, “cooking is a vital life skill. Knowing how to cook from scratch empowers people to appreciate the value of food, to understand what they are putting in their bodies and, therefore, to nourish themselves and their families with fresh, nutritious food” (Oliver). It is time that cooking was brought back into each and every home, where children learn how to cook from their mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. Not only does this create bonding opportunities and also pass down culture, it sets up the future generations to live better than the generation before.