Introduction
Over the course of the semester in “Food, Feelings, and Film,” I learned many invaluable lessons regarding formatting and structure. For example: how to draft an annotated bibliography or how the sentence length in Proust affects how the audience understands the text. However, the most important lesson I learned is how deeply tied our emotions are to food. As the semester went along, this theme began to appear more and more. In fact, it appeared in almost every piece of writing throughout the course. I first noticed in our personal essays where I explained the Italian Seven Fish dinner and what it meant to me. After finishing the essay, I took a second to reflect on what I wrote. I realized that there was so much more to the essay then just the food. I talked about family, friends, and the magical power of Christmas. All of these emotions arouse from the thought of just one dinner.
Moving on, the theme continued to appear whether it was in blog post assignments or even major graded assignments like our review from “Como Agua Para Chocolate.” With that said, I would say the overall theme of my blog: there are many emotions deeply tied to food, is exactly what one of the themes of the course is, which is, “Our
relationships to food often evoke a wide array of emotions and engage multiple senses, sometimes all five of them at once.” This theme can best be seen in my blog posts, “How Sustainable and Local Eating Has an Impact in My Life,” “Australian Teens Try American Cereal & Australians Try Australian-American Food,” the video voiceover script,” “Night,” and the Proust post. I chose to organize these blog posts in the order in which they were first published because I believe it best displays the improvement of my descriptive writing skills throughout the semester.
How Sustainable and Local Eating Has an Impact in My life (revised)
Sustainability and eating locally have both played a major role in my life growing up. Before I left for college and now, when I am home from college, my mom cooks every meal at home and you can bet each one of them are cooked with fresh and almost always organic ingredients. My mom knows all the local farmers' markets and she does her best to stop at her favorites every week. The closest is just down the street at pine park, where she buys all of her produce. She won't buy it anywhere else because the taste and freshness is so much better than anything she ever bought at Giant Eagle or Shop N' Save. The other farmers' market she attends is downtown in the strip district. This one is by far our favorite because it has locally raised meats and freshly caught fish (yes, fish from western Pennsylvania). In addition, my Mom loves it when my dad and I bring back what we caught after a king day out on the water. Everyone in my family loves to fish and a couple times a year, we go out and catch as many trout as we can. This culminates with a giant fish fry including everyone in the family and all of the neighbors. These are some of my favorite nights and meals every year.
I've been raised in an Italian family so you could say tasty, local, and sustainable food is a pretty big part of my life. In addition, I've tried a lot of different dishes and there aren't many that are better than the ones my family can cook. With that said, I'm very used to the locally grown ingredients and I don't think I would be able to get used to a diet without them. Even in college, I've continued the diet that my family instilled upon me at a very young age.
Old post
http://forallfoodlovers.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-sustainable-and-local-eating-has.html
Australian Teens Try American Cereal & Australians Try Australian-American Food (revised)
The purpose of these two videos is two highlight the difference between American and Australian foods as well as point out the inaccuracy of America's representation of Australian food. While I expected there to be significant differences between the two cultures, I did not expect the Australians to be completely unaware of the American cereal brands. In the video, the Australian teens were presented cap’n crunch, cookie crisp, trix, reeses puffs, lucky charms, and cinnamon toast crunch and not one of the kids had ever heard any a single one of these cereals. On the other hand, the kids' reactions when they tried the foods from Outback Steakhouse did not surprise me at all!
In both videos, the kids were separated into groups and given different foods to try. It was pretty safe to say the reactions were mixed. For cereal video, we saw people expressed amazed and concerned reactions. Some of the kids said they had never tasted something so good and that they good eat the cereal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner while other reactions were not as high. These people said that the cereal was just a fast track to diabetes. They may be on to something because I think they were given the most sugary cereals America has to offer. Particular reactions that stuck out to me was the girl’s reaction to Cookie Crisp. She said, “It’s just cookies in a bowl? Why am I eating cookies in a bowl for breakfast?” I’ve never been much in to cookie crisp so I had never thought about that but it’s true. Why are we eating cookies for breakfast? Another great reaction came from the first cereal they tried, cap’n crunch. The guy said, “It’s like the cornflakes we had when we were younger, but instead of putting sugar on it like we did, you actually have to try to take sugar off, there is just too much.” Again, I’ve never been a huge fan of cap’n crunch but he pretty much hit the nail on the head with that one. I saw reactions very similar to this in the second video about Outback and its link to Australian culture, however, maybe slightly more negative. The Australians didn't like most of the food, saying repeatedly, "This isn't Australian!" Then even the food they liked, they reinforced the idea that it isn't Australian. They were particularly amazed by the "bloomin onion," saying its incredibly gross and greasy and not Australian in any way! However, surprisingly, some people did actually like it. So unlike the cereal video, the reactions to the taste of the Outback food was not so good.
After watching the American cereal video, I can honestly say I can't relate to their reactions. I mean obviously I know these cereals are loaded with sugar, but still, I never had the same dumbfounded reaction most of them did when they tried the cereals for the first time. Maybe it was just because I was introduced to them at a younger age so they seemed normal to me. Either way, I hope we don’t choose to get rid of these cereals because they are perfect for a sweet snack every once in a while. For the Outback video, I have shared similar reactions. Being raised in a family that cooks authentic Italian dishes, I can very easily tell the difference between Olive Garden and a home cooked Italian meal. With that said, I can see where they are coming from in the sense that the two are just not related in any way.
Australian Teens Try American Cereal
Old post:
http://forallfoodlovers.blogspot.com/2016/09/australian-teens-tryamerican-cereal_28.html
Script for video voiceover: I've formatted it this way so you can see which thoughts go with each section from the film. (revised)
I’ve never seen live carp let alone people cooking them.
I didn’t even know carp was a fish that people ate, they're gross bottom-feeders!.
Deep Fried Carp, interesting.
This man seems very skilled, he is great with a knife and knowns his way around the kitchen.
He has all of his utensils and ingredients handy. Just a quick trip outside to the coup and he has his chickens for dinner.
Oh, and it appears he has frogs to go along with that, how delicious! I’ve never heard of a meal that resembles anything quite like this. It's so unique that I just might want to try it!
I’m not quite sure what the food is surrounded by the bok choy but it seems to be the most normal dish he has prepared.
I haven’t figured out if I am supposed to be disturbed or find this meal appetizing because almost every image they show makes me lose my appetite!
This meal sure covers everything. We have fish (carp and squid), frogs, fresh vegetables from the garden, and chicken, as fresh as it comes too!
I’ve definitely never seen anything quite like this back home. This man certainly seems to know what he is doing almost making me want to taste.
Old Post:
http://forallfoodlovers.blogspot.com/2016/10/script-for-video-voiceover-ive-never.html
Night (revised)
What does it really mean to achieve happiness? From my experience so far, I’ve found that the best way to achieve this is by finding these feelings in their purest and simplest forms. For me, there is no better example than a crackling fire away from the hustle and bustle of the city, where the stars shine so bright you can't even distinguish the difference between day and night. I’ve been around the outdoors more than most over my first twenty years on this earth and I’ve grown very appreciative of the nights where I get to do this. There was a night this summer in early August where I laid in the bed of a pickup truck listening to the dying flames of our once roaring fire while staring up into the night sky, unwilling to fall asleep. Never before had I been able to see the Big Dipper or Orion’s belt as clearly as I could in that moment. As I laid motionless in the heart of the Allegheny National Forest, I experienced a truly revitalizing moment. It wasn’t the s’mores or the company that made this night so special, but instead the pure beauty that surrounded me. When I was around ten or eleven, my Dad told me how important it was to find ways to be able to escape reality just like this. He said living life day by day without being at peace would not be a way that I would want to live. Now, I am starting to figure out what that actually means because I find myself thinking about nights like this one more and more often and just the thought of these nights soothes me more than anything else can. All it takes is the thought or mentioning of a s'more and my mind rushes to memories like this and immediately, I am thrust back into a state of bliss.
#HappinessInTheSimplestForm
#LightTheNight
#SearchingForPeace
Old Post:
http://forallfoodlovers.blogspot.com/2016/10/night-what-doesit-really-mean-to-be.html
The Cookie (revised)
The short story, “The Cookie,” was a very interesting read for me. At first, I was confused by the format of the text, finding it very difficult to follow because of all the commas and sentence breaks. This created very long sentences that lost meaning if you didn't pay attention. However, I managed to look past the structure and focus on the content of the passage. In the text, the man reflecting on their experience is reminded of a particular taste when he takes a sip of his tea, but then is reminded of the taste when he dips his madeleine cookie into his tea. It was just how his aunt did when he was a boy. At first, I was confused how someone can completely misidentify or forget a taste. However, then I remembered. Ironically, I have had an experience very similar to the one depicted in this passage. When I was about five or six living in London, my Dad brought back a combination of desserts. Looking back, I had no idea what the desserts were and my Dad couldn’t remember for the life of him either. So, the memory of out-worldly dessert was all I had to go on. Then one day, about three years ago, I ordered bread pudding for dessert at Pamela’s Diner back home. Little did I know how shocked I was about to be. I took a bite of the magnificent looking dessert and sure enough, the memory of my Dad bringing home an assortment of desserts rushed into my head. That was what he brought home ten or so years ago. The decade long mystery was finally solved similarly to the one in the passage, “The Cookie.”
Old Post:
http://forallfoodlovers.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-cookie.html
Conclusion
I picked these five blog posts because I believe they best display my development as a writer over the course of the semester. Coming in, my creative writing and analytical skills lacked, however, these posts show my dramatic improvements in these areas. You can see this the most in my post “Night,” where I reference a night in the Allegheny National Forest. I describe how I felt throughout the night as well as describe what I saw around me. A line from this post that I find particularly telling of my improvement is, “where the stars shine so bright you can't even distinguish the difference between day and night.” Before this class, I’m not sure I would’ve been able to develop a sentence with this level of detail. This post also exemplifies my theme that profound feeling and emotion can be tied to food when I mention how even the thought of a s’more takes me back to this perfect night.
While my other blog posts may not fit the theme that emotions are tied to food as well as this one, they all still have a moderate to strong connection. In my Proust reflection, I relate to the man’s experience in the text by forgetting the taste of a dessert that my Dad brought home until all of the sudden the memory came rushing back ten years later when I found myself eating the exact same dessert. In my local and sustainable eating post, I describe how important this is in my life because my Mom has been cooking this way for as long as I can remember. In the Australian video comparison post, each person develops a strong emotion either for or against the food that is put in front of them. Then in my voiceover post, I develop several opinions of what I am watching and elaborate on them in the script. So, all of these posts connect food with feelings, which is what this course is about.
Another objective of the course that I feel I obtained a solid grasp of through my blog posts is being able to craft multiple genres of writing. For example, some of my posts are formal reflective and analytical works such as reviews or summaries while others are just informal free-writes. This is definitely a skill that I will be able to take with me and apply daily life moving forward.
The blog posts were key in understanding the key concepts of this course. It made me aware of how feelings and emotions tie into food, informed me of the many genres of writing that exist and how to become more familiar with them, and ultimately, how to effectively edit a piece of writing so that the finished copy stands out from the original draft. These skills will prove to be very beneficial in my future endeavors.
