Understanding Neurogastronomy 

The student will develop an understanding of neurogastronomy through Shepherd’s Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters in the context of the offered in-program texts in effort to improve on a pedagogical theory of food studies. The student will also develop a practical understanding of how to participate in a community garden collective by participating in weekly work parties and volunteering at the food nook.

Learning Objectives	Activities	Evaluation
Internship Objectives: The student will improve an understanding of how to contribute to a community garden collective by participating in farming activities on a volunteer basis	The student will participate in weekly community garden collective work parties and will help with certain tasks when available during shifts at the Fertile Ground Food Nook.	Gail O’Sullivan of Fertile Grounds will write a paragraph summary of the experience working with the student. The student will upload an update of at least 100 words under Internship to describe weekly activities.
The student will develop an understanding of neurogastronomy	The student will read Gordon Shephard’s Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor	The student’s understanding will be reflected in weekly project responses
The student will develop a multidisciplinary understanding of information learned from Neurogastronomy: How the Brain Creates Flavor and Why It Matters	The student will read supplementary scientific peer reviewed articles to better understand sensory overlap in the brainstem to better understand neural pathways in effort to learn how to create a multi-sensory food eating experience	The student’s understanding will be reflected in preparing food for the class in week 8 and project weekly posts.
The student will develop an understanding of course material in the context of the student’s independent studies.	The student will complete all assignments as described on the syllabus,including weekly documentation on the Project pages of the SOS program website.	Whenever possible, the student will provide the faculty with a field supervisor, subcontractor, or mentor’s descriptive assessment of in-program ILC work completed with their guidance, expertise, or supervision by week 10. The student will complete comprehensive mid-quarter and final narrative self-evaluations and submit them to faculty prior to mid-quarter and final end of quarter student-faculty conferences.

Mid Term Reflection

This quarter I haven’t been posting nearly enough to the website and my goal for the second half of the program is to be active in uploading content consistently and documenting information learned. Non-program academic interests have also been distracting my attention, and I will integrate an understanding of course material in the remaining half of the program. The past week I have started to enjoy cooking with others. I don’t have a fridge and I am relying on the campus’s Sun Kitchen, which is a wonderful space, but some social discomforts in experimenting with a lack of cooking pans and new recipes can complicate attempts in a shared space. I have been eating beans and rice, with some soups from the can, tortilla and varying cooked vegetables from Jay’s farm stand. It has been inspiring to change my location and to practice cooking in a kitchen with cold kept items. I made a combination of Vertemae Smart-Grosvenor’s Codfish With Green Sauce recipe with the sauce from Cauliflower A L’Anita and put it on a sourdough pizza bread dough. Since then I have started to get into reading some cookbooks and understand how I was canned soup. In the second half of the program I hope to apply what I have learned about Neurogastronomy and neuroscience in relation to how other senses affect how we eat, how we cook, and how we can dance with flour flying in our process of preparing food.

Here is an outline of what I have done in the first five weeks of the program.

MidTermReflection