Tasting Lab Lunch: Week 8

Asparagus Stir-Fry

Students: Sean Dwyer, a brown bread made by Meghan, sourcing help from Alana Mousseau

Cut the bottoms of asparagus and trim to size

once bright green, throw in some ginger and chile

then add salad greens after and serve

I used pepper and salt.

Our ancestors understood this solemn truth, dug into the dirt, and built autonomous agrarian villages “for the beautiful ones not yet born.” (Davy et al. 2)

What’s a memorable experience of eating vegetables grown by someone you know? How does this change your experience of eating?

“The funny thing was everyone said I had a glow that evening and I kept saying that I didn’t feel good and the glow they saw was fever. They said I had the glow of health.” (Smart-Grosvenor 104)

Do you have a distinct memory of food and music together? Does the music, the food, or the environment stand out more in your memory? Can it?

Mead Tasting –

The mead tasting was a wonderful experience. The honey water tasted sweet but not overwhelming and the color wheel that was provided opened my eyes to several descriptive tasting words that were unknown to me. I was too interested in the presentation and all of the different types of flavor descriptions that were on the wheel to concentrate on how to describe it. Reflecting on the flavors, the honey water had a slightly fruity, caramel, and woody taste to it. The stronger mead that was mixed with the wine had a more pungent berry, woody, and a slightly caramel taste to it. Something that stood out to me is that in my studies of flavor and taste I read about the sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami flavors. On the wheel I noticed that umami was not mentioned and I couldn’t help but smile.

4) Why do you believe society doesn’t discuss complicated design issues to help solve either CCD or Individuation?

It’s a terrifying subject to discuss because it has such profound meaning to our existence and we don’t really know. A question that came up for me after the presentation was how do you raise bees outside of a box? I thought about it and the conclusion that makes sense to me is that bees shouldn’t be raised because they already thrive in a healthy ecosystem. Given the current state of the natural environment, it brings up a sense of fear in myself that can be hard to process while trying to promote Individuation and I imagine that I am not alone in that. Not until we can become confident in our individuality can complicated design issues be discussed with more ease.

5) Have you ever faced a painful part of your individuation process? If so what could society have done to have helped you?

I have faced a few painful parts of my individuation processes, but not with the same gusto that I give towards running from other painful parts of my individuation processes. The most painful aspects of that experience was when I felt unable to connect with people trying to help me because in the past I had run to others for help rather than facing the obstacles I built for myself first before getting support. Often times that happened because I couldn’t put a name to what was ailing me and I put myself in harms’ way to feel justified in my struggle. What this class has taught me is that when people know that you have love in your heart you are much more likely to believe they are there to help. Society as a whole could have encouraged me to ask questions from those who display confidence and make me feel good and promoted the importance of celebrating yourself. The beauty of it is that society did tell me those things but in a way that I didn’t understand until I experienced it, didn’t experience it, and then wanted to experience all of it.

6) When has the cultural norm helped and hurt you? What were the cultural norms/stereotypes that you are referring to?

The cultural norm of the alpha male has helped me be confident as a very sensitive person when my self-esteem was incredibly low and it gave me the opportunity to be more like myself. This norm has hurt me quite a bit because the opportunity to be more like myself was a trick of the rational mind, and in order to be who I really am I needed to develop emotional outlets to preserve that sensitivity and not grow into an alpha male, but the sensitive passionate person I am. Reflecting on how it has damaged me, I relied too much on social confirmation of my status as an alpha male and when people tried to connect with who I really am, sometimes I felt threatened in this pseudo-status and reflected who society wanted me to be. After realizing how overcompensation can obstruct perseverance in the individuation processes, I began to understand how fragile true confidence is if it is not reinforced with habitual integrity. I am beginning to see this cultural norm as a tremendous opportunity for personal growth, because it has allowed me to experience being an individual, not experience being an individual, and then want to experience it all the time.

7) I want to make honey, poems, music, farm, cook, cry, scream, and dance. And eat pizza.

Tea Tasting Lab

I have enjoyed Kotomi’s tea tasting labs so much over the past two quarters, but this tasting was definitely my favorite. I wanted to cry because I saw just how beautiful it all was. We tasted Jasmine black tea and silver needle white tea. I had a hard time describing the flavors of the tea until Natasha spoke about what the jasmine black tea tasted like to her. She said it smelled like the the woods by her grandma’s house in Woodstock, New York. When I was a kid I spent a lot of my time in the woods on my parents property in the neighboring town over – Saugerties, New York. As a kid I had really bad allergies and I would sneeze so much and pant with my tongue out so intensely that my parents tried pharmaceutical medication and it really didn’t work. I couldn’t smell. So when Natasha shared what the black jasmine tea smelled like, the next smell took me back to a place I hadn’t been in a long time – and the only way I could describe that smell was happy.