Cookbook Exploration

     The cookbook that I chose to explore is entitled, Feast of Goodness, by the W.M.U. of Bethlehem Baptist Church.  The cookbook tells you a lot about this group of women.  On the second page of the cookbook, they have included the times of the different services at their church, as well as, an open invitation for all visitors to come.  Then on the fifth page they included common emotions, such as afraid, bereaved, depressed along with where you can find it in the Bible.  Throughout the cookbook they have included inspirational quotes and Bible verses as well.  If you did not know that the W.M.U. of Bethlehem Baptist Church put this cookbook together, you would be able to tell that some sort of church group put it together just by looking at what they have included in their cookbook.  Throughout the book, it is clear that they are targeting mothers and wives.  On page 24 of the cookbook it says, “You can’t always tell what makes a man tick until you meet his wife. She may be the works.”  This insert shows that the women who made this cookbook, intended for it to be read and used by wives. 

In David Sutton’s article, “Cooking Skills, the Senses, and Memory” he says,” Skill raises issues of apprenticeship and repetition, and the education of the senses that allow for the comparisons necessary to judge the successful dish (Sutton 300).”  At the end of this cookbook they include many different tools for the cooks.  Some of the tools include cooking tips, a calorie counter, measurements, napkin folding, microwave hints, equivalency chart, and food quantities. Sutton claims that education is a major part of cooking, and this cookbook reveals this as well.  All of the tools and hints are to help educate the person using these recipes to cook. I found it interesting that the cookbook included a page on microwave hints.  Sutton says, “The microwave is another such device which seems to deskill the cook in relation to the traditional oven (Sutton 304).”  Sutton makes it seem that the microwave should not be used; however, in Feast of Goodness it is clear that it is okay with these women to use the microwave during cooking.  Sutton also mentions that food is “a symbol of identity (Sutton 317).”  I think this is relative to the cookbook I have chosen, given that throughout the cookbook the women form an identity for this person cooking.  The identity of a Christian wife/mother is the identity that is conveyed throughout Feast of Goodness. I never really thought about analyzing a cookbook, but it was very interesting seeing how an identity is formed throughout the cookbook.

Easter Sunday

One topic of discussion in my Cooking Up Culture class lately has been memory in association with food.  Given that this past Sunday was Easter, I felt that it was reasonable to discuss the association I place on memory and food in conjunction with Easter Sunday.  Easter is a very important holiday to me. I am a Christian and attend Botsford Baptist Church.  Easter Sunday is the day that Jesus was raised from the tomb, which is a very big deal to me.  This means that He died to conquer death for me.  Because of the price He paid by dying for my sins, I will be able to live again in Heaven with Him.  This Holiday represents so much more to me that Easter eggs and Bunnies.  While I agree that egg hunts and Easter bunny visits are definitely a fun part of Easter, it takes on a much more important role in my life.  It is the basis of my faith in Christ. My church has a “Sonrise” service every Easter morning.  Part of this service include communion, which is the Lord’s Supper.  Communion means “the breaking of bread.” It includes grape juice, which represents the blood of Jesus that cleanses our sins, and a small piece of bread, which represents the body of Christ.  Communion is time in which it is our privilege to enjoy fellowship with our risen Lord with each other.  This is a serious and meaningful time for Christians. After communion is over, there is prayer, and we sing a song before exiting.  This communion brings back the memory of being saved and baptized.  I was saved on February 28, 2011 when I was 18 years old.  This is a memory that is very precious to me, and I hold it close to my heart.  I associate my faith in Christ and my memory of being saved with Communion.  In David Sutton’s article entitled, “ Cooking Skills, the Senses, and Memory: The Fate of Practical Knowledge,” he says “Skill raises issues of apprenticeship and repetition, and the education of the senses that allow for the comparisons necessary to judge the successful dish (Sutton 200).” While I understand that Sutton is not referring to communion, the connection that I make with this statement is that communion incorporates repetition and education.  Communion is something that is done a few times a year, and it occurs in the same way each time.  It is a repeated occurrence, and it also includes education about the Christian faith.  Without the education behind the Lord’s Supper, it has no meaning to you, and therefore you have no memory to associate with it.  Sutton also mentions that food is a “symbol of identity (Sutton 317).”  This can be seen in relation to Communion, because the food involved in communion is a symbol of the Christian identity.  Easter Sunday Communion represents a very precious memory to me and also represents part of the person I am. Sutton’s article expresses the connection between food and memory, which connects to the personal memory I have that connects with Communion. 

 The body and blood of Christ

Memories and a Lasting Bond

Growing up I was always in the kitchen with my mama. She cooked dinner for my family every night of the week, and I was the typical daughter who always wanted to help out.  Holidays were very special, because tons of food had to be cooked including deserts.  Baking deserts with my mama was always my favorite thing to do, because it was our mother-daughter time.  I have an older brother and usually we were all together, but when it was time to cook/bake, it was just my mama and I.  Every holiday my family has a big lunch for us all to eat.  One thing that my mama has always made is red velvet cake.  When I was younger I would help her with this cake; however, now that I have grown up, the red velvet cake is my job.  While she is mixing up a casserole or working on another dish for the holiday lunch, I start working on the red velvet cake.  She has passed the torch on to me.  She no longer helps me bake the cake, but we are still spending time with each other.  While we are bustling around the kitchen trying to get everything prepared we talk about everything going on in our lives.  I still live at home with my parents, but I do not spend much time there given all of the schoolwork I have to do.  This time of cooking and baking with my mom represents something very intimate to me.  I have a chance to talk with her and get advice from her. I chose to bake a red velvet cake for my memory food, because it brings back those memories as a child of helping my mother in the kitchen.  While many tend to say that daughters are “daddy’s girls,” I was definitely a “mama’s girl.” I was attached to her hip as a child, and still can be that way sometimes.  This is just one of the many memories that I have with my mama, and I felt that it strongly represented the bond that I share with her.  The bond that I share with my mother reminded me of the bond that is expressed in Allison’s article entitled, “Japanese Mothers and Obentos: Lunchbox as an ideological State Apparatus.”  Allison talks about how the mother puts precious time and planning into making the obentos for her child to take to school, and this time and effort creates a bond between the mother and the child (Allison 85-86).  These Japanese mothers would spend hours working on their child’s obentos to make it a beautiful piece of artwork filled with colorful foods (Allison 84).  While my mama did not put all of this work into cooking, she did reveal cooking as an art form.  She would take a recipe and tweak it to create something a little different, and she always made sure that our plates were colorful.  She always incorporated colorful veggies for us.  My brother never cared for veggies, but she always made us finish our food.  The children in Allison’s article were expected to finish all of the food in their obentos or they were considered being disrespectful (Allison 86).  I can relate to this, because my mama always expected my brother and I to finish what was on our plate.  She would say things like, “How will you grow up to be big and strong if you don’t eat all of your food?” This activity was extremely fun, because it made me realize how important food can be and that there is a deeper meaning in food than just what meets the eye.  Simply baking a red velvet cake overwhelms my brain with memories of the past. 

 Red Velvet Cake Recipe

My mom and me :) 

Thanksgiving Traditions

     Thanksgiving is a big deal in my family!  We all come together to cook and prepare the food and then sit down for a nice feast.  We usually have all of the “traditional” Thanksgiving foods like turkey, dressing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green bean casserole, squash casserole, cream corn, biscuits, giblets, and giblet gravy.  Now I’m not too keen on the giblet stuff but my grandma likes it! Then there is all of the desserts like sweet potato pie, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and the list goes on and on.  Now there are some items that aren’t what you would call “traditional” Thanksgiving food, such as, the casseroles, the cream corn, and some of the desserts.  In my opinion each family makes Thanksgiving their own.  It is a time of nationality and family, and each family incorporates their own twist on things. 

     In my family, the women make all the food except for the turkey.  My dad always deep fries the turkey, so we leave that up to him.  My grandma, my mom, my cousins, and aunts all come together to help make all the different dishes.  We divide things up between all of us, and we all get started cooking.  My grandma loves to cook, and ever since I was a little girl I cannot remember and day that went by that she has not cooked something!  She always cooks the dressing. She helps cook everything else but she is the only one that cooks the dressing.  Honestly, I couldn’t tell you why this is but it is just tradition.  I think many things are like that today.  We do things the way we do them because that is how they have always been done.  We don’t like to stray from the norm, so we stick to what we know! After everything has been prepared, my dad or one of my uncles carves the turkey.  Yet another thing that I cannot explain.  I do not know why the men are always the ones to carve the turkey, but that is how it has always been done. 

     After the turkey has been carved and all the food is laid out, the children line up first.  The kids have always been the first ones to eat.  Now that I have gotten older, I have to wait till my smaller cousins get through before I can dive in (which sucks by the way)! We always have Thanksgiving at my grandma’s house, which is not very big in comparison to my family; therefore, we have to eat in sets.  The kids go first, then the younger adults, and then the older people.  Now I am not saying that it is forbidden to go ahead of your “turn,” but this is the order that we have always stuck to. Once all of the kids have their plates and are sitting down, my dad says the blessing over the food acknowledging the day of Thanksgiving that we are observing by eating this feast. Throughout the day we reminisce over memories of the past and talk of what we are all thankful for.  When I think about it, it is odd how we just do things because of tradition.  We never question Thanksgiving asking when this began. Where it started? Or who started it? Recently, I read “The Invention of Thanksgiving: A ritual of American nationality,” by Janet Siskind.  She brought up many good points of how we as Americans do not know when Thanksgiving began or the real reason behind it.  Siskind says “it is impossible to be an American and be unaware of Thanksgiving,” and she is completely correct (Siskind 167).  There is not one American that does not know about Thanksgiving! So how can we all know this holiday, but not really KNOW what it is?

    Thanksgiving is a national event, and celebrating it somehow conveys the fact that you are in fact an American.  Siskind talks of how the actual first Thanksgiving Day is not even known for certain, and that Thanksgiving is basically a made up holiday. We have formed this day saying that it originates from the pilgrims first Thanksgiving feast, but it does not originate from that.  So how can we take so much pride in a holiday that we know nothing about?  I guess this shows how tradition plays a key role in our lives.  Americans have been preparing a big feast for their family in November for years and years; therefore, we continue to carry on this tradition without any hesitation.  Siskind says, “The preparation of the Thanksgiving feast is a traditional responsibility of women, the carving of the turkey usually the prerogative of the man of the house.  Women wash the dishes after the feast while men watch violent games on television.  Gender roles and family hierarchy are reaffirmed. The media and all the schools emphasize the importance at Thanksgiving time of the need to be with the family, and it is this need that is projected onto the wider screen of nationality (Siskind 185).” She says it all in this quote.  As I said earlier, the women of my family cook and the men carve the turkey.  It is crazy how strong gender roles are in our daily lives, and how important that can be on a national holiday like Thanksgiving. 

     After spending some time thinking about Thanksgiving and what it truly means, it makes me wonder why we never stop to think of where it comes from and why it is so important.  Maybe this is something that should be looked into further.  Siskind concludes her article by saying that she is uncertain how much longer Thanksgiving will be around (Siskind 187).  I don’t exactly agree with her here, because I feel as though Thanksgiving will continue to be around for a long time. As I mentioned earlier, we tend to stick to the norm and to tradition. We don’t like change; therefore, it hard to think that Thanksgiving Day will ever be extinguished.  All in all, I still enjoy the family time and the food especially, so I wouldn’t mind if it sticks around, even though most of us have no idea how it relates to our nation.

I thought this represented the concept of prayer before the Thanksgiving meal very well.

Who else remembers doing this as a child? I sure do !! 

WE AREN’T PERFECT, AND OUR BODIES AREN’T EITHER!

Food comes with so many things to consider.  How healthy is it? How many calories are in it? Will this help me lose weight? Should I get another plate or not?  Society places such a huge importance on looks and body types.  If you are not skinny and stick thin, then you aren’t attractive.  Now, I am not saying that this is how everyone thinks or feels, because I have come across many guys/girls that are not interested in a stick thin person or a perfectly toned person.  However, when you turn on the tv or open up a magazine, there are all these so called “perfect” people staring back at you. 

How ironic was it that the moment I began reading articles on obesity and eating disorders that my Victoria Secret magazine came in the mail.  Now I won’t lie, I do shop a lot at Victoria Secret and spend a lot more money than I wish to admit (My perspective is, if you have a coupon, then you have to use it!).  While I love their clothing, I think another thing of their models.  Every time I look at that magazine it makes me sick, because I wish I could be that skinny. Yeah, yeah I know!  We are all made differently, but come on! I wish I could be that “perfectly” shaped.  I have always been a little on the heavier side.  I am not going to say that I am fat, but I got a lot of curves and stuff going on, so obviously I would want to be a little more slim and trim.  Why is this though?

When I think about it, the only reason that I along with millions of other girls/guys feel this way is because society has defined what the perfect person should look like.   In this part of the world a girl should be stick thin with enough butt/boobs but not too much, perfect teeth, perfect height, and so on! And the same thing for guys, they have to be the perfect height with nice teeth, defined muscles, and the list goes on and on! No wonder there are so many people with eating disorders in the world.  I could name five people off the top of my head that I know of personally that have or are suffering from an eating disorder.  I am no psychologist, but it is obvious that society places so much pressure on people to look a certain way that they have to result in being anorexic or bulimic just to try to make an attempt to look this way. 

I mean think about it; most obese people are made fun of or ridiculed at some point in their life.  I recently read an article by Margaret Meat entitled, “Why Do We Overeat?”  I must admit that she makes many good points in this article, one of which is that there is a heavy burden placed on obese people in today’s world.  Clothes are hard to find for them, furniture isn’t big enough, and so on (Mead 20).  How would you feel if you walked into a clothing store and could not find one thing to fit you or you were at the doctor’s office and had no place to sit, because the chairs were all too small?  In my opinion, that has to be hurtful and embarrassing.  Our society should consider that everyone is not the same size and that everyone is not made up of the same genes.  Some people cannot help that they were blessed with bigger genes than others.  Another good point that Mead makes is that we tend to group all fat together, and this is very true.  Any weight whether it be pregnancy weight, extra food weight, or genetic weight, we see it as all the same (Mead 20).  It should not be like this.  Fat is not just fat.  Many different things cause it and people should take the time to stop and think about that before they judge someone. 

Back to the eating disorders.  When anorexia and bulimia are mentioned, what flashes through your mind?  We often times associate these disorders with privileged teenage white girls.  I never knew why we did this until I read Susan Bordo’s article, “Not just ‘a white girl’s thing’: The changing face of food and body image problems.”  Bordo talks of how there is a misconception that white girls are the only ones that deal with these eating disorders.  She says that one reason for this myth is that at the time when most of the studies were done on these disorders, the most common people that were brought in to get help were privileged white girls (Bordo 47).  This makes perfect sense given that most middle or upper-class white families were the ones that sought out help, because they had the financial means to do so.  I found it interesting to hear the stories of all of the people in Bordo’s article.  Tenisha, a black girl, suffers from anorexia and Sami Schalk, a fifteen year old biracial girl, suffers from bulimia (Bordo 46).  There is this myth that eating disorders are limited to a certain type of person, but this is not the case.  Susan Bordo does a wonderful job at explaining why this concept is most certainly a myth.  These disorders have to do with having an “addiction to perfection” as Bordo says.  Anyone can have this problem, just like anyone can become a drug addict or an alcoholic.  We have tried to put restraints and limits on anorexia and bulimia, but the fact of the matter is, that anyone can have this problem. 

Touching back on my Victoria Secret rant, so many people look at these girls with jealousy or envy, but we never stop to think, maybe there is a reason I never see anyone who looks like this just walking around.   These models have been touched up and obviously can never enjoy a slice of cake or bowl of ice cream if they look like that!  Everyone finds something wrong with his/her body.  It is part of what makes us human.  WE AREN’T PERFECT, AND OUR BODIES AREN’T EITHER!  Our society place too much emphasis on a person’s looks and it doesn’t look like that will change soon, but hopefully in time, people will realize that beauty isn’t skin deep.

(This girl has hardly any fat on her, no cellulite… the media portrays this as if it should be the "norm" when it is no where near the "norm")

(I mean no wonder girls think that they don't look good enough.. look at this girl!) 

(Anorexia: we see one thing, while she sees something bigger)

(Myth: It is not all white women, and it is not all women when it comes to eating disorders)