Tasting Lab writing activity.

Week 6

Reid and Glenn Tasting Lab Writing Prompt Week 6

1) Tasting Lab, Lunch, Tea:  Week Six

2) Students:  Reid Ellingsen, Glenn Tippy

3) Materials and Methods (ingredients and recipes):  Lady Grey (Black tea Oil of bergamot Lemon peel Orange peel) Root Vegetable Hash (turnip, red/gold beets, fingerling potatoes, kale rabe, salt, pepper, olive oil) cube all ingredients into same size, sprinkle salt, pepper, oil and bake till all of the veggies are fully cooked. Spring salad (kale, spring mix, nasturtium flowers). Dressing: Olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Dijon mustard, salt, pepper) No knead bread (905g unbleached flour, 425g whole wheat flour, 240g cracked whole grains, 1T baking yeast, 2T + 1t salt, and 1200g water).  

4) Tasting Lab Questions in relation to weekly assigned texts: (Or in winter quarter’s language, “Inquiry for Critical Eating Studies, or The Mouth as Organ of Eating and Speaking”)  

“Charlotte introduced me to the high art of cooking on an alcohol burner. She would cook three-course meals on it; it didn’t take me long to catch on and we gave the best dinner parties in the hotel.” (Smart-Grosvenor 55)

“Kali used to go shopping each day for us and she did a beautiful job. One day I sent her for a demi-baguette and she came back with a half loaf of pain de campagne and two pain au chocolat. She said they didn’t have any more baguettes and so she got what she could with the money she had.” (Smart-Grosvenor 64)

“We always had lots of company on Rue des Ursulines. One day Pat and Ted and Dave came and all the stores were closed. We only had a couple of thin slices of ham and a few potatoes and eggs in the house so I made something that I called Omelette Des Ursulines.”(Smart-Grosvenor 64)

Root Vegetable Hash: Throughout the text there is an underlying theme or making due with what you have, whether it be limited money or ingredients. Spring time is a transitional time for farmers and ag workers.  I’ve heard March, April, and May refered to as the hunger months.  A time when all the stores of food that the farmers have saved for times when the fields are not producing much are all but used up.  These times call for ingenuity, and the ability to make do with what you have. The kale rabe you are eating came from kale plants that had overwintered in the field, and harvested before they were mowed down.  Many people overlook rabe, but to a resourceful person it’s a meal.  Similarly, root veggies have a longer storage life than other veggies, many times they’re the last morsels of food left over from the previous seasons harvest. As you eat the root vegetable hash with kale rabe and the mixed spring salad, please consider how you’ve managed to feed yourself in hard times.  What resourcefulness have you found yourself resorting to in times where you may not have had enough money to buy the ingredients you wished to have, or times when you haven’t had the proper space to prepare a meal?  How do you feed yourself?  How do you stretch out your money, while at the same time providing your body with the energy and nutrition it needs to get you through the day?  Do you ever go without eating?  Do you ever go to sleep hungry because you lack the means for a proper meal?  How many of the ingredients/recipes we use on a regular basis have their roots in poor-agrarian communities?

No Knead Bread:  This recipe was shared with me and the Practices of Organic Farming program in 2015 by Paul Przybylowicz.  Continuing with the theme of making due with what little we sometimes have, this bread recipe exemplifies limited time and limited resources.  Bread is a staple in many cultures as a filling substance that complements nearly and dish.  Calling for six simple ingredients (unbleached flour, whole wheat flour, cracked whole grains, baking yeast, salt, and water) this bread is cheap to produce.  Stereotypically students have limited finances and time on their hands, juggling school, a job, social life, and family can be stressful.  This no knead bread recipe takes hardly anytime though.  You simply throw the ingredients together, let it rise for some time, flip it once a couple hours before baking, bake it, and finally enjoy!  

5) Seminar Facilitation:  Process, Focus, Activities

-Student peer introductions

-Seminar discussions as Restorative Justice community building circles (see website for RJ handout of which pages 1-2 were handed out in class). Use of talking stick.

-Small group explorations of key quotations from select chapters of Tomatoland, Vibration Cooking, and The Roots of Black Agrarianism  that address these two questions: a) What’s the theme that ties these readings together? b) What memories do these readings awaken within you? Just as Marcel Proust has a case of involuntary conscious memory in his book Remembrance of Things Past as a result of dipping a madeleine into a lime blossom tea. How does the food you consume propel you back in time? Or connect you to people in different geographic locations?

Recipe to Bread HERE.