The poem “The Joy of Cooking” by Elaine Magarrell is intriguing in the worst possible way. Elaine Magarrell was born in the city of Clinton, Iowa on June 2nd, 1928 and died on July 24, 2014. During her early days, starting from the age of ten years old, she wrote a huge amount of poetry, but she decided to get rid of the poems by burning every last one of them. Eventually, Elaine started writing her poems again at the age of forty and then in 1981 she decided to quit her job to write full-time. She wrote numerous pieces including the poem I chose called “The Joy of Cooking”. “The Joy of Cooking” is an intense read that allows an abundance of room for interpretation. It starts off describing how she has prepared her sister’s tongue and then keeps getting worse and worse from there. Furthermore, she tells of having her brother’s heart and intensely talks about the firmness, dryness, and how to make it taste better in the sauces. The whole poem disgusts me immensely to think about it literally, which is why I …show more content…
When this poem is taken in from a literal perspective, it makes me feel grossed out and is sickening. However, when I think of the piece with the figurative meaning in mind it comes across as somewhat relatable. “The Joy of Cooking” has a part that says “I have prepared my sister’s tongue, “scrubbed and skinned it” (Magarrell 677). In these specific lines, it is important to not think of the words scrubbed and skinned as something done to a meaty food that’s about to be cooked but to realize the topic can be the author trying to get words out of her sister’s mouth while they are talking about something. As a sixteen-year-old girl, I can relate to the idea of someone trying to get words out of someone’s mouth or manipulate words from other people’s mouths because of how much drama goes on in high school. Lots of people “scrub tongues” in order to get someone to say what they want to hear or to get the juicy
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,
David Sedaris’s Tasteless is an essay filled with imagery and humor. His sarcasm and language really captures the reader’s mind. He takes you through his journey of his eating habits from a boy to an adult. He begins his story with discussing how cigarettes can affect one’s senses, blaming his lack of taste on his smoking fixation. He proceeds to describe his eating habits with elaborate details and analogies, poking fun at himself numerous times. Sedaris tells of a time where he tried to bribe his sister for part of her meal. Then he talks about a cookbook he received from his mother and how by high school he began making pizzas. Although he would be creative with his meals, he never applauded himself once on his abilities to create something
The coaching carousel. Once a weird term that seemed a bit harsh is now synonymous with the NFL offseason. Coaches and coordinators are on ever-shrinking leashes so much now that even after a few games of hardship, ownership and management begin to look at a “fall guy” to take the heat. (Perhaps Cris Carter recycled a previous speech he made at an owner’s symposium?) The 2015 offseason was no different as several teams saw changes at the head coach and/or coordinator positions. More often than not, certain individual players see a spike in production as compared to their career averages in year one of a new regime as opposed to any other year under the same coach or coordinator. Below
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
Three people from three different backgrounds all with their own unique stories. It is amazing how diverse the world can be. Despite being so different these three people are all vastly similar in the methods they use to sway an audience. Daniel, the writer of The Necessity believes that parades are essential. This very simple display of culture allows normal everyday people the chance to escape from their deeply depressing lives and show a bit of pride. Fong, the writer of Rice for Thanksgiving has a particularly interesting reflection on his family history. Despite the troubles they went through due to discrimination he still believes in the melting pot that is America. Chelsey the writer of Taking the Bus talks about how her experiences with new and strange people on the bus have changed her outlook on life. The interactions with these people give her some perspective on how her life fits in in the grand scheme of things. All of these stories are different yet they all do one very similar thing. They use the human capacity for sympathy as a means of swaying the reader.
“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)
The source of the earlier European colonist anxiety about their diet comes from their limited understanding of genetics, diets, and overall human health of the time. In Rebecca Earle’s work “The You Eat Their Food…”: Diets and Bodies in Early Colonial Spanish America, the historian presents the ideals of the early European Settlers, mainly Spanish, on how food effected the human body and form. The work elaborates on the Spanish logic for the aliments of both the settlers and the indigenous people of the land, linking it to food. Food in the New World played a prominent role in race and health – based upon Eurocentrism.
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.
A soul in distress is always looking for a mean to escape through a difficult situation. In the story Like Water For Chocolate, Tita De La Garza who suffered like no other, isn’t the exception. This young woman since birth was instilled with a very deep love for cooking. When the people who she loved most betrayed her, cooking eased her pain. All of the intense emotions that she felt while preparing food, were unknowingly added to the recipes. The author, Laura Esquivel through the use of symbolism, she demonstrates that the role of food in the story isn’t there just to sustain life, it also transmits strong emotions such as desire, sorrow and healing felt by the
It is about an event that occurred in her life at the age of fourteen. Amy had a crush on the minister's son, Robert. On Christmas Eve, she found out that her parents invited Robert and his family over for dinner. “What would Robert think of our shabby Chinese Christmas? What would he think of our noisy Chinese relatives who lacked proper American manners? What terrible disappointment would he feel upon seeing not a roasted turkey and sweet potatoes but Chinese food?” (Fish Cheeks 1). Amy was not only extremely nervous about Robert coming over to her house, but she was ashamed of her family. Obviously, Amy’s Chinese Christmas is much different from the type of holiday Robert is used to. The last thing Amy wanted was for Robert to see her traditional Chinese household and scare him off. Unfortunately, her fear had come true when Robert and his family came over. When dinner came around Amy started to fall deeper in despair. “My relatives licked the ends of their chopsticks and reached across the table, dipping them into the dozen or so plates of food” (Fish Cheeks 2). Unlike Amy’s family, Robert’s family patiently waited for platters to be passed around. It wasn't the typical American food for Christmas either. “bulging fish eyes...tofu, which looked like stacked wedges of rubbery white sponges...a plate of squid, their backs crisscrossed with knife markings so they resembled bicycle tires: (Fish Cheeks 1). Amy glanced
“Single-Handed Cooking” written by JJ Goode was the complete opposite of what I expected the article to be about. I thought the article single-handed cooking would be about a single parent/person working in the kitchen by themselves. But, I was wrong it turns out the article is about a guy who overcomes his misfortune of one arm being handicap, to do what he loves most cooking. I like how Goodes describes the kitchen of being a place of relaxation for most people, but for him it’s always been about facing his challenges of having one arm. Goodes said he used to avoid chopping up vegetables or food, and other grueling tasks of prepping because chopping proved to be difficult for him because he has on arm. Then he came to realize that sooner or later, to fully achieve success as a cook, he would have to do what he had been so good at avoiding chopping up food.
Cooking is a vital, overlooked component necessary to accomplish every human’s basic fundamental needs to survive and reproduce. According to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, food is one of the factors that constructs the base of the pyramid’s physiological section (Myers 330). This section cannot be considered without its fundamental component, the act of cooking. Not only is this act executed in most human individuals’ everyday lifestyle, but has also increased their fitness in the course of time. In Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Humans by Richard Wrangham, Wrangham similar idea convinces me. Wrangham declares that it was fire and cooking that led to new crucial physical traits developed in humans. Whether fire was created as a
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.” A statement from Pericles who says that imperialism has a great effect on countries. During the Age of Imperialism, many nations began to imperialize smaller countries for raw materials and land. With conquering land came the influence of education and religion, which shaped the country as it is today. European nations, Great Britain in particular, are not guilty of abuse of power as seen in the imperialized countries of Nigeria, India, and Singapore.
On January 21st, 2009, Barack Obama stepped up to the podium after millions upon millions of people chanted his name. It was the first time that an African-American took office as the President of the United States. He presented a historic message of hope and change for the future of the United States of America, given that it was a change of presidency in those excruciatingly unideal times. During his inaugural address, he had to state the most important issues that America was currently facing at the time and his plans on fixing those issues to the American public. He reassures the public about the changes that he was planning to employ within his presidency by contrasting different ideas, emphasizes America’s issues and his solutions through anaphoras and varying sentence structure, and convinces the American public that he is capable of addressing America’s issues through his use of strong diction.
The poem Acceptance Speech by Lynn Powell is about a housewife who feels undervalued by her family and by society. The title of the poem suggests that the character has received an award for achieving something brilliant, but in fact she is being sarcastic and conducting an imaginary award ceremony for herself in her kitchen, since no one else is willing to appreciate her hard work. The poet uses irony and personification of kitchen utensils and ingredients to add humour to the play. She uses the In this poem, the character deals with her desire to be appreciated by propelling herself into an imaginary scenario in her kitchen where she is in the spotlight and humorously personifies ingredients in food who are just as under appreciated as