Expository Writing-Food: Good Work

Dear all, 
   This week, we are focusing on the relationship between food and socio-economic class.  Some questions to consider as we work through the material.

1) What is the relationship between food and class?
2) What is the relationship between food and economics?
3) What does food tell us about the ways in which society is structured?
4) What are high-class/low-class foods?
5) What are some food stereotypes?

Please look at the following links for you reading this week.

Heirlooms
My Repertoire
The Food at Our Feet
Yaji

Also, here is a great Gettin Real in the Whole Foods Parking Lot video.

Best.
 JMN

Expository Writing--Food-Article

All,
   For homework tonight, please begin reading the following article by Peter Singer, Famine, Affluence and Morality.  It is a difficult article with very deep philosophical implications.  Take your time and come prepared to discuss it tomorrow.  You do not need to post on the blog. Also, remember that we have our Ramen fest tomorrow.  I can't wait to taste your creations.

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing-Food: Article

All,
   the link below will lead you to an article by Jared Diamond, a, important historian, writing on the question of whether the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic age was a good thing.  Please read and comment.

The Worst Mistake

JMN

Expository Writing--Food: Article, Critical Thinking, Analyitical Essay

All,
   After reviewing the film "Forks Over Knives", please begin the two-fold process of critique.  1) Read through the following critique of the movie (Forks Over Knives Critique); 2) determine which of the arguments presented from the movie and the critique are better and why. 

You will be writing an analytical essay comparing the relative worth of the two sets of arguments.  This is the beginning of an argumentative essay.  The paper will be due Monday.

Expostory Writing: Food--Article

Dear all, 

   Here is an article from renowned columnist, Roger Cohen on food.  Enjoy!

August 31, 2009

Op-Ed Columnist

Advantage France

By ROGER COHEN

CHERENCE, FRANCE — Arrival is usually defined as reaching a destination, but of course it’s more than that, it’s the moment when you have shed enough of where you came from to be present at the place you’ve reached. This offloading of layers takes time, like peeling an onion.

 

My French arrival this year was time-consuming. Iran, which is another story, had me. But the moment came, and when it came, it was not the dawn swooping of starlings, the softness of the dusk light through the sycamores, or the chiming of a village bell that delivered me to “la douce France,” but the sight of glistening guts.

The guts in question were being coaxed by a hand — ungloved — from the belly of a four-pound sea bass — unfarmed — at the market in the Norman town of Vernon, which has one stand devoted solely to watercress. The fish, iridescent, its gills bright scarlet, was fresh from the waters off Dieppe.

 

My friend Marcel Bossy, who had made the pre-dawn drive from the coast with his glossy load, had his hand deep in the fish. He was laughing about something as the guts slithered onto a scale-coated chopping board.

 

My 11-year-old daughter, Adele, covered her eyes, but I was riveted. Marcel’s wife, Sandrine, also laughing — something ribald between them — was gutting firm mackerel with swift incisions and finger movements, when one dropped to the ground. She scooped the fish up and resumed work on it, putting me in mind of Julia Child’s famous statement about a miss-flipped potato pancake: “You can always pick it up.”

 

Since Child, in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and in her groundbreaking 1960’s television show “The French Chef,” brought Gallic secrets to riveted Americans, the shameless gutting and picking-up of real food in ungloved hands has given way to the hurried-hermetic-hygienic U.S. fever of plastic gloves, processed foods and precooked meals.

 

Those fish guts delivered me to France because, although this country has its share of fast-food outlets, it has preserved a relationship to food distinguished from the American in three essential respects: fear, time and “terroir.”

 

If Americans want their fish pre-filleted, their chicken breasts excised from surrounding bone and conveniently packed, their offal kept from view and the table, and any hand that touches a slice of ham or lox sealed inside a glove, it is because fear of the innards that will not speak their name, the guts that reek of life, and the germs we all carry has become rampant.

 

By contrast, the French don’t believe what they’re eating is genuine unless they’ve seen gritty proof of provenance. They like the alchemy of the peasant hand that does the pâté grip.

 

American anxiety is related to the American perception of time, which is always short in a land that prizes efficiency above all. Precooked meals — food divorced from its origins, food without guts — is faster to prepare and therefore attractive.

I bought a couple of the female ducklings the French call “canettes” the other day. It took 15 minutes for the cutting-off of head, feet and wing-tips; for the innards to be removed; for the placing in the cleansed insides of the liver, kidneys and neck; for singeing over a gas burner; and for discussion as to whether I wanted the plump ducks trussed for rotisserie cooking (I did not).

 

Most stores in New York don’t bother selling ducklings — they’re inefficient birds in that the meat-to-size ratio is low — and if they did such protracted preparation would be unthinkable. Time bows at the altar of gastronomy in France. In the United States time is the altar.

 

The third fundamental difference relates to “terroir,” the untranslatable combination of soil, hearth and tradition that links most French people to a particular place. France sees American mobility with a sacred immobility; attachments trump restlessness.

 

These are attachments of the gut, which brings us back to why the French take such pleasure in those hands at work cleansing a sea bass or a duckling, and why a stand selling watercress (with the unique taste of a particular patch of soil) is viable.

The French Paradox, so-called, is really the French self-evidence. Change your relationship to fear, time and place, and you change your metabolism. This has less to do with the specific foods eaten, or the specific wine drunk (although of course they count) than it has to do with how food is approached.

 

According to the 2009 C.I.A. World Factbook, the estimated average life expectancy in France is 80.98 (84.33 for women and 77.79 for men), against 78.11 for the United States (80.69 for women and 75.65 for men.) France ranks 9th in the world; America ranks 50th. There’s something to be said for ungloved hands picking mackerel from the ground. 

 

The American healthcare debate is skewed. It should be devoting more time to changing U.S. culinary and eating habits in ways that cut the need for expensive care by reducing rampant obesity, to which anxiety, haste and disconnectedness contribute. France has much to teach, guts and all.

Expository Writing: Food-Psychology of Food Article

All,
   here is an article on the psychology of food that I want you to read.  Please read it tonight and come ready to discuss the relationship of Orthorexia to the psychology of food.  There will be a writing assignment and discussion in class tomorrow.

Paul Bloom-How Pleasure Works

Best,
JMN

Expository Writing: Food--Article

Here's an interesting piece in the NYT that contrasts well with Barbara Kingsolver's work.

NYT Piece on Locavores

Expository Writing: Food--Homework

Dear all,
  For your homework tonight, please carefully, but leisurely, read the following introduction to Barbara Kingolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Mineral.  You do not need to do anything else, but read it. I will pose some questions for discussion tomorrow, and we will continue to work on our writing exercises. 

All the best,
JMN

Expository Writing: Food--Article for Class on Monday

Dear all,
   Here is an article we are going to work through on Monday.  We will begin by reading the article, then examining the author's use of punctuation.  You do not have to read the article before class, but you can if you want to.  If you do, please consider highlighting the punctuation.  We will discuss grammar quite a bit tomorrow. 


Ackerman: Chocolate Equals Love


Best,
JMN

Expository Writing:Food--Good Writing

Lucy Calkins Talking About Good Writing and Being a Good Writer

22 Super Foods For Your Health

Super Foods Video

Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead Trailer

AP World Histroy--Standage Excerpt

Hi, all.
   Here is an electronic copy of the text from last night.

Standage: An Edible Hisotry of Humanity

Expository Writing: Food-Bittman and Standage Readings

Dear all,
   Here is the reading from last night along with an extra piece of writing for you to work through tonight.

All the best,
JMN

Bittman: Why Take Food Seriously?


Standage: An Edible History of Humanity