Process Writing

     I think the biggest structuring element for all of my bigger writing assignments was my notes. They were really what I relied upon to provide the meat and potatoes of my pieces. Without some good note-taking and observation, I would have had a much harder time both structuring and completing my pieces. I think that some of that desire for good note-taking comes from the journalism class I took last quarter. It really taught me to look for details and write down everything that's happening in a situation.

     I think that I was frustrated at first with the review assignment. It just seemed really silly for me to be able to write a thousand words about a place I had never been to before, with no background knowledge about the place and with only Sam Sifton's articles to work from. I guess the scariest thing was sitting down and starting to write from an a position of authority. I certainly didn't feel like one. Once I sat down and started though, the process became much easier. It just took me a little to get in the right writing mindset. Avoiding certain pronouns and abstract words just took a little practice and getting used to.

     I thought that aspects of workshopping were very useful and some other parts weren't as beneficial. Getting comments from other people about my writing was great but I think that having the discussions in smaller groups would have been more beneficial to me and my style or learning and workshopping. Having everyone reiterate exactly what they said on the blog comments seemed redundant to me. I think that getting in a group with three to five other people and going really in depth with whatever we are workshopping would be more effective than doing it with the entire class. It would also take up less class time if we spent four fifteen minute time slots instead of seven.

     I think that through learning and writing about the American industrial food system I also learned a lot about myself. I have always had an inkling that there's something wrong with supermarkets and McDonald's, but until this class I hadn't been exposed to any kind of direct investigative journalism about either of them. I think seeing how processed and homogenized nearly everything in supermarket food is has shown me how easily I can distance myself from what I'm eating. After reading “The Omnivore's Dilemma” and watching Food Inc., I did swear off Kraft Mac and Cheese for a while and am still going strong in my bid to not eat Poptarts. The problem is chicken. I use it for so many delicious meals that are tasty and easy to make. Instead of totally eschewing it and becoming a locavore, I haven't really changed my approach toward it. I still buy it regularly and don't feel bad about it. Is it because I can conveniently forget about all the horrible things that go into Meijer chicken? I guess so. This writing about my own relationship to food and the American industrial food system is making me reflect closely and critically on the place I want certain aspects of food to have in my life. I don't think that I'm a person who changes their lifestyle on a whim or quickly in any sense at all. I do think that thinking critically about our readings by writing about them has influenced the way I think about the world, but I think that any large lifestyle changes will have to come after college when I have a more stable lifestyle. And if I'm making enough money.

     Keeping a blog was an interesting experience for me. I've never really considered putting myself out there on the internet in the form of a blog but my experience keeping one in class made it seem easier or simpler than I had thought it to be. I liked having people talk about things I had written, I felt validated in some way. Of course they had to for the class, but all the same, it was a rewarding feeling to have others talk about my writing. I think that validation is something I need in my writing. I felt more accomplished or better about myself if I saw that lots of other people had commented on my blog. Something feels pretentious about a blog though. I guess there's an assumption that what you're putting out there is good enough to make it on the internet. Or maybe its just the stress of putting your work out there for others to talk about and judge. I'm not sure. I think that overall, keeping a blog for this class was beneficial and exciting.

Part 3 of the Restaurant Review

    I'd say that my biggest concern in writing about La Mexicana was feeling out of place or like an outsider at the market. I just feel very uncomfortable somewhere if I feel like I'm unwelcome or being looked at or judged. I guess my expectations stemmed from whatever conception I have of authenticity or what constitutes an insider/outsider in my mind. All I knew about the market/restaurant was that it served good food and wasn't very expensive. I didn't know anything about what the atmosphere or experience of the market would be like.

    Despite my own self-reassurances, I couldn't escape some feeling of discomfort or out-of-placeness. I don't think it was whether the food was authentic or not that unsettled me, I think was my perception of the culture associated with it and the role i played or didn't play in it. As soon as I walked into La Mexicana I felt out of place or like I didn't belong there. I don't speak any Spanish and I have next to no knowledge of Mexican or Latino (or whatever term you want to employ) culture. I felt afraid to speak English and I kept catching myself getting stressed out about how loudly me or my dining companions were talking. In the restaurant we all clustered around the drink fridge for around five minutes. I think we were all scared to approach the counter and learn the truth of whether the cashier spoke English. The whole time I was there, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was out of place, that I didn't belong there. I kept imagining the other patrons eying us surreptitiously with scowls. I'm sure nothing of the sort happened, and I kept trying to convince myself to relax and take it easy. I was a paying customer, people would respect me, I'm sure non-Latinos come in all the time. Despite that rationality, I couldn't relax!

    It seems like a large amount of our discomfort came from the things we didn't know about the restaurant and market. We didn't know how to act in this cultural space, we didn't know how much English was spoken and by whom. We had until this point been unexposed to the specific kind of culture we were intruding upon in La Mexicana. We could infer that some English was spoken because of the bi-lingual menus and signs around the restaurant but we didn't know what people thought of us or what the process of ordering and picking up food was. As soon as we sat down to eat, things became easier and we could forget about the tension and enjoy the delicious food.

    All the tension I was feeling seems to be based on the concept of us vs. them. I was so self-conscious because I couldn't help seeing myself as a stereotype; a well-off, white college student. Beyond that, I couldn't see the non-white people at La Mexicana as anything but insular foreigners wary of privileged white people sampling their exotic food. I feel pretty bad that I lost sight of the multifaceted nature of people and reverted to thinking of my experience as an interaction between stereotypes. That reversion just seemed so natural. I was in a place where I didn't know what was happening and my personality is a pretty self-interrogative one. I can see how I got so absorbed in over thinking everything everything about my experience at La Mexicana.

    Overall I think that the experience of breaking through some boundaries to challenge myself to experience a new cuisine in a very new and unique environment was very valuable. Now that I'm thinking about it, I learned a lot about  myself in the process. And had some wonderful food.

La Mexicana Review: Revised

[For the index]

    La Mexicana is a small, unassuming brick building across from a gas station on the corner of Bryant and Portage. This humble building houses three distinct areas. Upon entering, customers are greeted with the first section of the market, fresh produce and rows upon rows of Hispanic food staples. Horchata, Mole, hot sauces, a whole section of bagged spices and a whole deli counter filled with meats are some of the bountiful selections to be explored here.

     Straight back into the market is the second area, the ice cream coolers. La Mexicana offers homemade ice cream and ice cream bars in plenty of interesting flavors. Guava, avocado, chocolate, and egg nog are just a few of the diverse selection. Diners looking for a frozen treat in the cold months are out of luck. The ice cream section is closed during the winter.

     Secluded in the back of La Mexicana is the venue's true treat; the restaurant. The cash register and the grill sit behind a glass sneeze guard in full view of the seating area. Diners order at the counter and pick up their order from the same counter when its ready. Patrons looking to sit and eat have their choice of heavy wooden tables with a few chairs around each, or three plastic booths lining the walls.

     The Spanish and English menu posted on the wall is sparse: burritos, fajitas, tortas, tacos, with your choice of steak, pork, chicken, or chorizo. The prices at La Mexicana are very low and reasonable: no more than $7 for any of the main dishes. Drinks from the refrigerator are $1.50 and can be opened at the bottle opener attached to the wall.

     The burrito is perhaps the most filling item on the menu. It's at least four inches in diameter and absolutely packed with whatever meat you order, beans, sour cream, rice, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes and onions. The soft tortilla is wrapped in tin foil and thin paper to make the nonetheless messy process of eating the burrito easier. But don't take these for granted, they still have a habit of dribbling lettuce and beans down your arm or up your sleeve if you aren't careful. The chicken Burrito is a good starting point. No extraordinary flavors but all the different fillings work well together and create a well-textured meal and a half. The only negative in the burrito is the beans. It's hard to get beans to taste like anything but beans, but La Mexicana doesn't seem to want to push their refried beans beyond just mediocre.

     The atmosphere at La Mexicana is a familiar, humble one. The dining room is ringed with painted frescos of Mexican pueblos. Two TVs are tuned in to Spanish soap operas or the news. The sizzling of the meat on the grill mixes with the Spanish from the television for an energetic and vibrant dining experience. The eating area isn't very attractive in the way one might expect from a more upscale restaurant. There are few decorations apart from the painted walls. Despite its humility, the decor creates a feeling of earthiness and disregard for outside oppinion. One doesn't come to the back of a Mexican market looking for the atmosphere and decor of Food Dance.

     Tortas make for a smaller but no less interesting meal than the burritos. Tortas are a “Mexican Sub” according to the menu. They include avocado, lettuce, tomato, onions, sour cream, and the meat of your choice pressed together between two halves of what looks like a Mexican kaiser roll. Pork works well in these. The smoky and fatty chunks of pork, cut from the cooking leg right in front of you, complement the crunchy lettuce and the crispy roll extremely well. Again, these come wrapped in foil and paper to aid in tidy eating but like the burritos, messiness is unavoidable.

     The steak in the fajitas is a wonderful treat. Beautifully marinated and chewy to the point of ecstasy, their juices release in the mouth with a burst of rich meaty flavor. The fajita plate comes with lettuce, rice, steak, avocado, grilled peppers and onions, and corn tortillas to wrap everything up in. Make sure to eat these fast as the corn tortillas become grainy and dry as they cool.

     An easily overlooked aspect of the restaurant are the sauce trays. Four different sauces, each spicier than the last provide the kick and punch to the entrees. The four sauces are red, vibrant orange, chunky green and smoother green and are increasingly spicy in that order. Make sure to ask for some small cups to spoon the sauces into.

     The drinks at La Mexicana also deserve a special mention of their own. There are no soda fountains or aluminum cans of Coke to be found here. The restaurant's refrigerator is stocked with glass bottles of Squirt, Sprite, and some more eclectic Mexican specialties. There's “Boing,” an uncarbonated mango beverage that's a little watery, and “Schin Guarana,” a carbonated canned beverage with an unidentifiable pseudo-fruit flavor. Finally, there are a multitude of flavors of “Jarritos,” a very popular Mexican soft drink. The stand-out flavor is the orange “Mandarina”. It's refreshing and tangy without being too overwhelming. There's no corn syrup to be found in any of La Mexicana's drinks. Nearly all of the drinks are available for purchase both in the fridge in the restaurant section and the market proper.

     Vegetarians looking for a delicious Mexican meal may find themselves out of luck at La Mexicana. Most of the menu items are only offered with meat. Non meat eaters may find themselves having to settle for a burrito with extra beans instead of any heartier or more complex meal.

     Spanish is above all the language of conversation throughout the entire market and restaurant. Many patrons give of an air of comfortability both with the market and the Spanish interactions within The person taking orders speaks English, as do many of the employees and the menus are all in both English and Spanish, but the overall feeling of the market and clientele is Hispanic and might be alienating for some.

     The proprietors of La Mexicana don't try to hide their culinary skill under paint and reservations. They let their affordably priced, hearty fare stand for what it is, lovingly cooked, “traditional”, and above all else, delicious Mexican food.

La Mexicana

    La Mexicana is a small, unassuming brick building across from a gas station on the corner of Bryant and Portage. This humble building houses three distinct areas. Upon entering, customers are greeted with the first section of the market, fresh produce and rows upon rows of Hispanic food staples. Horchata, Mole, hot sauces, a whole section of bagged spices and a whole deli counter filled with meats are some of the bountiful selections to be explored here.

     Straight back into the market is the second area, the ice cream coolers. La Mexicana offers homemade ice cream and ice cream bars in plenty of interesting flavors. Guava, avocado, chocolate, and egg nog are just a few of the diverse selection. Diners looking for a frozen treat in the cold months are out of luck. The ice cream section is closed during the winter.

     Secluded in the back of La Mexicana is the venue's true treat; the restaurant. The cash register and the grill sit behind a glass sneeze guard in full view of the seating area. Diners looking to sit down and eat have their choice of heavy wooden tables with a few chairs around each, or three plastic booths lining the walls.

The Spanish and English menu posted on the wall is sparse: burritos, fajitas, tortas, tacos, with your choice of steak, pork, chicken, or chorizo. The prices at La Mexicana are very low and reasonable: no more than $7 for any of the main dishes. Drinks from the refrigerator are $1.50 and can be opened at the bottle opener attached to the wall.

     The burrito is perhaps the most filling item on the menu. It's At least four inches in diameter and absolutely packed with whatever meat you order, beans, sour cream, rice, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes and onions. The soft tortilla is wrapped in tin foil and thin paper to make the nonetheless messy process of eating the burrito easier. But don't take these for granted, they still have a habit of dribbling lettuce and beans down your arm or up your sleeve if you aren't careful. The chicken Burrito is a good starting point. No extraordinary flavors but all the different fillings work well together and create a well-textured meal and a half. The only negative in the burrito is the beans. It's hard to get beans to taste like anything but beans, but La Mexicana doesn't seem to want to push their refried beans beyond just mediocre. I'd expect more attention to be given to this staple but the restaurant dissapoints.

     Consider Tortas for a smaller but no less interesting meal. Tortas are a “Mexican Sub” according to the menu. They are avocado, lettuce, tomato, onions, sour cream, and the meat of your coice pressed together between two halves of what looks like a Mexican kaiser roll. Pork works well in these. The smoky and fatty chunks of pork, cut from the cooking leg right in front of you, compliment the crunchy lettuce and the crispy roll extremely well. Again, these come wrapped in foil and paper to aid in clean eating but like the burritos, messiness is unavoidable.

     The steak in the fajitas is some of the best I've had. Beautifully marinated and chewy to the point of ecstasy, their juices release in the mouth with a burst of flavor. The fajita plate comes with lettuce, rice, steak, avocado, grilled peppers and onions, and corn tortillas to wrap everything up in. Make sure to eat these fast as the corn tortillas become grainy and dry as they cool.

An easily overlooked aspect of the restaurant are the sauce trays. Four different sauces, each spicier than the last provide the kick and punch to the entrees. The four sauces are red, vibrant orange, chunky green and smoother green and are increasingly spicy in that order. Make sure to ask for some small cups to spoon the sauces into.

     The drinks at La Mexicana also deserve a special mention of their own. There are no soda fountains or aluminum cans of Coke to be found here. The restaurant's refrigerator is stocked with glass bottles of Squirt, Sprite, and some more eclectic Hispanic specialties. There's “Boing,” an uncarbonated mango beverage that's a little watery, and “Schin Guarana,” a carbonated canned beverage with an unidentifiable pseudo-fruit flavor. Finally, there are a multitude of flavors of “Jarritos,” a very popular Mexican soft drink. I'd recommend the orange Jarritos. It's refreshing and tangy without being too overwhelming. There's no corn syrup to be found in any of La Mexicana's drinks.

     Vegetarians looking for a delicious Mexican meal may find themselves out of luck at La Mexicana. Most of the menu items are only offered with meat. Non meat eaters may find themselves having to settle for a burrito with extra beans instead of any hardier or more complex meal.

     The atmosphere at La Mexicana is a familiar, humble one. The dining room is ringed with painted frescos of Mexican pueblos. Two TVs are tuned in to Spanish soap operas or the news. The sizzling of the meat on the grill mixes with the Spanish from the television for an energetic and vibrant dining experience. The eating area isn't very attractive in the way one might expect from a more upscale restaurant. There are few decorations apart from the painted walls. But the unassuming decor works. One doesn't come to the back of a Hispanic market looking for the atmosphere and decor of Food Dance.

     This atmosphere might be off-putting for some however. Besides the noise and the humble appearance, Spanish is above all the language of conversation throughout the entire market. The person taking orders speaks English, as do many of the employees and the menus are all in both English and Spanish, but the overall feeling of the market and clientele is Hispanic and might be alienating for some.

    La Mexicana feels very truthful. They don't try to hide their culinary skill under paint and reservations. They let their affordably priced, hearty fare stand for what it is, lovingly cooked, “traditional”, and above all else, delicious Mexican food.

Preliminary Writing

     When looking for a restaurant to review, I wanted something new, something that I had never had before in Kalamazoo. This was a problem as one of my favorite pastimes is finding new places to eat. After much pondering and debate, I decided to seek out an "authentic" "Mexican" restaurant. My experience with Mexican food is Chipotle. Chipotle and Qdoba. I don't really have a clear idea of what I'm expecting out of eating at "La Mexicana." My current conception of Mexican food is burritos and quesadillas. I love the burritos I get at Chipotle and I've recently taken to making quesadillas for myself pretty often. Oh yeah, I love chips and salsa as well. I'm sure that these three dishes aren't representative at all of "true" Mexican food. I'm used to sour cream, guacamole, salsa, and ground beef. I really have no idea what kind of a food experience I'm in for.

    I've been conscious for a while that Chipotle, Qdoba, and homemade quesadillas aren't a true indicator of food that someone from Mexico or South American would have grown up with. With that knowledge came a desire to try some "authentic" Mexican cuisine. I feel guilty that I refer to Chipotle as "Mexican" food. Unfortunately, that's really the only experience I have with it growing up in the suburbs of Detroit. I'm always on the lookout for new food experiences and places to eat near my house but the "ethnic" selections are often limited or "Americanized". Will the food be spicy? Will it be strongly spiced? I'm really excited to see what kinds of food are available at the market/restaurant. I'm curious about what meat will be offered. My current conception of "Mexican" meat is ground beef in a homemade Taco but I'm sure there are a much larger variety of meats eaten in Mexico.

    I'm not interested in foods different from what I've grown up with because of their inherent "Otherness" or association with some exotic, foreign experience. I'm more interested because they'll (hopefully) be a delicious change from my usual experience of food on an aesthetic level. I eat "foreign" foods because I like their taste, not because I'm trying to consume some "Otherness" or because I'm seeking a truly authentic experience. I don't think it's really possible to recreate a food experience in the same way as its conducted in it's original setting. There are so many variables that are different in the United States. I don't think that my experience at an "ethnic" restaurant is really based on the decor or the apparent "authenticity" of the venue, but I'll be curious to see whether that really applied at "La Mexicana." The restaurant itself is behind the market and I've heard it described as very humble and non-flashy.

    Well, its almost time for my dinner. I'll be watching out for everything I can at the restaurant; the presentation, atmosphere, and most important, the food. I think that, from what I've heard of "La Mexicana" I'll have a great meal. I love cheap, good holes-in-the-wall.

Max: Post-Tourist

"Authentic" Thai decor

    I thought that all the different aspects of the two chapters we read were very applicable to our lives as eaters of food. What really struck me was the depth that "authenticity" works in our daily lives. It's not just that something different from our norms seems strange to us or is an experience in learning something about another culture or food, it's also some reflection on us or on the way we define ourselves. This give and take seems really relevant to me, especially with study abroad coming up. How will I work to understand the culture of wherever I end up? Will I be naive and see everything as foreign and exotic? I hope not. I think that I'm relatively conscious of the way I perceive other people and cultures around me.

    The different kinds of "tourist" aspect of the chapter also intrigued me. I had never really thought about what purpose an experience in a foreign country or culture could serve. I've always had a sense that a tourist in the stereotypical sense is something I wouldn't want to be. I've grown up with a sense that gawking at things different from you is wrong or bad in some way. As far as I can remember, I never really thought about a cuisine being authentic or not. I was always more interested in how the food tasted. This background has made it difficult to place myself on the tourist spectrum. Am I an existential tourist? No, I don't really have a super strict definition of what is or isn't authentic. Am I more of a diversionary tourist then? I don't think so. I guess I associate that end of the spectrum with gawking Americans snapping pictures of everything in sight with blatant disregard for respect and tact.

    At the risk of sounding super pretentious, perhaps I'm more of a "post-tourist." Molz writes that the post-tourist is "aware of the social and commercial constraints to authenticity and decides to overlook them."  I think that this definition fits my own perception of "ethnic" and "authentic" dining in America. I can see the shifting nature of pursuing the concept of authenticity in American dining but I still really enjoy eating lots of different kinds of food. I'd agree with McClancy that "inauthenticity is a small price to pay for culinary variety and the spice it adds to everyday life." I don't go to a Thai restaurant to experience an experience of Thailand, I go to eat something that I enjoy the taste of. The authenticity or exoticism of the experience doesn't interest me in the sense that I'm consuming the "Other" as an exoticised construct, but because I love the food that's served at my neighborhood "Thai" restaurant.

Revised Perfect Meal

     A myriad of potential dishes ran through my head. My usual fare of mac and cheese was the first thing that came to mind and the first thing to be rejected. No, I thought, that's too usual, too Kraft for a unique meal. Next was chicken wings, which you know, if you've read my other blog posts, is my culinary shangri-la. Too risky, I told myself. There's no way that anything I could make would measure up to my demanding standards. I had to have something closer to me, something I'd never had in a restaurant, something that was great enough to justify an entire meal with it as its center. Finally, I knew. Chicken piccata.

     Chicken piccata was a staple of my father's cooking and one of the few dishes that I loved and requested as often as I could back at home. Soft chicken with crisp sauted breading and the important part, a lemon juice, white wine, chicken broth and caper sauce. With the chicken, my father always made a plate of sauted green beans and almond slivers in lemon juice. This aspect of the meal could prove more difficult than the chicken. I remember my father either undercooking or burning the almonds at least three times before he managed to get the dish just right. I figured that the delicacy needed to perfect. The almonds along with the green beans would be too much for my novice cooking abilities and so I opted out of the finicky almonds.

     Now that I had my meal, I needed a person (or a few people) to share it with. I thought and thought and, after realizing that the majority of my friends were vegetarian, decided on my close friend Ethan. Ethan and I had spent nine months in Israel together and shared countless teenager-cooked meals together there, the most memorable being a Columbian soup into which an extra hot pepper and another pepper's worth of seeds was accidentally added. I figured Ethan would be the most receptive to my culinary excursion from Kraft noodles and bagels with cream cheese. Another bonus; Ethan will almost never pass up a free meal.

     Procuring the ingredients for my meal was a relatively simple task but one nonetheless fraught with tension. Most of the ingredients were simple; chicken, oil, beans, lemons, eggs. The problems came when I ticked “chicken” off of my grocery list and came to bread crumbs and capers. The amounts of these two ingredients that my recipe called for were miniscule in comparison to the bountiful containers in the supermarket. My brow furrowed when I realized I'd have to pay five dollars to use a tenth of both the container of bread crumbs and capers. What college student uses capers in any kind of meal? Oy vey. Sighing deeply at my frugality, I purchased both and hoped that I'd find some way to enjoy eating breaded capers in the near future.

     I lugged the Meijer bags from my car, up the tortuous stairs and into my house. Surveying the freshly unpacked ingredients arrayed on the kitchen counter, I didn't feel so great about my decision to cook this meal. It was the chicken that got me. I allowed myself an inward wince of disgust, I knew that the chicken came from the worst of factory farms and was injected with a strange brew of antibiotics and chicken flavoring. The only harvest that I could picture the green beans as part of was my own when I grabbed handfuls of them from the plastic bin at Meijer. The core of my meal was unsustainable and a perfect feed-in to the American industrial food system. I had no easy alternative to the cheap accessible Meijer chicken. My rationalization was that my father used the same chicken in his chicken piccata. So, with my cognitive dissonance suppressed for a little while, I launched into the meal.

     With all the ingredients assembled, it was time to start cooking. A few days earlier I had asked my dad to send me the recipe for his chicken piccata and he obliged, sending me the scanned page of “Dad's Own Cookbook,” complete with his written notes about variations on the dish and when to pound the chicken. Thinking ahead, I had defrosted the chicken in the fridge for about half a day before I started cooking my meal. When it came time to pull it out of the fridge and begin the long process of readying it for cooking, it was still a little frosted. I ended up letting it sit out for another couple of hours before undertaking the first step in creating chicken piccata, pounding. After wrapping the chicken in cellophane, I laid into it with a rolling pin, flattening it to about half its former thickness. According to my father, this was so that it cooked faster. I just had fun taking some of my sixth-week blues out on a piece of inanimate meat. Next, I dredged the pieces of chicken in beaten eggs and then breadcrumbs. At this point the chicken seemed pretty gross. Just slimy pink meat with crust of bread crumbs. Well, I thought, the only thing to do is throw them in the pan and see what happens. As the breasts sizzled in the frying pan, a wonderful cooked chicken aroma mixed with the heartiness of frying bread crumbs and olive oil filled the air. Things were going according to plan.

     When both breasts had turned a golden brown, I took them out of the pan and poured my pre-prepared mixture of capers, chicken broth, white wine, and lemon juice into the same pan to cook down for around ten minutes. From my experience, this sauce is what really makes the whole dish come together. The sourness and cooked down chicken flavor work amazingly with the soft yet crunchy chicken breasts. The best part is near the end of the meal when all the sauce has been absorbed by the breadcrumbs and your last few bites of chicken have the whole shebang together inside them.

     I did hit a snag with the sauce. The directions say that you're only supposed to cook the mixture down for 45 seconds, but after those 45 seconds my sauce hadn't achieved the strongly-scented brown thickness that I remembered from my father's piccata. I decided to cook it down for another five minutes but I had to add more of all the ingredients in the sauce so that I'd still have enough sauce after everything cooked down.

     Where have the green beans been this whole time you ask? Boiling in a pot that I had prepared at the beginning of the meal. After they boiled for around five minutes I took them out, and delegated the rest of their process to Ethan because I was busy with the sauce. He strained them, washed them in cold water, and cooked them in a pan with butter. As the sauce finished, we juiced half a lemon on top of them and moved the whole meal out to the living room to finally be consumed.

     This whole process made me realize just how much practice goes into perfecting just one recipe. My father must have cooked this dish multiple times before it attained the stature that motivated me to cook it myself. He passed a few tips down to me in the email he sent with the scanned page of “Dad's Own Cookbook”. They weren't anything incredibly secret or amazing, just a couple of recommendations for objects to pound the chicken with and a warning to not overheat the oil. There wasn't a secret spice I was supposed to throw in at an exact right time or a trick to breading the chicken that would make the recipe larger than life. The dish and my father's notes were perfect for “Dad's Own Cookbook;” not too difficult, down to earth, and unassuming.

     Despite the humble tradition behind it, the chicken was wonderful despite. There were some slight differences from what I was used too. My father either bought smaller breasts than I did or cut the ones he had in half, but our servings were gigantic. I'm not sure how, but the chicken was cooked perfectly through even though I wasn't watching them very carefully when I was dashing around the kitchen. The sauce was great too, very lemony. It really deepened my enjoyment of the chicken. The green beans' sweetness and crunch was a perfect compliment to the soft chicken and the tart lemon in the sauce and the beans. I couldn't get many specifics out of Ethan but he said that he really enjoyed the whole meal.

     The only problems we had were slight. The sauce could have been thicker and less lemony, the breasts could have been thinner or more manageable, and the chicken had cooled by the time we had finished cooking our green beans and sauce. Also, there was a lot of lemon in our meal. I'm totally fine with this and even enjoyed all the tartness, but I'm not sure how the whole meal would go over with someone who doesn't love lemon as much as I do.

     With the chicken safely in our bellies, we turned to the monumental task of doing the mountain of dishes that amassed during the frantic scramble to cook one of my favorite meals. My dad's notes written on the recipe page and the texture and appearance of the breaded chicken brought me back home again, at least for one night.

An Acquired Vocabulary

    I left the "Eating Out" section of this book with a strong disdain for any kind of fancy eating. Especially French restaurants in the late 1940's. I traveled through the vast majority of the pieces without any ground to understand what the dishes the critics were talking about consisted of, why they were so agitated by the tack French cuisine was taking. I felt almost no empathy for A. J. Liebling when he exclaims "You take me for a jackass!" after realizing a loved restaurant had gone down the drain.
    I should take into account that most of the pieces I found uninteresting and pretentious were written before 1975. The conspicuous consumption and elitism of those pieces must have been a result of the times. I've read some articles in the New Yorker and, at least in its modern incarnation, the writers seem to revel in presenting the complicated mess of their subject in a concise and interesting way. A good writer draws the reader in with the cunning explanation of the intricacies of their topic but those articles about France just seemed to be written for gourmands who already care about shifts in French haute-cuisine and wine vintages. Nearly all of the "Eating Out" section was dedicated to French cuisine, something I know next to nothing about. Instead of talking about specifically how the "amazing" French cuisine came about or how the everyday Frenchman/woman eats and how that related to the haute-cuisine, they seemed too caught up in their own decadence. They seemed to live in their own world of gastronomy and speak their own jargony language.

Ahh, a good old-fashioned beefsteak   

    I did love Anthony Bourdain's piece about the behind-the-scenes of restaurant. His description is so fresh and his exaggerated voice keeps me reading to see what crude or ridiculous statement he'll make next. Reading the perspective of someone very much a restaurant cook in the midst of so many food critics and "gastronomes" was incredibly refreshing. Even though he may be pretentious about vegetarians and buffets, he manages to make himself more understandable and identifiable to the reader than the rich men who fly over to France to eat their fills of the country's cuisine.
    I also loved the first piece in the collection about the "beefsteaks." Even though the article was written in 1939, I thought the author did an amazing job of showing us the excesses of the beefsteaks. The author seemed to have that same drive to create a vivid picture of a practice or aspect of life that I've come to associate with good writing and the modern New Yorker magazine. The author didn't seem to revel in his own excess. To me, he was just portraying the practice of beefsteaks in its cultural context.

CYOA: Urban farming

    Looking for alternatives to feeding into the American industrial food industry, I decided to research urban agriculture  in Detroit. I had heard some things about it from a few of my friends but I had never really looked into it myself. I ended up finding this video about the DBCFSN or Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. Here's their website.
    From their website:


The Detroit Reality:
1. Many Detroiters do not have a grocery store within a mile of the homes
2. "Fast food" has practically replaced home cooked meals in many Black households
3. Detroit's majority African population is dependent on others to feed it

---

     This organization identifies so many of the things that we talked about in Detroit and are taking extremely active grassroots measures to change things around them. They've started a co-op and created a farm  in the largest park in Detroit. The organization does focus on Black people in Detroit (81% of Detroit is Black) but I think that their ideology and methods are applicable across race. They really stress taking ownership over your food and working for yourself to create food and a lifestyle that is inherently yours and not something forced on you by another person or corporation. Here's another take on the situation, a more corporate one. The head of the DBCFSN, Malik Yakini, is quoted in the article as saying "I'm concerned about the corporate takeover of the urban agriculture movement in Detroit."
 
Things to Ponder:

• How related is our sense of general autonomy with our choice of food?
• Is a corporate or grassroots method of urban farming more effective?
• Does a corporate or industrialized agricultural process inevitably lose some something important in a smaller scale farm like Joel Salatin's?

Film and Print and Food

Good Ol' Joel comin' atcha
through the magic of film.

    I definitely felt more emotionally moved after watching Food Inc. I'm not sure how much more it affected me than The Omnivore's Dilemma though. I think the largest difference was in the styles between the two different pieces. Pollan left me wanting to research and know more about the industrial food system but Food Inc. just left me lacking somehow. I think that the thought behind Pollan's book is what hit me and really made me want to understand what he was saying. His approach to telling us about the industrial food system seems to really value exhaustive research and a mostly humble presentation of that research. Food Inc. on the other hand really hits you over the head with its information and is much more forceful in its presentation.
     I definitely felt more of a kinship with Pollan than I did with whoever created Food Inc. I do think that it was a really valuable visual look at the food industry but I thought that it tried a little too hard. It definitely added some pieces of the picture for me and the emotions it elicited with the images and music are valuable because the subject needs some representation in popular culture but the film seemed like it knew what it was doing too well. That I think Food Inc. tried too hard may sound kind of strange, but I loved Pollan's self-conscious and constantly questioning approach to interrogating the food system. Food Inc. just came off as something that was trying to get you to think in a certain way and I don't like that. I thought Pollan's presentation of his own experience with not that much intentional persuasion was in fact more persuasive than Food Inc.'s style of presentation.
    I guess that the two forms of media are two different sides of the same coin. Film lends itself more to sensationalist representations of problems in society while the book works better as a more drawn out, inquisitive expose of the material. I can see many more college students/people with short attention spans becoming inspired by Food Inc or motivated to do something because of it. Not to sound super pretentious but The Omnivore's Dilemma seems like a more mature form of exposing the food industry's industry. That's too harsh I think. I guess the conclusion that I've come to is that Food Inc.'s main appeal are the visual aspects of it; those animations and the graphs inside of pigs. The Omnivore's Dilemma's attraction for me revolves around the narrative and the draw of someone taking us through the process of discovering the true nature of the food industry. It's stupid to say one is "more mature". Each of them appeal to a different audience and I guess that I just identified more with Pollan than that really passionate guy who made Fast Food Nation. I loooved Joel Salatin in both places though. His passion and strength to do something and even create his own farm were great and incredibly inspiring. Plus his suspenders are AMAZING.

     When first thinking about this assignment, a myriad of potential dishes ran through my head. My usual fare of mac and cheese was the first thing that came to mind and the first thing to be rejected. No, I thought, that's too usual, too Kraft for a unique meal. Next was chicken wings, something many of you now know is my culinary shangri-la. Too risky, I told myself. There's no way that anything I could make would measure up to my demanding standards. I had to have something closer to me, something I'd never had in a restaurant, something that was great enough to justify an entire meal with it as its center. Finally, I knew. Chicken piccata.

     Chicken piccata was a staple of my father's cooking and one of the few dishes that I loved and requested as often as I could back at home. Soft chicken with crisp sauted breading and the important part, a lemon juice, white wine, chicken broth and caper sauce. With the chicken, my father always made a plate of sauted green beans and almond slivers in lemon juice. This aspect of the meal could prove more difficult than the chicken. I remember my father either undercooking or burning the almonds at least three times before he managed to get the dish just right. I figured that the delicacy needed to perfect the almonds along with the green beans would be too much for my novice cooking abilities and so I opted out of the finicky almonds.

     Now that I had my meal, I needed a person (or a few people) to share it with. I thought and thought and, after realizing that the majority of my friends were vegetarian, decided on my close friend Ethan. After spending nine months in Israel together and sharing countless teenager-cooked meals together there, I figured he would be the most receptive to my culinary excursion from Kraft noodles and bagels with cream cheese. Another bonus; Ethan will almost never pass up a free meal.

     Procuring the ingredients for my meal was a relatively simple task but one nonetheless fraught with tension. Most of the ingredients were simple; chicken, oil, beans, lemons, eggs. The problems came when I ticked “chicken” off of my grocery list and came to bread crumbs and capers. The amounts of these two ingredients that my recipe called for were miniscule in comparison to the bountiful containers in the supermarket. My brow furrowed when I realized I'd have to pay five dollars to use a tenth of both the container of bread crumbs and capers. What college student uses capers in any kind of meal? Oy vey. Sighing deeply at my frugality, I purchased both and hoped that I'd find some way to enjoy eating breaded capers in the near future.

     With all the ingredients assembled, it was time to start cooking. A few days earlier I had asked my dad to send me the recipe for his chicken piccata and he obliged, sending me the scanned page of “Dad's Own Cookbook,” complete with his written notes about variations on the dish and when to pound the chicken. Thinking ahead, I had defrosted the chicken in the fridge for about half a day before I started cooking my meal. When it came time to pull it out of the fridge and begin the long process of readying it for cooking, it was still a little frosted. I ended up letting it sit out for another couple of hours before undertaking the first step in creating chicken piccata, pounding. After wrapping the chicken in cellophane, I laid into it with a rolling pin, flattening it to about half its former thickness. According to my father, this was so that it cooked faster. I just had fun taking some of my sixth-week blues out on a piece of inanimate meat. Next, I “dredged” the pieces of chicken in beaten eggs and then breadcrumbs. At this point the chicken seemed pretty gross. Just slimy pink meat with crust of bread crumbs. Well, I thought, the only thing to do is throw them in the pan and see what happens. As the breasts sizzled in the frying pan, a wonderful cooked chicken aroma mixed with the heartiness of frying bread crumbs and olive oil filled the air. Yum! Things were going according to plan.

     When both breasts had turned a golden brown, I took them out of the pan and poured my pre-prepared mixture of capers, chicken broth, white wine, and lemon juice into the same pan to cook down for around ten minutes. From my experience, this sauce is what really makes the whole dish come together. The sourness and cooked down chicken flavor work amazingly with the soft yet crunchy chicken breasts. The best part is near the end of the meal when all the sauce has been absorbed by the breadcrumbs and your last few bites of chicken have the whole shebang together inside them.

     I did hit a snag with the sauce. The directions say that you're only supposed to cook the mixture down for 45 seconds, but after those 45 seconds my sauce hadn't achieved the strongly-scented brown thickness that I remembered from my father's piccata. I decided to cook it down for another five minutes but I had to add more of all the ingredients in the sauce so that I'd still have enough sauce after everything cooked down.

     Where have the green beans been this whole time you ask? Boiling in a pot that I had prepared at the beginning of the meal. After they boiled for around five minutes I took them out, and delegated the rest of their process to Ethan because I was busy with the sauce. He strained them, washed them in cold water, and cooked them in a pan with butter. As the sauce finished, we juiced half a lemon on top of them and moved the whole meal out to the living room to finally be consumed.

     The chicken was wonderful despite some slight differences from what I was used too. My father either bought smaller breasts than I did or cut the ones he had in half, but our servings were gigantic. I'm not sure how, but the chicken was cooked perfectly through even though I wasn't watching them very carefully when I was dashing around the kitchen. The sauce was great too, very lemony. It really deepened my enjoyment of the chicken. The green beans' sweetness and crunch was a perfect compliment to the soft chicken and the tart lemon in the sauce and the beans. I couldn't get many specifics out of Ethan but he said that he really enjoyed the whole meal.

     The only problems we had were slight. The sauce could have been thicker and less lemony, the breasts could have been thinner or more manageable, and the chicken had cooled by the time we had finished cooking our green beans and sauce. Also, there was a lot of lemon in our meal. I'm totally fine with this and even enjoyed all the tartness, but I'm not sure how the whole meal would go over with someone who doesn't love lemon as much as I do.

     With the chicken safely in our bellies, we turned to the monumental task of doing the mountain of dishes that amassed during the frantic scramble to cook one of my favorite meal. My dad's notes written on the recipe page and the texture and appearance of the breaded chicken brought me back home again, at least for one night.

The Recipe

Second Draft: A Mile-Wide Grin

     "We're going to clean out the Three Rivers sewer system," one of our counselors told us, stifling a barely perceptible grin. "Make sure that you all wear clothes that you can get dirty in."

     "They're lying," Sam whispered to the seventeen of us as we gathered outside the white vans that would allegedly take us to the sewers. "The counselors always say we're doing something gross when we leave camp like this," he said. "Last summer they said we were going to an old folks' home."

     "Where are we going then, Sam?" asked Maya.

     Sam smiled to himself and remained quiet.

     This statement of fact by a knowledgeable camper and subsequent interrogation by the less knowledgeable one is a common exchange at Camp Tavor. Because of the esoteric nature of many of Tavor's traditions, new campers are often in the dark until an older or more experienced camper deems them worthy of an explanation.

     “Come on Sam, just tell us already,” chimed in another camper from the back of the van as we turned down the long dirt trail that winds its way through the forest marking the edge of camp. The road heaves up and down past fallen trees and rusted metal fencing until you reach the first marker of civilization, the corn field. The field is always referred to as “the corn field” even when the farmer who tills it has planted a crop of dinky soy bean plants instead of the towering corn stalks that, at night, provide a much anticipated maze into which only the coolest of counselors take their campers to play a terrifying medley of hide-and-seek and tag called “Come Dance With the Devil in the Pale Moonlight.” As the vans heaved over the road's last hill and hung suspended, the trees to the left of the road narrowed into a sparse line, and the final symbol of civilizations' reappearance was revealed, the grey asphalt of A.L. Jones, the paved two-lane highway marking the beginning of the rural outskirts of Three Rivers.

     Ten minutes after the vans turned onto A.L. Jones, they round another bend onto North Main Street. Sam recognized the street name and a mile-wide grin spread across his face.

     “Come on Sam, tell us where we're going,” I implored. At 11, this was my first year at camp and I was aching to know what the big surprise was.

     “Goldies,” Sam finally replied, grin spreading even wider. “We're going to Goldies.”

    As the vans slowed to turn into the parking lot, the white and green sign came into focus: “Goldies” in black-lined gold bubble letters. “Pizza*Subs*Burgers" above the gold script, and the most important words below in capital letters, "ICE CREAM."

     We piled out of the vans and took our places at the picnic tables waiting outside, the giant umbrellas poking out of the middle of the tables like palm trees a welcome respite from the humid heat of the summer.

“All right,” said a counselor, “this is how it works. Four people inside at a time, when someone comes out, another person goes in”. As a camper, the inside of Goldies was mysterious, somewhere we only ventured to pick out what kind of ice cream we wanted or to use the bathroom. We always scampered back outside to eat our ice cream, the summer heat made the coolness of the ice cream that much more refreshing.

    As kids, ice cream was all we ever ate at Goldies, nothing else on the menu interested us. Looking back, we were hardly empathetic towards the lactose-intolerant kids who never got to experience the wonder of yellow cake batter or peppermint patty ice cream. They were limited to a box of french fries. The scoops of ice cream were enormous to our eleven, twelve, thirteen year-old eyes. No one could match our monstrous appetites. Even a small serving was too big for some of our sugar-headache-wary counselors. No ice cream was too large, too sugary, too cold for us. We scarfed down frozen delight with reckless abandon, monstrous grins on our faces the whole time. My personal favorite was “Peppermint Patty,” the devilish transformation of a York Peppermint Patty into a rich ice cream form.

     Goldies ice cream and I had been close friends for years but my more mature and passionate love affair with everything in the restaurant began in 2009, my first year as a counselor at Camp Tavor. The summer was one of exhaustion and excitement. The amount of work and planning that we had to do was inversely proportional to the amount of sleep we received and thus our general well-being. I soon discovered that everyone needs a break from the always-on mentality of camp. Luckily, the wise staff in the past had established a system of break taking that proves effective still today. Everyone is allotted one whole day, one half day, and two nights off per three- or four-week session. Counselors used these breaks to go out to eat at restaurants in Three Rivers, maybe go to a movie, and finally retire to the corn field at the edge of camp to swig burning mouthfuls of apple brandy distilled at Hubbard's, the nearby farm.

     This constant stress and responsibility as a counselor was camp from a totally different view point than I had experienced it before. When I was a camper, things just happened, we went to activities and had fun with no knowledge of the fact that someone had to spend time (precious, precious time) planning them. Now that I was on the other side, the work that went into making camp run smoothly became clear. Every event needed to be planned, every outing required med forms, first-aid kits, and wrangling two or three certified drivers from their busy camp lives. The real stress came from balancing all of these activities with the task of dealing with the fallout from the petty arguments and insults your campers threw around. Taking a break from all that was one of the best experiences at camp. That's not to say I didn't enjoy being with my kids, just that even the most dedicated counselor needs a break from all that stress and lack of sleep.

     The cornfield was something else thrown into a new light when I became a counselor. It wasn't a maze of gigantic stalks anymore, the corn was still there but now it inhabited the periphery of my perception. What mattered now was the circle of chairs and the few flashlights illuminating the beading cans of beer and amber bottles of brandy being passed around the circle. I can proudly say that I never got so drunk that I couldn't still be an effective counselor when I returned to camp in the morning. I'm not sure that I can say the same of some of the other counselors though. Every few weeks stories would percolate around about vomiting in the counselor's area. For the most part though, we didn't let our relaxation intrude into our kids' summers.

     Being among my fellow counselors on my first break, all of whom had shared my same wonderful experience with Goldies ice cream, we naturally decided to explore the other fare that the restaurant could offer. What a decision. The experience of driving out of camp, not packed into giant white vans, but tooling around in crappy pre-college student sedans and minivans was a new and thrilling one. We screeched into parking spaces outside Goldies and walked into the cool air conditioned interior. Always focused on the steaming ice cream buckets behind the counter directly across from the door, I had never noticed what the inside of Goldies looked like. It was a diner, tables and chairs, booths along the walls, nothing fancy.

We walked up to the counter, and I, thinking I'd try a totally new meal, ordered both a Southwest Barbecue Burger and an order of eight chicken wings. It was love at first sight. My whole meal was $8, perfect for a near-broke camp counselor. Let's begin with the burger. Three onions rings atop a ½ pound burger covered with American and Pepperjack cheese, pickles and a hearty helping of BBQ sauce.

     Next, the dish that, after eating for the first time two years ago, I will now give nearly anything for, Goldies chicken wings. Slathered, and I mean slathered in BBQ and Tabasco sauce. These wings are gigantic. Goldies was my first experience with them, so I had no frame of reference for the average size of chicken wings. Looking back, these were enormous. When eating normal wings, you scarf a couple down without even realizing it but I tasted each and every of those eight wings that I devoured that night. The spicy sweet punch of the sauce against the crunch and texture of the breading and the soft smoothness of the chicken beneath was unbelievable. I burned through them like a hot knife through butter. Or a hungry camp counselor through a plate of incredible wings. This was an adult meal. My first introduction to the wonders of BBQ sauce and expanses of barbecued meat. There is nothing childish about sucking the last morsel of saucy meat off of the bone, tossing the bare wing atop the mountainous pile of its companions, grinning contentedly, and gently reclining so as not to lose the meal you've just ingested. After a lengthy digestive rest, I staggered to the bathroom to wash the barbecue and Tabasco sauce off of my hands. I was still smiling when the jet of burning water from the faucet scorched my hands the same color as the sauce. Walking out into the windy summer night, my red hands burnt with the same feeling as my throat soon would be as the apple brandy we were going back into the cornfield to drink scorched its way into my stomach.

Organicism

Too. Much. Organic. Food.

   There has been so much slaughtering of animals in this class so far! I can't say I dislike it though, its such a fresh view point on the way our food is prepared. That distance from what we eat and how it's rendered edible that Pollan talks about seems like the core of the current state of America's industrial food system. A big thing that this chapter stressed was that even though the "organic" label seems like an antidote to this distance, it may not be. We may assume that anything labeled "organic" has been grown or raised on a small family farm in non-industrial fields, but Pollan's research and narrative seems to say otherwise. Apparently, organic farming has been industrialized to large extent, at least in the specific couple of farm that Pollan visited. I found myself asking the same question that Pollan was: are industrial and organic mutually exclusive?
   To me, there seems to be so much ideology and non-traditional business logic involved in organic farming. The reduction of farming to a simple input-output system masks the true depth of farming and ecological creation. The focused awareness on the beauty and bounty of nature seems to run contrary to industrialization. Or at least to what Pollan described at the farms he visited. Those farms were simply industrial farms with little organic variables and additions tacked on; free range areas, organic feed. To me, the real beauty and benefit of organic farming comes from trying to understand the cycles in nature and working with them to create healthier and more delicious food and not from shoving parts of those cycles into out in/out factory system.
   I guess the question that arises from that is how effective are the small organic farms like Joel Salatin's at actually changing the current situation. I think that I agree with Pollan's statement that every organic-industrial farm is better than a simply industrial farm. His logic works in terms of an in/out kind of mindset but these farms still seem like they're selling out. I see a core of respect and admiration for nature at the core of farms like Salatin's. The industrial-organic farms seem to be simply missing this. Even though their methods are organic and more sustainable than the purely industrial alternative, I still see them as buying into that industrial and dehumanizing mindset of the larger industrial farms. Ideally there would be only small independent farms like Salatin's, or some sort of larger conglomerate that still operates like Salatin's in terms of its understanding and emulation of nature. I don't know if that's even possible though. Is there a way of feeding America without a huge centralized food distribution system? I have no idea.

Corn corn corn!

Mmmm. Sweet and now grossly ambiguous.

   Well, who's sick of corn? I definitely am. Whodathunk that it was behind so many of our foods. If they can be called that. Oy. What really struck me about all of Pollan's research and conclusions was the depth of interconnectedness between all the aspects of the American food system and corn. It isn't just that corn and its derivatives is cheap and can be used in so many different products, its that there has been so much intentional fiddling with the markets, the biology, and the psychology of the American people. Corn hasn't simply jumped into the limelight because of chance or because it is sustainable or beneficial. No, it has moved to center stage because of humans who intentionally forced its production over other crops, who place the capitalist ideals of supply and demand over health. I'll stop ranting now.
   The explanation of all the myriad uses that corn can have might have been the part of this section that effected me the most. My father often likes to point out the strange presences on nutrition labels. I've always noticed corn syrup on a good deal of those lists but I never associated it with a huge agricultural and industrial process established over many years. It always seemed like something familiar, even though I had no idea what it was. It seemed like something that belonged in food. Something, in my younger mind, like wheat. An ingredient that was a base for a ton of different foods present in my life. Now I've come to see corn syrup and other corn derivatives as some strange, almost evil presence in my foods. Maybe that's too strong. Even though it's natural and it comes from a plant that grows in the ground, it just seems like a weird omnipresent artificial additive. Traveling to other countries that don't rely almost totally on corn syrup as a sweetener and tasting soft drinks there can be a refreshing experience. I had the opportunity to sample the diverse array of Israeli soft drinks while I was there. The whole experience seemed so much more fulfilling. The cans cost more and were thicker. Being used to thin American cans, you'd think you still had a fifth of the can left when you picked it up after draining it. Something just tasted sweeter or more genuine about the cane sugar sweetened soda.

My god, even the corncob-holder is made of corn!

    The hardest part of the book so far has been seeing how entrenched we are in the current system. Like I said on someone's blog, breaking out of this cycle of industrial and capitalistic agriculture seems so incredibly difficult. I think one of the keys is the government's stake in the whole deal. The agricultural lobby is just so strong and concentrated, those four or five main companies that control corn and its production hold so much power because the corn industry is so linked to so many other industries; gas, food, plastics. It seems nearly impossible to dislodge the stranglehold corn has on all these aspects of the American economy without destabilizing something, whether its an aspect of the economy or the links between food lobbyists and the government.

A Mile-Wide Grin

Camp

    "We're going to clean out the Three Rivers sewer system," one of our counselors tells us, stifling a barely perceptible grin. "Make sure that you all wear clothes that you can get dirty in."

    "They're lying," Sam whispers to the seventeen of us as we gathered outside the white vans that would allegedly take us to the sewers. "They always say we're doing something gross when we leave camp like this," he says. "Last summer they said we were going to an old folks' home."

    "Where are we going then, Sam?" asks Maya.

Sam smiles to himself and remains quiet.

    This statement of fact by a knowledgeable camper and subsequent interrogation by the less knowledgeable one is a common exchange at Camp Tavor. Because of the esoteric nature of many of Tavor's traditions, new campers are often in the dark until an older or more experienced camper deigns them worthy of an explanation.

    “Come on Sam, just tell us already,” chimes in another camper from the back of the van as we turn down the long dirt trail that winds its way through the forest marking the edge of camp. The road heaves up and down past fallen trees and rusted metal fencing until you reach the first marker of civilization, the corn field. The field is always referred to as “the corn field” even when the farmer who tills it has planted a crop of dinky soy bean plants instead of the towering corn stalks that, at night, provide a much anticipated maze into which only the coolest of counselors take their campers to play a terrifying medley of hide-and-seek and tag called “Come Dance With the Devil in the Pale Moonlight.” As the vans heave over the road's last hill, and hang suspended at the cusp of the hill, the trees to the left of the road narrow into a sparse line, and the final symbol of civilizations' reappearance is revealed, the grey asphalt of A.L. Jones, the paved two-lane highway marking the beginning of the rural outskirts of Three Rivers.

    Ten minutes after the vans have turned onto A.L. Jones, they round another bend onto North Main Street. Sam recognizes the street name and a mile-wide grin spreads across his face.

    “Come on Sam, tell us where we're going,” implores Maya.

    “Goldies,” he finally replies, grin spreading even wider. “We're going to Goldies.”

Yummmmm.

    As the vans slow to turn into the parking lot, the white and green sign comes into focus. “Goldies” in black-lined gold bubble letters. “Pizza*Subs*Burgers" above the gold script, and the most important words below in capital letters, "ICE CREAM."

    We pile out of the vans and take their places at the picnic tables waiting outside, the giant umbrellas poking out of the middle of the tables like palm trees a welcome respite from the humid heat of the summer.

“All right,” says a counselor, “this is how it works. Four people inside at one time, when someone comes out, another person goes in”. As a camper, the inside of Goldies was mysterious, somewhere we only ventured into to pick out what kind of ice cream we wanted or to use the bathroom. We always scampered back outside to eat our ice cream, the summer heat made the coolness of the ice cream that much more refreshing.

As kids, ice cream was all we ever ate at Goldies, nothing else on the menu interested us. Looking back, we were hardly empathetic towards the lactose-intolerant kids who never got to experience the wonder of yellow cake batter or peppermint patty ice cream. They were limited to a box of good nonetheless french fries. The scoops of ice cream were enormous to our eleven, twelve, thirteen year-old eyes. No one could match our monstrous appetites. Even a small was too big for some of our sugar-headache-wary counselors. No ice cream was too large, too sugary, too cold for us. We scarfed down frozen delight with reckless abandon, monstrous grins on our faces the whole time.

    Goldies ice cream and I had been close friends for years but my more mature and passionate love affair with everything in the restaurant began in 2009, my first year as a counselor at Camp Tavor. The summer was one of exhaustion and excitement. The amount of work and planning that we had to do was inversely proportional to the amount of sleep we received and thus our general well-being. I soon discovered that everyone needs a break from the always-on mentality of camp. Luckily, the wise staff in the past had established a system of break taking that proves effective still today. Everyone is allotted one whole day, one half day, and two nights off per three- or four-week session. Counselors used these breaks to go out to eat at restaurants in Three Rivers, maybe go to a movie, and finally retire to the corn field at the edge of camp to commit unspeakable acts of debauchery.

    Being among my fellow counselors who had had the same wonderful experience with Goldies ice cream that I had, we naturally decided to explore the other fare that the restaurant could offer. What a decision. The experience of driving out of camp, not packed into giant white vans, but tooling around in crappy pre-college student sedans and minivans was a new and thrilling one. We screeched into parking spaces outside Goldies and walked into the cool air conditioned interior. Always focused on the steaming ice cream buckets behind the counter directly across from the door, I had never noticed what the inside of Goldies looked like. It was a diner, tables and chairs, booths along the walls, nothing fancy.

These wings come nowhere close
to the masterpiece of BBQ Hot wings.

    We walked up to the counter, and I, thinking I'd try a totally new meal, ordered both a Southwest Barbecue Burger and an order of eight chicken wings. It was love at first sight. My whole meal was $8, perfect for a broke camp counselor. Let's begin with the burger. Three onions rings atop a ½ pound burger covered with American and Pepperjack cheese, pickles and a hearty helping of BBQ sauce.

    Next, the dish that, after eating for the first time two years ago, I will now give nearly anything for, Goldies chicken wings. Slathered, and I mean slathered in BBQ and Tobasco sauce. These wings are gigantic. Goldies being my first experience with them, I had no frame of reference for the average size of chicken wings, but theses were enormous. When eating normal wings, you scarf a couple down without even realizing it but I tasted each and every of those eight wings that I devoured that night. The spicy sweet punch of the sauce against the crunch and texture of the breading and the soft smoothness of the chicken beneath was unbelievable. I burned through them like a hot knife through butter. Or a hungry camp counselor through a plate of incredible wings. This was an adult meal. My first introduction to the wonders of BBQ sauce and expanses of barbecued meat. There is nothing childish about wrenching the last morsel of saucy meat off of the bone, tossing the bare stick atop the mountainous pile of its companions, grinning contentedly, and gently reclining so as not to lose the meal you've just ingested. After a lengthy digestive rest, I staggered to the bathroom to wash the barbecue and Tobasco sauce off of my hands. I was still smiling when the jet of burning water from the faucet scorched my hands the same color as the sauce.

Tony B. and Food

      While reading about Anthony Bourdain's travels, I was struck by the seeming differences between America and the rest of the world. Bourdain takes note of this as well. I'm sure 99% of urban Americans, myself included, have never seen their food before it's been transformed into neat blocks sitting plastic-wrapped on yellow styrofoam in the local Meijer. I almost envy Bourdain's experience of seeing a pig being slaughtered and eating its meat two feet away. My own food consumption is mostly unthinking. I eat the cheap chicken in Meijer even though it may have been force-fed steroids in a factory farm, I eat the cheap beef because I've never seen a cow being raised and slaughtered. I'm very disconnected from my food. I need a shock, I think. I need to see a factory farm in action. I need to see a pig raised for six months and brutally slaughtered. I need to see how my food is killed, prepared and packaged. Maybe after I see one end of the spectrum in factory farms in America, and the other in local sheep in Scotland (hopefully), I'll be better equipped to make some sort of choice about my meat eating. Maybe I'm too reliant on lived experience for my lifestyle. Or I'm just lazy.
     Well, back to Anthony. I thought that one of the book's strongest parts was the seamless way that Bourdain melded place and food together. He usually begins his description of his new locale with a description of a person or an event that was taking place. In Russia he begins with the fighters in the club, San Sebastian with him walking down the street with Luis. His focus on location and setting before food really emphasizes the importance of place in the food he is eating. Each and every place he goes to he tries something totally unique to that area that wouldn't have existed if the specific culture and location of that place hadn't existed how they did. This breadth of description also makes his chapters extremely vivid and interesting. I might just be a stickler for imagery and description, but I think that those are two of the most important narrative devices in creating a vivid story. This kind of description would have made "Stealing Buddha's Dinner" so much more enjoyable for me. None of the locations in that story really stuck in my mind the way Bourdain's travels do.
     I really enjoyed the background Bourdain gave on all the different ethnic foods he was tasting. I have no idea what any of the dishes he names in their local dialect are, let alone many of the fancier English titles dishes or ingredients. So far my experience with this book has been great. I love reading about exactly what Bourdain is writing about; exotic and interesting cuisine and places. He manages to be very respectful of the cultures and foods he encounters, most likely because he relishes their diversity. He seems to want nothing more than to taste every possible combination of animal entrails and exotic fruits and vegetables in whatever combination a culture can invent.