SOS: ComAlt, Seminar Pre-Writing Week 8
22 May 2017
Word Count: 317
Passages:
“The Freedom Farm created a shared ownership model allowing cooperative members to feed themselves, own their own farms, farm cooperatively, and create small businesses together in order to support a sustainable food system, land ownership, and economic development” (Davy, Horne, McCurty & Pennick 2016: 4).
“I really dig cooking and eating with friends… Sometimes people would bring things – anything they had at home or we’d take a collection and buy supplements to my meager ‘pantry.’ The combinations were really soulful” (Smart-Grosvenor 1970: 106).
“Beddard thought that there was something viscerally wrong with using poisonous chemical to grow food we would eventually put in our mouths. ‘I was viewed as a renegade with a hippie philosophy.’ he said” (Estabrook 2012: 156).
News Media Context:
Jewish Delicacies Beguile the German Capital
“That is part of the point. ‘It can’t just be nostalgia; it can’t just be your bubbe’s cooking,’ Mr. Yoskowitz said, using the Yiddish word for grandmother. ‘This is a living food tradition.’…‘There was a lot of bagel ignorance in this town,’ she said. So Ms. Kratochvila, 33, began slinging her own dough. She pored over old cookbooks and food blogs, adapting traditional recipes to make use of local ingredients.”
Discussion:
This morning I awoke to sunbeams streaming through my blinds in a happy, horizontal pattern. I rolled out of bed with books in hand and ventured to my front porch. As I cracked open Vibration Cooking I drank my fair trade coffee blissfully, basking in the bright heat. I only mention this because over the weeks I have noticed that the context in which I read our assigned passages drastically affects how I consume the words on the page. Because of my joyous mood I felt triggered by moments of bliss and progress. After a lovely night of cooking, eating, and laughing with my good friend Annie, reading Smart-Grosvenor’s chapter about friends and sharing food instilled a sense of content nostalgia. As I read and grinned, my consciousness teetered between the voice of Vertamae and the catalog of my most cherished memories cooking and eating with dear friends. When studying the inherent inequalities and ecological injustices of our current food system, it is easy for me to lose sight of the magic in food and its role in identity and vulnerability. Reading about Jewish cuisine being elevated and appreciated in Berlin only enforced my satisfaction in transcending cultural and personal barriers with food.
Surrounded by green leaves and clear blue skies, I felt grateful when reading about Beddard’s “renegade hippie philosophy,” not only because it indicates there are some good tomato farmers out there, but because the fact that organic produce has so quickly recovered its consumer value is at least something – a small step toward a cleaner, fairer food future. I had a similar feeling of wistfulness when reading about people of color reclaiming their sustainable agrarian identities at The Freedom Farm, fighting against the forces of institutionalized racism and industrial agriculture that work so adimately to prevent their sovereignty. These success stories left me feeling inspired instead of my usual sensation of hopelessness and defeat.
Citations:
Davy, D. C., Horne, S., McCurty, T. L., & Pennick, E. (2016). “Black Agrarianism: Resistance.” Retrieved from https://foodfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/DR6_final-3.pdf.
Estabrook, Barry. (2012). Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing.
Gellman, Lindsay. (2017 May 14). “Jewish Delicacies Beguile the German Capital.” Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/world/europe/guten-gefilte-jewish-delicacies-beguile-the-german-capital.html?ref=dining&_r=0.
Smart-Grosvenor, Vertamae. (1970). Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Athens: The University of Georgia Press.
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