Is This Title Authentic?

Meredith Ashton

Culinary Tourism

Reading Response

20 October 2016

Is This Title Authentic?

            Dean MacCannell analyzes the tourist experience, stating “touristic consciousness is motivated by its desire for authentic experiences.” The work Culinary Tourism by Lucy Long expands upon this statement, analyzing culinary tourism as an exercise motivated by the human curiosity to experience “the other” as an escape from the mundane. This experience can be set on Lucy’s continuum of the exotic to the familiar, as the degree of  desired “authenticity” is individual-specific. The issue is additionally muddled by the fact that the very idea of the “authentic” is socially constructed, holding differing meanings in varied cultural contexts. Due to the individual-specific nature of the culinary tourism critique, I decided to turn inwards to reflect on my experience with authentic (or perhaps, more accurately, inauthentic) tourism.

            One of my first experiences with “other” cultural cuisine was in Disney World: the quintessential icon of “Americanness.” I remember walking around the World Showcase in Disney’s EPCOT theme park, icy cold gelato sticking to my throat in Italy and a Mexican candy skull so sugary my eight-year-old self spit it back out. Who knew that something could have too much sugar? It was fabulous and exotic and exhilaratingly different. My young “tourist’s gaze” was adept at discovering all of the exciting differences between “here and there.” In the matter of a an hour or two I had walked through eleven countries, heard men in plaid kilts blare their bagpipes, watched a belly dancer shake her hips in the din of a Moroccan restaurant, and found no fewer than three gruesome trolls on the Maelstrom ride in Norway.

I was practically a world traveler. It was only the occasional Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream bar and the surprise spotting of Beauty and the Beast on the cobbled streets of France that reminded me I was still very much in good ol’ America. Disney created a user-friendly type of culinary tourism for its guests, where young American families could experience “the other” as a type of elaborate theatrical imitation, and still have the option of an “American Hot Dog and French Fries” in the conveniently located American Pavilion in the center of the Showcase.

Don’t get me wrong. I freaking love Disney World—some of my fondest childhood memories include consuming fistfuls of colorful Goofy Sour gummy worms with my sister under the backdrop of Cinderella’s Castle. I’ve simply become more aware over the years that Disney’s theme-park-packaged experience falls very far towards the familiar end of the culinary tourism spectrum. While I still enjoy walking the streets of the World Showcase with my family, I now do so with the understanding that it is more of a “show of the world” than an authentic showcase, which is tailored to a very tourist-specific lens. EPCOT presents an experience authentic to Disney World, but not necessarily of the different cultural others that it performs for its guests.

Artisanal Delicacies

Meredith Ashton

Secret Ingredients

Reading Response 2

13 October 2016

Artisanal Delicacies

            The final chapters of the Local Delicacies section of Secret Ingredients spoke to the beauty and culinary superiority of artisanal food products. As the descriptions of these foods were so lovely and tantalizing, I began to wonder: what is it that makes these artisanal products so delicious? After analyzing these sections, which describe “those particularly gnarly little dark pumpernickel bagels,” unpasteurized cheeses created by a nun, and the artisanal tofu handmade by Japanese monks, I discovered a few common themes that tie these artisanal dishes together.

            The first aspect that surprised me was the incredible amount of hard work and specialized knowledge that these dishes necessitate. When making tofu, for example, many artisans show up at two in the morning to begin the arduous task of ensuring the product is “soaked, ground, boiled, strained, reboiled, curdled, pressed, drained, cooled, sliced, and packaged” (Thurman 328). Such a time-intensive task also requires individuals to have very specific knowledge of the process. In the case of Mother Noella in the chapter “Raw Faith,” she has completed a Ph.D. in microbiology, studying cheese caves in France for her doctoral thesis. The nun has an incredible amount of specialized knowledge about the bacteria and fungi that are an essential aspect of the artisanal cheese-making process. Bagels, too, turned out to be far more complex than I had previously imagined. There are specific flours and an intermediate boiling period that create a huge difference between a bagel and a bread.

            The process of creating these artisanal goods relies not only on the knowledge and perseverance of these cooks, but also upon natural forces. Both cheese and tofu require an intricate understanding of natural forces and native ingredients. Mother Noella explains that “Every dairy, every cheese cave, has its own specific ecology. Every handful of soil, no matter how ordinary, contains more biodiversity than a rainforest,” (Bilger 321). With her keen knowledge of fungi, Mother Noella is able to harness this natural process to aid with her cheese-making. Tofu also requires a nuanced knowledge of the natural, as a key part of creating artisanal tofu is finding the correct ingredients. The author of the section explains the difficult task of locating the right coral reef off the coast of a certain island where there resides the perfect kind of seaweed to mix in with the half-formed tofu.

            The final component of these artisanal delicacies is that their complicated processes result in unique, individualized food products that one cannot find elsewhere. In “The Magic Bagel,” Calvin Trillin spends multiple days searching for the particular artisanal bagel he once enjoyed with his daughter. He refuses to settle for any other kind of pumpernickel bagel because it simply won’t be the same experience. As we’ve discussed in class, eating the same food twice, especially one tied up in nostalgia, will not be an exact simulation of the first time that you tried a dish. Trillin, however, does not seem to be looking for a recreation of his pumpernickel bagel.  Rather he acknowledges and respects the beauty and “magic” of that food from his past, and wishes to possibly taste that connection to food and his family once more. It is this ethereal, magical component that contributes to the success, and arguable superiority, of artisan foods.

How much is too much?

Meredith Ashton

Dining Out Reading Response

10 October 2016

How much is too much?

            How much should we eat? This is a question that, when posed to a passionate French chef, a clean plate club mother, and a stringent doctor, would merit very different responses. It’s a query that comes with enormous privilege, as only those with disposable time and income have the opportunity to determine to what degree of excess they will eat on a daily basis.

            As a child, I was raised to be exactly the kind of customer that has the French chefs and food critics in the Dining Out section of Secret Ingredients shuddering in horror. My household was self-labeled “health-conscious,” and as such I entered restaurants as a salad-loving vegetarian accustomed to the reasonable portions I received at home. I suppose this was the inevitable outcome of having a mother who owns a gym, an aunt who’s a registered dietician, and another aunt who competes in Iron Man competitions. Basically, there was zero chance that my family would be invited to an all-you-can-stuff-in-your-face beefsteak.

            Coming from such a strictly portion controlled background, the idea of eating an enormous amount of food was foreign to me as a reader. In the chapter title All You Can Hold for Five Bucks, Joseph Mitchell presented the beefsteak as a festive atmosphere in which individuals came together over the consumption of huge quantities of meat and beer in a rich, time-honored celebration of social and political success. And honestly, as strange as the initial thought of eating six steaks was, the beefsteak sounded pretty darn entertaining.

            The tradition reminded me of my family’s one instance of eating excess: holidays, of which Easter was the pinnacle. In the Orthodox Christian tradition, we celebrate Pascha, or Easter, at a midnight service that goes into the wee hours of Sunday morning, and then enjoy the Agape (God’s love) Meal directly afterwards. Similar to the beefsteak, the Agape Meal is a celebration of a special event (the birth of Christ), in which the entire parish shares an outlandishly excessive meal with the communal goal of eating as much as humanly possible at two o’clock in the morning. Parishioners bring wicker baskets overflowing with sausage links, ham, red-dyed eggs, rich breads adorned with dough crosses, sculpted butter lambs, large chocolate Easter bunnies for the kids, wheels of cheese, and bottles of wine and ouzo and vodka, depending on one’s ethnic background. Hands pass around goods from personal baskets, so everyone gets a nibble of whatever they wish. It’s a relatively quiet endeavor at first, with all mouths engaged in the all-consuming task of eating. That is, until the deacon starts going around with the shots and a rousing chorus of Russian drinking songs fills the hall with rowdy laughter.

            In the chapter titled Really Big Lunch, Harrison wrote that “life is a near death experience, and our devious minds will do anything to make it interesting.” When I first read this passage and reflected on his 37 course lunch, along with the beefsteak celebration, I found it hard to understand. For most of my childhood, I’d been taught that we eat to live. Now, Harrison was proposing that we live to eat, or at least we zest up our lives by enjoying the occasional six hour lunch. This contrast reminded me of one of my mom’s few sayings that I actually enjoyed: “everything in moderation, even moderation.” Perhaps that is the answer to the age-old question of proper portions. If you’re lucky enough to have the privilege, eat until you’re full. But a beefsteak every once in awhile can help to keep life fresh.

"Transition"

Meredith Ashton

Memoir Piece

8 October 2016

“Transition”

The autumn wind whips through my thin running tights and my glove has a gaping tear on the thumb, exposing my pale-pink skin to the harsh Michigan gale. 

“Who the fuck decided we should walk here?” grumbles Emmy, my roommate and companion on one of our first college “adventures” together. I sigh, eyes glued to my phone screen, the little GPS straining under the weight of near-constant “recalculation” to our path. My cheeks are rosy, aided by the wind and a growing feeling of incompetence. I was failing as a navigator. Jesus, I was a freaking freshman in college and I couldn’t follow simple GPS instructions.

We had left our cozy little cubicle of a dorm and ventured out into the great unknown that was The City of Kalamazoo. After our first month at college, we were already thoroughly disappointed with the cafeteria’s “vegetarian options,” which mainly consisted of slabs of undercooked tofu slathered in different pungent sauces and given deceptively interesting names. And so, the vegan and the vegetarian, armed with my phone’s GPS and two terribly misguided senses of direction, embarked on our quest to find and conquer the Kalamazoo Farmer’s Market.

At least we were moving. I had spent my first month of college transitioning. Which is a nice way of saying I spent a lot of time in my dorm room wondering why the heck I’d chosen to come to a tiny school on Michigan’s west coast where I didn’t know a soul. It seemed like everyone else was figuring it out just fine. I missed my friend Emma who I’d known since first grade when we dueled with twigs on the playground. I missed getting slushies at Speedway with my sister every day on our drive home from high school and coming home to see my mom bent over our stovetop making dinner. Motion implied progression, and that could only be a positive thing, right?

Lost in my reverie, I didn’t notice we’d (finally) reached our destination until Emmy tapped my sleeve with her own mittened hand. It looked like a small city. The covered stalls created a large square, encircling a central area in which there were vendors selling beeswax candles, hand-knit scarves and hats, wheels of cheese aged to perfection, donuts fried in boiling oil, and a booth with a dazzling array of multicolored salsas. I bought dusty red sweet potatoes and a large onion from a man  missing quite a few teeth, and a wooden crate full of fresh apples from two twin brothers in matching flannels. There was a very nice woman who tried to sell me some ginger herbal tea, but I managed to politely refuse. I was in my element—plunging my numb hands into crates of produce to examine each carrot before purchase and then shaking hands with the farmer who’d pulled the leafy vegetable from the ground days before. I found comfort in the sense of control that accompanied choosing my own food, as well as in the childhood memories associated with the task.

I remember long car rides to the farm co-op with my mom, straining against the confining car seat to peek out the window. We drove down winding roads with windmills and cows. The cows, despite their perpetual lethargy, were always particularly exciting during the journey. The farm was mostly a place where I could “look but not touch.” My mom brought me along to help her carry the bags because “that’s why I had children,” she said. I didn’t mind too much. The best part about the brown paper bags that the grizzled old overall-wearing farmer handed us  was that the contents were a surprise. I loved peering into the sacks and seeing the stacks of red-ripened tomatoes, the kind I could snap off the green vine and eat like an apple, red juice dribbling down my chin. The only possible garnish was a sprinkle of sea salt. Anything else would ruin the light crunch of their crisp skin, and the gush of their juicy insides spilling seeds and juice into my mouth. One time our bags were full of radishes.

“What do you do with radishes?” I asked my mom. For the next two weeks, I discovered that you can, in fact, incorporate radishes into dinner every single night. A salad garnished with radishes, tortilla soup with radishes, steamed radishes and peas, radish crostini, radish slaw, braised radishes, radishes sneaked into sandwiches, and, when all else failed, a small pile of radishes served raw as a side. The sight of the offending crimson-red vegetable makes me queasy to this day.

The farm was a place of dirt and bugs and grime; an experience separate from the manicured grocery store aisles from which food “normally” came, and exceedingly different from anything else in my Midwestern suburban schema. The Kalamazoo Farmer’s Market presented something similar: an escape. But this time instead of moving from what I knew as a child to what was novel and exciting, I was transitioning (that pesky word again) from the foreign to the familiar. Here I didn’t have to worry about making friends and how to start “having the best four years of my life.” I could find comfort and belonging in what I knew—the process of journeying to my food and then preparing it with creativity and love.

I remember my favorite dish as a child (and still today if we’re being honest and totally un-health conscious) was my mom’s homemade mac and cheese. I remember slowly whisking together milk and flour as my mom tossed in at least ten different cheese into the pot, scavenged from whatever we had left in the fridge. I stole a nibble of the mozzarella when she turned her back. It was my job to whisk the cheese into the roux without letting it burn. The American cheese was my favorite to watch. It would slowly dissolve, turning from solid to liquid with a turn of my whisk, disappearing under the creamy folds of the sauce just like magic. I remember watching the layers of thick spiral pasta with the cheese flowing over them, encasing each noodle in a thick coating of orange sauce. And my mom hand-beating the saltines into fine crumbs and then, with a finger to her lips, pouring a small tablespoon of butter over the top. It was all a secret: hers and mine.

            So now I’m back in our tiny dorm kitchen, sautéing blood-orange Farmer’s Market carrots in thick olive oil. The flip of my rubber-tipped spatula reveals the lightly toasted underbellies of my vegetables. I toss in a handful of lightly chopped onions to the frying pan. Emmy stands next to me, so close her left hand nearly bumps my right as she tests the tiny redskin potatoes boiling next to me on the stovetop. Alt-J blares over the sizzling pops of the sautéing veggies and I sway lightly to the music, bouncing my knees and my elbows in my trademark “mom” dance. I grab a carrot from the pan, disregarding its internal temperature, and defiantly plop it into my mouth. There’s no one to police the taste-testing now. We eat our meal in the dark out of one bowl (less to wash later), carrots and potatoes mashed together with the onions, huddled around Emmy’s laptop, already on the fourth season of Game of Thrones. The sweetness of the carrots, despite being slightly charred, melds with the creamy mashed potatoes and I have to admit: it tastes pretty damn good.

            It’s different, this new cooking ritual. We trekked through the cold and burnt the carrots to a crisp and set off the smoke alarm twice, but we did it. It’s only now, cozy in my dorm with a full stomach, that I realize I haven’t thought about college or transitioning in awhile. In fact, I might even feel a little hopeful that this nebulous thing called “home” can move with me to college. 

The Secret Strawberry Bush

Meredith Ashton

Memoir Piece

2 October 2016

The Secret Strawberry Bush

It’s dark here, under the belly of the yellow slide. I squeeze three little fruits in my left hand, careful not to squish them between my fingers. Mom doesn’t like it when I get stains on my clothes. I push one into my mouth, and I let it sit on my tongue, licking off every particle of sugar before chewing and swallowing. The sweet juice is cool against the summer’s heat. I toss the bent green stem into the grass, secretly hoping that one day my very own strawberry bush will grow here.

I have been consumed by food my entire life. From sneaking sugar-coated strawberries under my play set on lazy summer afternoons to experimenting with my own cooking in college, I have developed my criteria for the perfect meal. Food is a fundamental connection between individuals and the land from which we harvest it. I long for food that sustains me on a spiritual level, as well as a physical one. Storied food, shared from farm to fork, across kitchen tables and stovetops—this, this is what I desire.

The food of my childhood was healthy and handpicked. I remember long car rides to the farm co-op with my mom. We drove down winding roads with windmills and cows. The cows, despite their perpetual lethargy, were always a particularly exciting find during the journey. The farm was mostly a place where I could “look but not touch.” My mom brought me along to help her carry the bags because “that’s why she had children.” I didn’t mind too much. The best part about the brown paper bags that the grizzled old farmer handed us, (I never could remember his name, but he definitely wore overalls, which was almost more exciting than the cows) were that the contents were a surprise. I loved peering into the sacks and seeing the stacks of red-ripened tomatoes; the kind I could snap off the green vine and eat like an apple, red juice dribbling down my chin. The only possible garnish was a sprinkle of sea salt. Anything else would ruin the light crunch of their crisp skin, and the gush of their juicy insides spilling seeds and juice into my waiting mouth. One time, our bags were full of radishes. Radishes. I asked my mom, what you do with radishes? For the next two weeks, I discovered that you can, in fact, incorporate radishes into dinner every single night. A salad garnished with radishes, tortilla soup with radishes, steamed radishes and peas, radish crostini, radish slaw, braised radishes, radishes snuck into sandwiches, and, when all else failed, a small pile of radishes served raw as a side. The sight of the offending crimson-red vegetable makes me queasy to this day.

I continued the tradition of food adventuring my first year of college. Our first month, already thoroughly disappointed with the cafeteria’s “vegetarian options” which consisted of slabs of undercooked tofu slathered in different pungent sauces, my roommate and I resolved to trek to the Kalamazoo Farmer’s Market. We left our cozy little cubicle of a dorm and ventured out into the great unknown that was the City of Kalamazoo. Armed with my phone’s GPS and two terribly misguided senses of direction, we embarked on our quest. While there weren’t any cows lounging on the side of the road, we did see beautiful old homes with white-wrapped porches, a smattering of churches from every denomination, and an empty city park. The Market itself was more impressive (and the fact that we discovered it after only getting lost twice, even more so). It was a particularly chilly fall day and my thin windbreaker and running tights did little to protect me from the frigid wind. The covered stalls created a large square, encircling a central area in which there were vendors selling beeswax candles, hand-knit scarves and hats, donuts fried in boiling oil, and a booth with a dazzling array of multicolored salsas. I bought dusty red sweet potatoes and a large onion from a man (also in overalls!) missing quite a few teeth, and a wooden crate full of fresh apples from two twin brothers in matching flannels. There was a very nice Asian woman who tried to sell me some ginger herbal tea, but I managed to politely refuse. This was my element—plunging my numb hands into bins of produce to examine each carrot before purchase and then shaking hands with the same farmer who’d just pulled the leafy vegetable from the ground days before.

This is food with a connection. And as I don’t see myself donning a pair of overalls in the near future, it’s the closest thing I’ll have to really knowing from where my food comes. And that doesn’t mean that I subsist solely on freshly picked carrots and radishes; my mom taught me that everything in life is about balance. And knowing that your food was cooked with love is even more satisfying than haggling with scantily-toothed farmers.

If I had to choose one dish for my Last Meal, it would be my mom’s homemade mac & cheese, but only if they let her make it for me. It’s my comfort food. My guiltiest pleasure. And, if I haven’t made this explicitly obvious yet, it’s damn good. I remember slowly whisking together milk and flour as my mom tossed in at least ten different cheese into the pot, scavenged from whatever we had left in the fridge. I stole a nibble of the mozzarella when she turned her back. It was my job to whisk the cheese into a roux without letting it burn. The American cheese was my favorite to watch. It would slowly dissolve, turning from solid to liquid with a turn of my whisk, disappearing under the creamy folds of the sauce just like magic. I remember watching the layers of thick spiral pasta with the cheese flowing over them, encasing each noodle in a thick coating of orange sauce. And my mom hand-beating the saltines into fine crumbs and then, with a finger to her lips, pouring a small tablespoon of butter over the top. It was all a secret; hers and mine.