The Food Writer Who Lost Her Sense Of Smell

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,

The article “Your Brain on Fiction” by Annie Murphy Paul (2012) asserts that reading can motivate the human brain, and even influences on a person’s behaviour, as has been proved by neuroscience. Not only well known parts of the brain, which responsible for written words, engage in the process of reading, and react to it, but also other sections, for instance, one of them relates to the sense of smell. The article provides information about the study that describes the reaction of participant’s brain to different words and their combinations. The words that have a strong connection with the smell or texture metaphors activate the sensory cortex. Moreover, researchers determine the response of the motor cortex by the words that represent movement.

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.

I turned to see where it was coming from and realized my dress was on fire. Frozen with fear, I watched the yellow-white flames make a ragged brown line up the pink fabric of my skirt and climb my stomach” (Walls 9). Immediately, Jeannette’s mother rushes her to hospital and underwent a skin graft to ensure her survival. In today’s society, a young child cooking a hotdog is very scary and most parents will not allow it out of fear of what happened to Jeannette. The fact that her first memory is one that Jeannette feels fear and happens to be a memory that is on the other side of fear, danger, is important. Her life foreseen by her first memory is also filled with danger; yet, she does not have to view them as dangerous ones with fear. Due to the fact that these memories are from a perspective of fear leads her story to have a theme of fear.

A physical perception was born of my learning, an understanding of the correlation between the attentiveness to detail of plate setting, to the organ setting of the body. Cooking is a science, where it is quite important for cooks to be aware of the ins-and-outs of methods involved in it, just like physicians must be aware of various details such as where the third thoracic vertebra is located, and what the

McCorcle’s essay ‘Her Chee-to Heart is an informational essay with persuasive undertone that’s main point is that food has a positive emotional value. While the essay is best defined as informational, much of the essay's foundation is coming from the author's personal experience and thus, a more persuasive tone becomes embedded. There is a clear limitation exposed in McCorcle’s essay that cannot be ignored. While she promotes food as a form of comfort, it is unhealthy food that is most associated with in her essay. Turning to unhealthy foods as a form of comfort can develop into a detrimental habit.

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

Another example would be that someone with dementia may not see or understand why they have to eat in a particular way, for example, starter, main, dessert. For someone with dementia,

While Fisher displayed emotional struggle with food, Goode’s disability forces him to struggle with food physically. Although Goode enjoys food, he finds himself testing all his abilities as a one handed person when he prepares a meal. JJ Goode begins the discomfort he

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

 Marge Piercy is an American novelist, essayist, and poet best known for writing with a trademark feminist slant. In "What's That Smell in the Kitchen?" Marge Piercy explores the way women are sometimes held in low esteem by men through the eyes of a tired housewife who has had it with her monotonous day- to-day duties. In this poem, it is not stated that the speaker is a homemaker, but the reader is told about one woman in particular who is meant to express the feelings of women as a whole. The author conveys this central idea through imagery, figurative language, and devices of sound.

In context to reverting the process of habituation, Alain de Botton states,” I forced myself to obey a particular kind of mental command; to look around me as though I had never been in this place before. And slowly my travels began to bear fruit. Under the command to consider everything as of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value,” (De Botton, ). Here, he states that it is necessary to adapt a mindset in which you look at your surroundings and familiar objects from a way that one had previously not seen it before. By this, an individual can develop,” latent layers of value,” (De Botton, 63). Familiar objects in a habituated surrounding can exhibit deep, hidden meanings that one may not have realized before. At times it may feel like there is nothing to be discovered because one has become so habituated to one’s surroundings. Changing one’s perspective can reveal the true value of an object that had been long forgotten about. It can also remind an individual of the memories and experiences related to the object. When adapting an “open-minded mindset,” an individual can help differentiate between the ordinary and the extraordinary

Didion’s article focuses on many subtopics that all surround the primary topic, “why keep a notebook?” She chooses to elaborate on her topic in a number of ways which create an interesting train of thought for the reader. “I was on Fire Island when I first made that sauerkraut, and it was raining, and we drank a lot of bourbon and ate the sauerkraut and went to bed at ten, and I listened to the rain and the Atlantic and felt safe. I made the sauerkraut again last night and it did not make me feel any safer, but that is, as they say, another story.” Didion’s essay ends with these two sentences, she explains what memory a sauerkraut recipe brings back.

I thought what a wonderful way to tell a story” (Mujica 38). The reader is often present in the kitchen with Esquivel when she writes about her past experiences in the kitchen.

I didn’t know I can have the skill that I can know what condiments put in dishes until I was in middle school. Once a time, I taste a food that cooked by an aunt, then I asked her if this dish used some sugar and Thirteen Spice (a spice that produced at China) and cooked by olive oil rather than sesame oil. The aunt is very surprised that I got the whole right condiments. She praised me a lot and said I had this skill that other people don’t have. After that, I begin to notice my gustation and form a habit that Before I eat each dish, I have to try and guess what kind of seasoning is in it. Until now, I still keep this habit.