Traditionally, family gatherings have the potential to be an emotionally taxing event. Complex, political arguments aside, the preparation of specific food has the ability to become a very contentious and polarizing experience. For example, the Norwegian dish of lefse, a flat potato pancake, possesses a subjective ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ method of baking and consumption. As revealed through several interviews, not one participant could agree on the ‘proper’ method of serving this complex yet simplistic dish. “Serve it with butter and then maybe some more butter,” stated one subject while another maintained that the only ‘true’ approach was to serve lefse with sugar and cinnamon. Beyond the prevailing passionate opinions on how the dish should be prepared, lefse exists also as evidence of a dynamic relationship between food, female identity and the immigrant experience. Customarily produced by the women of Norwegian-American immigrant communities, passed on from generation to …show more content…
Contemporarily, however, lefse is described as a potato based flatbread enjoyed by families primarily during holidays or special occasions. Often served alongside other traditional Norwegian cuisine, typically lutefisk, lefse is a combination of potato, flour, cream and sugar, hand-rolled and cooked over a hot griddle. Initially, however, the dish did not contain potato. In what is now referred to as ‘Old Norway’, lefse was produced by the women of communities in preparation for the winter season. Stored within barrels, 1 year’s worth of lefse would be made by the women of the entire community, usually taking up to 4 days to complete. Potatoes were introduced to the winter recipe upon the increasing popularity of crops of the stem vegetable during the mid 18th
Montano’s describes growing up half White American and half Mexican American. Montano did not have a proper place in his family. One side called him the “white one” and the other side called him the “Wexican” (Montano). At a young age and utilized cooking to channel his biracial frustrations. He became more frustrated when he and his Mexican father needed a hotel room, and they were refused service. It was at that moment he said, “I hate white people” (Montano). That began Montano’s fathers teaching a lesson. The lesson continued when Montano’s dad took him to a small restaurant from his hometown where the nacho meal was invented. His father correlated the Aztecs’ corn and the Spanish colonies dairy as the fusion of two societies coming together. “This recipe morphed” becoming the nacho created in that Mexican restaurant of the 1950’s served in the “hangout for Mexican and Texas politicians” (Montano). Montano grew and visited Argentina which he found to lack in anything Mexican. Montano missed his spicy food and began cooking. He treated his friends to his authentic Mexican dishes. Cooking was no longer to relieve the frustrations but served as an enjoyment in his heritage. It was through the frustrations as a biracial child and lesson taught by his father using nachos as a metaphor (probably not
Food Inc. addresses many political issues during the film to draw in the audience. Issues such as: the environment, education, workers’ rights, health care, climate change, energy control, to name a few. Director Robert Kenner exposes secrets about the foods society eats, where the food has come from and the processes the food went through. It is these issues that are used as politics of affect in both an extreme visual representation and a strong audio representation that has the biggest impact on the audience and their connection to what they are being told. This paper aims to discuss the film Food Inc. and the propaganda message for positive change, as well as, the differences between seeing food and deciding...
For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal. Yezierska’s text is a powerful example of the turmoil that is created in the family as a result of the conflict between the Old World and the New World.
... Nestle’s quote, Bittman makes his editorial plea to ethos, by proposing proof that a woman of reliable mental power of this issue come to an agreement with Bittman's thesis statement. Bittman also develops pathos in this article because he grabs a widely held matter that to many individuals is elaborate with: "...giving them the gift of appreciating the pleasures of nourishing one another and enjoying that nourishment together.” (Mark Bittman) Bittman gives the reader the actions to think about the last time they had a family dinner and further imposes how these family dinners are altogether important for family time. Therefore, Bittman did a magnificent job in pointing into the morals of his targeted audience and developing a critical point of view about fast food to his intended audience leaving them with a thought on less fast food and more home prepared meals.
This triumphant history is simmering beneath a complicated mixture of endearing and polarizing perspectives. As for many, these are dishes that celebrate a heritage of culinary genius, community-building, and resourcefulness. However, there are many who reach the opposite conclusion and criticize soul food as an exceedingly unhealthy cuisine that needs a warning label, or slave food that is unworthy of celebration (Miller,
The definition of homemade has changed drastically throughout time. Rachel Jones recognizes this in her article “Homemade is the New Organic,” published in 2013 by The Atlantic. It is in this article that she explains how media nowadays has raised expectations on home cooking. Jones` purpose is to make readers aware of the unrecognizable and unrealistic expectations that the modern media subtly places on us when it comes to home cooking. Based on the content and the examples presented in the article, it appears as though the author`s intended audience is people who cook, or more specifically, mothers that cook. Jones begins building her credibility with past experiences and reputable sources, uses facts to back up her claims, and appeals to reader`s emotions.
Michael Twitty is a food writer and culinary historian best known for preparing, preserving and promoting African American food ways and its origins in Africa. He emphasizes how African food culture has made a great impact on the American South. His cooking helped him to learn about his identity and culture. He describes “identity cooking” a way to better understand him and his culture as a Jewish-African American. A project he developed called “The Cooking Gene” is what he explains as a means of “exploring my family history through food, from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom.” Race, food and ethnicity all have a more complex and cultural meaning especially when fused together. Different
Geeta Kothari’s “If You Are What You Eat, Then What Am I?” shares a personal story of a young woman’s efforts to find her identity as she grows up in a culture different than her parents. Kothari retells memories from her childhood in India, as well as her experiences as an American student. Kothari uses food as a representation of culture, and she struggles to appreciate her parent’s culture, often wishing that she was like the American children. Kothari’s tone changes as she comes to realize the importance of maintaining connections to her Indian culture. Originally published in a Kenyon College magazine, Kothari’s main audience was originally student based, and she aimed to give her young readers a new perspective to diversity. Through the
This research project is focused on how food exists to not only help us survive, but also for helping to create and shape identities, especially the national identity for Mexico. I will approach this topic primarily through a discussion on the formation of Mexican cuisine, but also about how food tells us stories about history, art, tradition, globalization, authenticity, and on gendered food identities, particularly on the role of women and their sense of empowerment through the evolution of Mexican cuisine. Mexico’s ethnic food was a part of their culture, but it became problematic when the Europeans brought with them a variety of new foods and looked at Mexican food as suspicious
In “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’” (The Guardian, 2015), Lavanya Ramanathan deplores about how ethnicity is associated with food adventuring. In “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes cultures” (The Washington Post, 2015), Ashlie Stevens puts her audience to perspective with an alternate view on how food exploring does not necessarily lead to cultural imperialism but rather cultural evolution. Ramanathan’s audience comprises Americans in general, where xenophobia and racism is very prominent in their media. Stevens’s audience comprises of the British, known to be less emotional. Although both articles have rightfully addressed that a booming form of cultural appropriation is food adventuring,
As one of the many axes on which humans make social distinctions, gender can become closely entwined with interpreting the social meaning of particular foods and food practices. As such, not just particular foods become gendered, but food production and processes of the development of cuisines and the heritage of culinary traditions can also become highly gendered. Attempting to draw the connection between these different planes, this essay will focus first on the Carol J Adam’s understanding of how meat-eating is increasingly painted as masculine in Euro-American societies through commercialism, before moving on discuss Cynthia Enloe’s analysis of how both agricultural production and removed consumption of the banana, among other foods,
The culinary styles of a people are the by-product of their history, geography, religion, fears, hopes, and regrets. By renouncing meat, which was such a large part Jamaican food, I was renouncing a large part of my culture. Like many...
Food is traditionally considered as a simple means of subsistence but has developed to become filled with cultural, psychological, religious, and emotional significance. Consequently, food is currently used as a means of defining shared identities and symbolizes religious and group customs. In the early 17th and 18th centuries, this mere means of subsistence was considered as a class maker but developed to become a symbol of national identity in the 19th centuries. In the United States, food has been influenced by various cultures such as Native American, Latin America, and Asian cultures. Consequently, Americans have constantly Americanized the foods of different cultures to become American foods. The process on how Americans have Americanized different cultures’ foods and reasons for the Americanization is an important topic of discussion.
Cookbooks during this time period in the 1950’s had a significant role in society in which it impacted and influenced the domestic ideology of postwar America. Many cookbooks were created to advise women and mainly newly-weds in the culinary arts to reassure that their skills in the kitchen would ensure happy marriages. These cookbooks helped to limit women’s role to those of wives, mothers, and homemakers. They are a reflection of the 1950’s popular culture which emphasized conformity, a gender-based society, and gender norms, in which gender roles were very distinct and rigid. They are similar to television in that they can be seen as teachers because they have instructional texts “given detailed account of the correct gender specific way to undertake the activity of cooking” in which their students are mainly women pressuring them to identify themselves as solely housewives and mothers (“The Way to a Man’s Heart”, pg. 531). Because of cookbooks and its reflection on popular culture, there was a heightened emphasis during this time period on the woman’s role in feeding the family. The 1940s cookbooks emphasized more on rationing food and helping the war effort by not wasting any food and being creative of limited sources of food. However, although the concept of food is different, the domestic ideology was still the same in that these
Dan Bartlett (2014). Kitchen Brigade: Who Does What?. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.artinstitutes.edu/adv/files/kitchen_brigade.pdf. [Last Accessed 10 February 2014].