SOS: ComAlt. Sarah Williams.
Tasting Response. Wk 1.
Zoe Wright.
1/16/17.
In the stead of participating in the tastings every other week, I will be writing a short note on my observations of the tasting and of the social culture related to food that is created in the classroom during mealtimes and tastings.
During the tasting last week there was brief discussion about the phenomenon of liking things less or differently the more you learn about them, and about how so many classes with social justice aspects have a very large success rate of making you really despise things you used to like, or at least feel highly guilty about wanting to still like them.
This week our tasting involved five types of eggs. These were called: White, Pink, Marbled, Golden, and Salmon Roe. The first four were various ways to prepare hard boiled eggs. The fifth is the egg of a salmon. The class was to write down visual observations, then taste each type once and write down first taste observations. Then the class was to read the blurb about each kind of egg, which included something about what it was or how it was made, and some personal touches about what it meant to a few different people. After reading the blurb for each egg, they were to taste the eggs again and write down what, if anything changed.
Thus each description was read and the eggs turned into a normal hard boiled egg from Stiebers Farms Cage free “Sunrise Fresh” eggs; a ‘golden’ egg that had been bought locally and were known as “Egg Lady” eggs, which had been scambled in their shell and then boiled; Egg Lady eggs that had been pickled in beets, a recipe found on Allrecipes.com that one commentor said tasted just like their grandma’s recipe, and that one commentor said was a beloved family favorite; and Egg Lady eggs that had been boiled in black tea sourced from the controversial Sakuma Brothers farm, making them tea eggs that you might find with street vendors in Chinese communities; and salmon eggs that had to be harvested at a particular point in the salmon’s reproductive cycle to get the correct texture and flavor.
This exercise was a way to highlight the different things that go into forming what something tastes like and especially whether or not you like that taste or that food. Where it came from, how it was grown. Who’s serving it, why, and when. Some of what was discussed last week was how knowing background information affected how you physically tasted, and mentally decided, which was better. Some mentioned that knowing when fish eggs had to be harvested, before the salmon has a chance to use them to actually reproduce, made them choose not to eat those eggs. While another said that looking at the background of salmon eggs made them not want to eat them, but the taste and flavor and the personal experiences linked to eating them overpowered that new knowledge.
This tasting was in response to reading and discussion of the introduction of Kyla Wazana Tompkins book Racial Indigestion, which opens by looking at an example of the way black bodies have been considered edible objects in advertisement and entertainment over the last century and a half or so. This introduction is us up for reading the rest of the text, which examines cultural artifacts such as a books and advertisements and what those artifacts have to do with food and eating and how people of different social, racial, or other statuses looked at food and eating. This tasting sets up the idea of taste (or liking) being built on something other than the chemical interaction between taste bud and brain – or the simple ‘it tastes good.’, ‘it tastes like this . . .’, or ‘it doesn’t taste good.
This study of how taste and liking is affected by knowledge is really interesting, since the idea of taste, as in personal taste – taste in food, or even taste in clothing, or taste in movies – is a very prevalent idea in our culture.
Thinking about personal taste and individuality in this culture brings up an interesting contradiction.
One part of that contradiction is that diveristy is a brilliant and beautiful thing, and having different tastes, experiences, and beliefs is deeply part of diversity. For the other part of the contradiction, there is the idea of fitting within certain social boundaries of which things each person with a particular identity can like. Thus there is a contradiction, you can have a diverse personality and life experience, but only within a selection of pre-approved actions and tastes.
This contradiction and the way it takes form in each part of identity or personality is an incredibly complex thing. There are pieces of study in various places. One of the pieces of study is perhaps this class and it’s consideration of and critical thinking about these tasting labs.
And perhaps part of the study, at least a casual version of it, would be further looking at particular topics related to the social interactions around food. The casual and formal ritual of food. The expectation of behavior around food in certain contexts. The things that influence taste, both the physical taste of food, and the attachment of the value of liking something. And the maintenance of social boundaries around food.
And of course, whatever interesting aspect of food and food culture is brought up at each tasting.