Tasting Lab – Week 2
Local Eats

This meal consisted of mixed greens, including a variety which could be tracked back to eating locally.  One thing that stood out to me before eating, was taking the consideration of “eating local”. Do you consider yourself a localist if you buy food from the co-op and farmers market, but still partake in eating chocolate, or drinking coffee?
How often do people pay attention to the true costs, labor and distance their food has to travel before they can purchase it, and put it on their dinner plates to consume?
We did not get the chance to do this in class during our tasting, but I feel that being able to take the time to really define “local” would help the tasting. I think everyone personally has a different definition of the word, and probably even a different distance in mind, when asked how far something can travel before it is still considered local.
Does one consider “local” to be as restricted as Olympia, from Puget Sound, in Washington state or as broad as the Pacific Northwest?
By being able to define the word local, this can help one to bring back and have that connection to their food, helping them to understand and be conscious when making decisions, and recognizing where it comes from.
Overall, I found this meal incredibly delicious. I think the dressing paired well with the salad, and I really enjoyed being able to taste all the different kind of bitters in the mixed greens. Through my own experience, eating a salad with “bitter greens” can either be with mixed greens that are naturally more bitter and stronger or flavorful than others, or even just experimenting with the flavors in general and eating bolted lettuce, to learn how bitter compounds are affected with “ripe and ready-ness” of lettuces.
I was just slightly concerned coming into the tasting because often times people shy from wanting to eat bitter compounds and flavors. Bitter is often referred back to the world’s most “dangerous” flavor, because of the association of bitter flavors being found in toxic foods or other compounds. Even within the animal kingdom, mammals may stay from bitter foods, because of the awareness these foods could potentially be dangerous or poisonous to them. I am still curious as to learning how bitter compounds are tasted differently within the genetics of females and male taste buds.
The corn bread though! Corn bread is not a food I find myself eating very often. Partially because it’s not something I grew up with as a kid, and I wasn’t generally a fan of how crumbly it was. But putting into perspective there is a “right” and “wrong” way of eating cornbread opened my eyes… which could be both facts or just a personal opinion. Then that also brought my attention to how many different ways there are to eat cornbread. Sweetened, which is considered “cake” to some, and without being sweetened, which is the proper way to eat cornbread. Then of course, falls the category of eating corn bread without being sweetened to the recipe, but eating it with something sweet- such as adding honey on top.
Eating the two together was very pleasant, and I enjoyed the lesson about corn bread before we had our meal.