A Cook's Cultural Tourism

Meredith Ashton

Reading Response

A Cook’s Tour

26 September 2016

A Cook’s Cultural Tourism

             Anthony Bourdain’s novel A Cook’s Tour depicts his travels around the globe in search of the “magical” perfect meal. Bourdain defines magical food as cuisine that can transport you through time and has an element of simplicity and purity, such as the French oysters he ate as a child. He also stresses the necessity of knowing from where your food comes, and the richness of knowledge and history that come from using all parts of an animal, like the slaughtering of the Portuguese pig in the first chapter. Finally, Bourdain requires that his perfect meal contain an element of daring and adventure. He travels the globe in search of not just good recipes, but thrilling dining experiences, such as the spa and ice bath that accompanies his meal of black bread and vodka in Russia.

            In the chapter “Back to the Beach,” Bourdain tries to recreate past meals and memories which are innately interwoven with his childhood summers in France. Bourdain returns to the same beach town home with his little brother to eat the same food and have the same adventures as they did when they were boys. While an enjoyable venture, Bourdain continues to emphasize that his experiences fall short; he feels as though he is lacking something essential. Through this process of reconnection, the reader discovers that for Bourdain, France and food are interlaced with memories of his father, who has since passed away. In attempting this recreation, Bourdain set himself up for failure, which is a fact he acknowledges by the end of the chapter. He writes “I’d recreated, as best I could, all the factors present in my youth. But once again, I felt restrained from pure enjoyment,” (Bourdain 42). The oyster, that “perfect damn meal” from Bourdain’s youth that set him off on his wild trek to becoming a world-class chef, would never taste as inspirational as the first time the chilly brine touched his tongue.

            As in France, Bourdain continues to take his preconceived notions about other cultures and cuisines to the countries to which he travels. Bourdain has, as many of us do, a set schema of what other countries should be like, which is informed by knowledge of past history and popular cultural beliefs in the United States. He writes “So far, Russia had been everything I’d wanted it to be. It was the Russia of my dreams and adolescent fantasies that I was looking for,” (79). Clearly, Bourdain has characterized all of Russian culture based off of his experiences growing up in America during the Cold War and reports on television. It’s all well and good when a country and its cuisine meets his expectations, but when a culture doesn’t quite line up with his schema, Bourdain behaves in a very unsettled manner.

            After a casual afternoon of exploring a Vietnamese market, Bourdain happens upon a man whose entire body is encased with scar tissue; the victim of a napalm burn during the Vietnamese war. Bourdain says “Everything I eat will taste like ashes now. Fuck writing books. Fuck making television. I’m unable even to give the man money,” (64). It is in these shocking moments of clarity that Bourdain is acutely aware of his role as a cultural tourist. While he does his best to be respectful to his hosts and their cuisine, and be aware of his privilege, he still falls into the trap of believing popular assumptions and applying them to an entire culture of individuals.

Realizing "Realness"

Meredith Ashton

22 September 2016

Reading Response

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner 

Realizing “Realness”

            The second half of the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner by Bich Nguyen portrays Bich’s process of growing up and maturing in her relationships with her family and her own self-identity through the medium of food. Bich begins reading to experience and explore the worlds to which she will never have access. She idolizes the witty, white heroines; she craves their abundance of wholesome food, their cozy nuclear families, and their innate sense of belonging. This is juxtaposed with the older, wiser narrator version of Bich who views these novels more critically, as whitewashed manifest destiny propaganda in which she, as a young Vietnamese girl, could never hope to play a role.

            Bich’s growth is also depicted through the changing nature of the memoir’s chapter titles. Initially, the sections referenced stereotypical American foods, such as Pringles and Toll House Cookies, which then evolved into more intentional dishes that represented the complex cultural identity with which Bich is becoming acquainted. The chapter titled “Holiday Tamales” strives to grasp the complicated relationship Bich holds with Rosa’s Hispanic-American family. When Rosa accuses Bich of not trying to relate to her family in Fruitport, Bich responds “I like tamales and tortillas.” Despite their cultural differences, food was the common ground that Bich and Rosa’s relatives shared.

            In addition to contemplating her relationship to Rosa’s family, Bich further explores her connection to her own family near the end of the novel. In the chapter Mooncakes, Bich meets her birth mother for the first time and walks away with a sticky mooncake and twenty-years worth of still-unanswered questions. Bich writes “I always wanted mooncakes to be something other than they were” (Nguyen 233). Bich facilitates her feelings about her mother through the medium of food. The mooncake is something she always wanted to love and to have for her own, but every time the first bite is a disappointment. Throughout the novel, we’ve seen Bich idealizing the perfect “real” mother: the homemaker, the Marmee March,  the slender socialite. However, she acknowledges that she never dreamed her mother would be of this stock. Her own mother was almost “too real”—a painful and complex reality that would challenge the careful identity Bich had constructed for herself; a Vietnamese-American, Refugee-Citizen, and Hispanic by marriage who was striving to be white by choice.

However, in the end Bich realizes that “in truth, everything that was real lay right in front of me: oranges after dinner; pomegranates in the winter; mangoes cubed off their skin. Birthday cakes decorated in my own hand while my stepmother taught me the words to “Cumpleanos feliz.” Bich was real all along, however, it took the process of growing up to come to the realization of all that she had. The final chapter, Cha Gio, represents a returning to Bich’s Vietnamese roots, where she both respectfully acknowledges from where she came, but also that her tree has grown quite differently from it’s humble origins in Saigon. Bich doesn’t belong to just one place, or one type of cuisine. From processed American Pringles to Hispanic holiday tamales to Noi’s Cha Gio, Bich is from many foods, places, and peoples.

Veggies Over Vending Machines

Meredith Ashton

CYOA Project

September 20^th, 2016

Veggies Over Vending Machines

Traditional cafeteria lunches are the stuff of childhood legend—plastic apples dyed red with chemicals,  sausage links tinged green in the center, and limp iceberg lettuce masquerading as a “healthy” side. After decades of cafeteria food bearing the label of “barely edible,” Michelle Obama helped revolutionize the Federal School Lunch program with the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. One major, and lesser known, component of the bill is the Farms to School Program that provides grants and guidance for connecting local farms with public school cafeterias. By supplying locally-grown food and providing education about where their food is grown, students are empowered to make healthy dietary choices early on in their lives. This is essential in combating the issues of childhood obesity and financial food insecurity for kids. Eating local additionally supports vibrant, small-scale economies and minimizes our environmental footprint by reducing the number of miles food travels from farm to fork.

The Farms to School Program looks different in every location, as the availability of produce is dictated by place. Although they are not a part of the federal program, Woodward Elementary School in our very own Kalamazoo exemplifies the farms to school movement. Here the elementary schoolers dig in the dirt of their own community garden, nibbling on various veggies and learning about the importance of growing and preparing healthy foods. I hope you enjoy this short video clip about the USDA's Farms to Schools program that's taking root across the country! 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlD1vU3_LeI

A College Dorm Kitchen

A College Dorm Kitchen

            The kitchen where I’m making dinner is a college dorm kitchen. When they replaced the dorm’s vending machines with a stovetop, it became a “kitchen” in a very rudimentary sense. It contains a chipped white stove sticky with Ramen residue, an ancient microwave I never dared open, and technically enough room to accommodate two students embarking on their first culinary exploits (or, more often, disasters.) Despite my complaints, it was this cramped closet that became my haven during my first year of college.

As an intended English major with a passion for good food, I often intertwine cooking and writing in a similar manner to Jane Kramer, the author of “The Reporter’s Kitchen.” Both are creative endeavors, with aspects that are formulaic but also individual-specific. There are structures for writing good essays and recipes for baking good cakes. However, it is only personal style, creativity, and boldness that can create something truly extraordinary. When speaking about reviewing a book of poems, Kramer writes “while whatever I did say wasn’t going to be the last word on the poetics of domestic violence, it would be my word.” Although my written works and culinary creations in college are hardly internationally acclaimed, they are still unique to me. My works reflect my own personal flavor, if you’ll pardon the bad pun.

This flavor started developing from an early age, thanks to my mother, although I’ll never admit that to her. I can see her in our kitchen, unruly red hair curling out of her clip onto the nape of her neck, and in our office typing away steadily on her ancient computer. She bought me my first notebook and taught me how to make words out of pencil-scratches on paper. She let me make measurements in glass cups and put cupcakes wrappers in tins far before I should have even been allowed in the kitchen.  I learned to cook and write and eat and read; I was both creator and consumer, and in this way I could shake the world, or at least make a really delicious blueberry crumble. To a college freshmen, the world is raw and fresh, brimming with new possibilities. My tiny dorm kitchen was a slice of home, and also an opportunity for new experiences.

My kitchen was not, however, a pantry for old memories and recipes to be stored on dusty shelves. Kramer writes that “some dishes just don’t travel, no matter how obvious or easy they seem,” and I soon learned the truth of this statement. Great cooking, like great writing, is dynamic, constantly evolving. There is always another revision, a better word, a fresher ingredient, to be thrown into the pot. I could never recreate that garden pizza I had in San Francisco with it’s lingering flavors of rich brown soil and heavy-laden grape vines and veggies so fresh they’d just jumped off their vines. Which isn’t to say I couldn’t make my own garden pizza, and some damn good pizza at that, I may add. Cooking is not a recreation, but a re-imagination. It is taking the old recipes apart and creating a slightly different dish. In the same vein, writing is not, or should not, be a recreation of something already said. The same topic or event is processed and pondered upon quite differently by two unique minds. As a writer, I am constantly going back and revising, changing, deleting, and starting afresh old works. I myself am often surprised by the end product (which may or may not be the case with this very essay).