Like Water for Chocolate- food and feelings

I thoroughly enjoyed “Like Water for Chocolate” not just because I am a Spanish minor but because the film handles melancholy/serious issues with a mix of sincerity, humor, and passion. The issues range from love and heart break, to illness and death. The protagonist of the film- Tita, essentially waits on her evil mama Elena on hand and foot- the food that she cooks for her is a big part of this. It is interesting that Tita’s passion is to cook, but it is also part of her servitude, which she hates. Coincidently Tita uses her cooking for control and mischief. For instance, when she makes a dish with the rose petals give to her by her lover, the dish provokes the guests to feel sexually aroused. Or when she cries over her lover into the wedding cake of her sister- and the tears cause her guests who eat the cake to long for their loved ones. Food and feelings really go hand and hand.

I enjoyed the review “Picks & Pans - Like Water for Chocolate starring Lumi Cavazo,” by Joanne Kaufman because it is open minded and honest about what to expect from the film.She captures the passion of the film by providing the unusual examples of the profound effects of Tita’s cooking without going overboard. She refers to the kitchen as “(Tita’s) only safe haven” – I agree and think she explains this well

Kaufman wraps it up by saying:“This visually sumptuous movie, which takes its title from the Mexican method for brewing hot chocolate by boiling water to the point of exquisite agitation -- a metaphor for sexual arousal -- may not be everyone's dish. But those willing to give themselves over to the gently ironic narrative, a large portion of mysticism and some wildly fanciful plot turns, are in for a treat.” This concluding thought is respectful and realistic of the culture and point of the film.

Kaufman, Joanne. “Picks & pans - Like Water for Chocolate starring Lumi Cavazo” People Weekly. 7 June 1993: pg 201. ProQuest. Western Libraries, Bellingham. 17 May 2008.

It's Hard to Go Wrong with Chocolat(e)

This is such a yummy movie. It's so nice to see chocolate shown as delicious, sensuous and decadent rather than something you shove into your mouth while breaking your diet or crying over your ex. I particularly love Armande's birthday feast. Everything has chocolate, including a sauce for the chicken. I thought that was unusual, but looked tasty. This is way better than the giant milk chocolate easter bunnies that I once thought were the best chocolate ever! One of my best experiences in Spain was getting to drink hot chocolate that was as thick and chocolaty as the drink Vianne serves.

I remember seeing a poster advertising Chocolat in a Godiva chocolate shop. At the time, I thought the poster was a spoof, or just some of Godiva's advertising (I didn't recognize any of the actors--yup, this was when it was still possible to NOT know who Johnny Depp was.) When I finally saw the movie, I thought it was great fun. I also was very amused to see Carrie Anne Moss in role so different from Trinity in the Matrix movies. I've enjoyed repeat viewings of Chocolat, perhaps one of the funnest was at a sleepover with lots of chocolate included. It certainly isn't a bad way to spend part of my Memorial Day weekend!

• Levy, Shawn. “Tase Sensation.” The Oregonian[Portland, OR]. 22 Dec. 2000: 19. ProQuest. ProQuest. Western Libraries, Bellingham. 26 May 2008.

I agreed with Mr. Levy, that the movie is visually beautiful, well acted, and very tasty. I enjoyed his final recommendation:

"When you go see the movie, smuggle into the theater the most expensive chocolate in which you're willing to indulge yourself. No movie candy counter in America is adequate to the sensual yearning it evokes."

I agree, M&Ms just won't cut it with Chocolat. My only disagreement with this review is that Mr. Levy gives away the results of when Anouk suggests that Roux try eating a worm. Other than that, he hit the nail on the head: Chocolat is "Taste Sensation."

EDITED 6/8/08 for grammar and formatting.

Old Ads

First, I would like to say that from what I browsed, alcohol and cigarettes are the vast majority of "food" advertisements in national magazines. Coca-cola and cereal make an appearance, but you're not going to find an old equivalent of your Haggen's ad in Life magazine. But your weekly grocery ads usually come in the daily newspaper, not national magazines. It could be interesting to see what ads are in old Bellingham Heralds from before the 1960s.

It struck me, flipping through magazines from the 1920s, 30s, 40s and 50s: first, there is very little color in the magazines, and they have considerably more text. There were more drawings and fewer photographs. This makes sense, given the change in technology, but they were much more newspaper-like than magazines. It's a lot harder to imagine cutting out the pictures of people to use as paper dolls from the old magazines; they wouldn't be colorful enough.

Of course the type of magazine changes what type of ads are in it; I found plenty of alcohol, cigarette ads, but only one Coca-Cola ad in 1930s and 40s Newsweeks. But when I switched to looking at Life magazine, a magazine for the whole family, not just whoever reads the news (and probably doesn't cook), there were more food ads. This holds true to modern magazines: InStyle mostly had ads for perfume, jewlery and other fashion items. Woman's Day will have a lot more Campell's Soup ads and other household-oriented items.

A lot of the older ads have a lot more text than ads now; there will be a descriptive paragraph, or a housewife's testimony, or a recipe. Now, ads are usually a noticeable photo and a few words. And there's no longer any need to explain how much time convenience foods will save you; it's a given now, they're not new products. Of course velveeta will make cooking quicker, why else would you buy it? But in the older ads, they sometimes explain how their product works, and what it substitutes for; these were new foods pre-1960.

For example, I found a Dole canned pineapple ad in Life magazine for September 11, 1939. Firstly, they talk about "a delicious new treat from Hawaii." Several times, they emphasize how new canned pineapple is. There's a picture of a lady vacationing in Hawaii and writing to her friend back home. At home, her friend goes to the grocer, a man in a suit and white doctor's jacket, who shows here a can of pineapple, and explains when the new product is used ("Lots of folks eat them at breakfast.") Then the lady is shown smiling in the kitchen, while her children take pieces of canned pineapple from a bowl behind her back. The add even has a pineapple cartoon, complete with face and hands in a chef's hat pointing out the recipe for canned pineapple.

Some of this ad seems very cheesy (What about her Hawaiian vacation did Mary write to Jane? Why the canned pineapple, of course!). However, ads today still include smiling mothers watching their kids devour whatever fabulous, delicious and time-saving new food is being advertised. The ad now just might say how cool the mom is for feeding her children the product.

Citation:

• Bower, John A. and Nicola Mateer. "'The White Stuff?': An Investigation into Consumer Evaluation of the Scottish Celebrity Milk Marketing Campaign." Nutrition and Science. 38.2 (2008): 164-174.

EDITED 6/9/08 for spelling and formatting.

Just ask Aunt Jemima

As I was leafing through a LIFE oversize periodical of magazines from 1955, I came across an advertistment for Aunt Jemima's pancake mix. The advertisment was disturbing to me, because it reminded me of the film "The Confederate States of America" about the stereotypes and issues of racism. The film ends by stating that America hasn't entirely abandoned the stereotype of the smiling, happy African-American servant... "Just ask Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben." Prior to watching this film I had never thought of products such as Aunt Jemima's maple syrup as having a racist beginning.

This particular advertisment depicts aunt Jemima attired with a stripped bandanna, and matching apron happily serving two gentlemen their pancakes. With a quote underneath:

"When guests of colonel Higbee asked aunt Jemima how she made pancakes so light and full of flavor, she just smiled and answered- ("thats my own secret. you just eat' em.") Always she kept that secret"

It is hard to ignore the racist undertones of this advertisment. The image of Aunt Jemima is always kind of erie to me- her over fake smile, happily going about her work, or better said- her secret. It doesn't matter how much labor, hard work, suffering that goes into pleasing guests, it matters that she is smiling and not complaining about it. It was probably common in the early 1950's for rich families to have servants or buttlers, but this advertisment appears to be set earlier to the time of publish. The pancakes in this advertisment are in the least being linked to servantry or more extremly to slavery. Why would advertisers think that consumers would want to buy pancakes when they saw the image of a servant serving them? Maybe because it reminds them of a simplier time, they take comfort in being waited on. Regardless of the exact motives behind this advertisment, I find it disturbing and somewhat racist.

For More racism in the media check out:

Strausbaugh, John. Black like you : blackface, whiteface, insult & imitation in American popular culture. New York: Penguin, 2006.

Finer Flavor from The Land O' Corn

For this assignment, I came across an advertisement for Rath Bacon in the November 1959 issue of The Reader’s Digest. It portrays six strips of bacon on a plate with one on a fork, all over a blue and white checkered tablecloth with cream and a cup of coffee residing in the background. Above the bacon sits the quote, “-it’s real Iowa corn-fed bacon.” The ad beneath the picture states, “You hear a lot about Rath Bacon (and its all good). One good cook tells another. And so another family sits down to a platter of this delicious rise-and-shine bacon…..Try some – this very day.”

The picture is quite reminiscent of the kitchen of a home in the country, with simple furnishings and the common blend of blue and white being quite prominent throughout the picture. Upon close inspection of the plate on which the bacon resides, I can see that there is no grease underneath, and each strip looks sliced and cooked to perfection. The eye is almost immediately brought to the finest piece of bacon, which has been carefully staged at a noticeably obscure angle with respect to the rest of the bacon. The cup of coffee offers reassurance that bacon should indeed be as regular a breakfast item as a strong cup of freshly brewed beans.

As for the phrasing of the advertisement itself, I find it difficult not to notice that it is subtly community/family based. With the first line of, “One good cook tells another,” the impression is given that whoever is eating this bacon has at least one friend who cooks, and that both friends talk often enough to know that they are both good cooks. Cooking, by its nature, is a fairly communal affair. Often people cook together, or at least interact with others to gather the food which will be prepared. Meals cooked by a member of a family are rarely eaten by just the cook; more often than not, they are shared by the family. This notion of sharing meals with others is supported further by the next line in the ad, which reads, “And so another family sits down to a platter of this delicious rise-and-shine bacon.” This sharing of food is good news for the people at The Rath Packing Company, as they will sell far more bacon if people tell their friends, who will then purchase enough to feed an entire family as opposed to just one person.

It seams that advertisements today do not really have the same sense of sharing (most of the few that I’ve seen have been devoid of any communal aspects at all). The last line of the ad reads, “Try some – this very day.” I’ve seen several ads with similar lines in the magazines that I looked through for this assignment. It seems like advertisers were a bit more direct in their approach to sell their products than they are today. Today, perhaps because of the aid of advanced visual technologies, advertisers tend to let the product sell itself.

For more on the issue of food advertisement directed towards children, I recommend the following article:

Moore, Elizabeth S, and Victoria J. Rideout. "The Online Marketing of Food to Children: Is it Just Fun and Games?." Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 26.2 Fall 2007: 202-220.

Don't forget to hydrate!

During high school my choices of eating were very influenced by sports. During the Spring I ran Track, and I always had to be aware of what I was putting in my body. Our team signed a contract not allowing us to drink alcohol for the season. There were also common unspoken rules- two nights before a track meet- carbohydrate load for dinner; drink the amount of at least two nalgenes bottles of water a day, don’t drink coffee or soda, and obviously don’t eat foods high in fat or saturated fat whenever could be avoided. I really stuck by these rules, and after a while they became a routine. I mentally felt so much better running when I knew I had eaten healthy the night before. Some highly successful athletes on my team didn’t follow such rules. The best male sprinter on my team would often chow down a McDonald's big Mac the day of a meet. This made me look at food intake as having a mental aspect to how it affects an athlete. Of course drinking the right amount of water and staying away from unhealthy foods is important, but there is no one way of eating that worked for each individual athlete.

Every year during a middle season tournament in Spokane, the team would always eat at the Spaghetti house, but not without some ground rules: no ordering any alfredo, buttery, or cheesy anything! This was non-negotiable seeing as the coaches were paying for our meal. I always craved alfredo sauce so much on those spaghetti nights: I wanted to food that wasn’t an option. The final hurrah of track ended at our annual Mexican Restaurant dinner with parents at our state meet. We would always arrive at the restaurant still in our sweaty uniforms and fill ourselves full of salsa, enchiladas, and burritos. I remember grossly overstuffed walking back to the bus. We were celebrating by eating foods that we had avoided all season, and it felt great. The food tasted so good to me because it had been such an untouchable during the track season, and I could relax and think about food as celebration and congratulations- not as a diet or a regimen. I felt that I deserved to eat the food.

It was and has been really important for the food I eat to be in accord with my mentality. When I am focusing really hard on accomplishing a goal whether this be physical or not- it is always important eat healthy and hold back on foods that are celebratory. During track the food I ate was such an easy thing to control, when other things were so out of my control- like how the weather would be or how I was going to perform at a meet. Its interesting for me to think about the Track contract I signed and the dinners that we ate- always involved resisting or enjoying food and drink. This is why eating unhealthy food or consuming unhealthy drinks was so special- it was done when my mental attitude was in check; in my case I was trying to relax and celebrate after working hard. I have no gone back to the total “track diet” but it has served as an important experience for me regarding how the harmony of positive mental state and healthy food.

Academic Journal:
Harris, Marvin, and Eric B. Ross. Food and evolution : toward a theory of human food habits. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.

Bread that never gets moldy!

As we’ve established over the course of this class thus far, it seems fairly important (to most) to know what is in our food and where it comes from. It has also been established that it is incredibly difficult to know where all of our food comes from and the processing involved to get it to the market in an aesthetic condition. We can derive from the definition of society that we all must choose our battles, and hopefully share our findings with the rest of those around us. One battle that I have chosen is that of bread. As a large part of my diet, I feel that I should devote quite a bit of attention to it. My sister first taught me to bake four or five years ago, and I’ve been going at it non-stop ever since. Through the past few years, I have been learning (and continue to do so) about what makes a good bread. One of the quickest lessons that I had learned was that commercially produced bread does not constitute as “good bread.” One only needs four ingredients to make a loaf of white bread. The last time I looked at the ingredient list on the back of a loaf at the store, there were quite a few “extras” tossed in with the mix. There is no need for them. Bread made at home does not need preservatives, as it does not mold if done properly. While the time difference of baking a loaf versus buying a loaf is quite substantial (around 3 or 4 hours against 15 minutes, respectively), the reward is much more satisfying.

With so few ingredients in a loaf of basic bread, it becomes much easier to track down where those ingredients come from (the four basics being flour, water, yeast and salt). All of the ingredients can be found at the co-op, and any other store with a decent bulk section. If ingredients are bought in bulk quantities, the cost is, intuitively, brought down. It’s possible to make a basic loaf of bread for just a few cents a loaf, even with quality ingredients. It’s easy to ask who the current supplier of a bulk product is (although most are written right on the bin), and give a phone call to find out more about the product. I’ve been fortunate enough to come across flour and wheat berries from the company Wheat Montana, which sees their local wheat through from seed to store. Whenever I head to Spokane to see my family, I always make sure to stock up. I haven’t seen this wheat around Bellingham, but there are several wheat farmers in the area that supply excellent wheat without additives.

I always have a loaf or two on hand now, and when I see that I’m starting to run low, I can just whip up a dough starter in the evening - taking about 20 minutes - then let it sit in the fridge overnight to rise. In the morning I’ll take it out and punch it down, shape it into loaves, and let it rise again while coming to room temperature. I can let it do the second rise while at school, then come home and bake it for 30-40 minutes. Utilizing the refrigerator, it is easy to spread baking around one’s schedule without having a continuous 3 to 4 hour block devoted to baking bread.

I’ve come to a point in my life where I feel that I must make the process of preparing food just as important as the food itself. I suppose it is quite reminiscent of a utilitarian approach of “not treating something as a means to an end, but rather as an end in itself.” All bread must be baked, whether at home or in a factory. But I pose the question: Why not at home? It is much less expensive, much more satisfying, you know where it came from and what went into it, and don’t have to worry about mold. If time is a concern, the ever-popular quick breads can be prepared and baked in less than an hour. Although somewhat shunned in the baking community, they will suffice for a delicious and speedy method to prepare your own food.

Pita bread is another incredibly simple bread to make, taking only six to eight minutes to bake. It is a real marvel to watch rise in the oven, making an open pocket once cut in half. I was on a pita kick for a while, and had stacks of these things laying around, stuffing them with whatever I had on hand.

It’s easy to lose sight of what is important to human survival. We need food before we need technology. Eating should be a celebration of what it took to get to that point, not just something to do while watching television or browsing the internet. It is my hope that we can rid the world of Wonder Bread and all start taking the time to see both food and the path it takes to become such as ends in themselves.


For an incredibly technical explanation of what is happening while bread is rising, I recommend the following article:

Bikard, Jérôme, et al. "Simulation of bread making process using a direct 3D numerical method at microscale: Analysis of foaming phase during proofing." Journal of Food Engineering. 85.2 Mar. 2008: 259-267.

Don't Use the Word "Putrid" for Your Mother's Cooking

When I was in elementary school, I learned an awesome new word: "putrid." I even learned that it means "rotting." But I still decided to describe the packed lunches my mom made for me with this wonderful new word, putrid. Mom's reaction was to refuse to pack a lunch, which forced ME to pack my own lunches (the school didn't have a cafeteria, so buying lunch wasn't an option). By high school, oftentimes my sister and I were on our own for dinner or we were cooking it for Mom and Dad. I really, really missed my mom's cooking. Despite my earlier complaints, I had discovered that her cooking was much better than mine. (That said, when I finally got my own kitchen in college, I was very happy I knew how to use it because I'd had to prepare my own food for years.)

I loved my host mom's cooking in the summer I spent abroad in Spain. She cooks lunch and dinner, with the exception of Friday nights. I always told her that the food was delicious and always cleaned my plate. Fortunately, her food really is very good, but I was not going to say ANYTHING that could be remotely insulting about her food, for fear of being forced to cook all my meals again; I remembered the results of the word "putrid." The flip side of this is that her daughters aren't nearly as wonderful cooks as she is, because they've never needed to be in the kitchen much since their mom does all of the cooking.

I suppose that my points in this post are:

1. Don't ever insult your mother's decent cooking: if you do, it will go away, and the alternative (your own cooking) won't be as good.
   
2. I wish I had known this in elementary school.
   
3. Despite Points #1 and #2, it is much better to learn how to cook while still at home, where you can eat your mom's cooking at least some of the time and are not wholly dependent every day of the week on whatever mess you made yourself.
   
4. Finally, and most importantly: Tell your mother you love her cooking on Mother's Day, but don't suggest she cook for the occasion. Take her out to dinner.
   

Bliss is Rapidly Leaving

It's nice to see something about the horrors of the food we eat that does NOT have to do with meat. Now that I have plenty to be guilty about every time I buy a hamburger, I can now also feel terrified when I order a taco.

Unfortunately, this system where everyone in the food chain except the farmer is making money is not actually a new phenomena. It's actually been the case, even back to the "good old" turn of the century that The Future of Food seemed to feel was better. My grandfather was a long distance trucker and school bus driver while he owned his dairy cows and then his beef cattle. Despite growing up in the 1950s, my mom did not have a stay-at-home mom; Grandma worked in the post office in town. Farming is a terrible business, because it is terribly unpredictable. You can't know if a frost will wipe out your orange crop, or if some bug will eat your product out from under you. Thus the attraction to plants that can be easily and effectively be sprayed and the crop be more likely to survive and flourish until it can be harvested and sold. If you want to be rich, you don't own a family farm. Grandpa raised his cows because he loved farming, not because he wanted to be fabulously wealthy. Banking may be a lucrative profession, but you can't really yodel to your paperwork. Grandpa could and did yodel to his cows.

While I knew about "sucide seeds" I didn't really think it through. When I first heard about it, I was pretty peeved. My sisters and I loved to try to grow avocados from the pits of the ones we bought at the store. I assumed that they never grew into trees because my sisters and I didn't grow them properly, nor is the Pacific Northwest an ideal climate in which to grow avocados. But I was pissed to think that my kids or even just kids younger than me wouldn't be able to spit out the seeds from the tomato they were eating and try to grow a tomato plant with them. We tried that as kids because Mom explained that the seeds were where plants came from. It's absurd and freaky that in the future, or even the present, that it is not actually true that new plants can grow from the seeds that the plant produces. In fact, seedless grapes are really quite wrong. What I hadn't really thought about was the sheer impossibility of keeping natural plants from breeding or absorbing parts of genetically modified plants.

As for the patenting of seeds and genes, and the cases upholding the patents, I'm going to have to see some of the cases. When presented in the movie, it seems like the most idiotic, suicidal thing to do, but not all those judges and lawyers can be stupid. They must have some logic or reason. I need to read their reasoning to see if it's entirely dumb. Maybe all parties involved in these rulings have never planted anything, but that seems really unlikely. But hey, "separate but equal" was eventually overturned; hopefully, someone will build a successful case to overrule the patent permissions. Or the corporations can try to patent the tortilla and get ripped to shreds by millions of people who eat tortillas everyday. Ask Marie Antoinette what happens when you're too callus about starving people--oh wait you can't, they killed her for it.

Really, this movie just highlights the fact the world would be a better place if people weren't so determined to screw other people over, or at least weren't so worried about what was in it for themselves. Forget nuclear doomsday movies, we need ones with massive starvation due to pharming. Models could serve as extras for the dying masses.

Yes, I have qualms about eating genetically modified plants. I don't need ecol i in my food on purpose. Fish do not belong in my tomatoes. No, I can't think of a reason why genetically modified products are NOT on food labels. See the above paragraph about screwing people over for reasons why they are not already on food labels.

And an article from ProQuest:

• Spurgeon, David. “Monsanto Wins Seven-Year Court Battle for Seed Patent.” Nature. 429.6990 (2004): 330. Research Library. ProQuest. Western Libraries, Bellingham. 4 May 2008 .

Here is a brief article that has a helpful, though partial, solution to the lawsuits against farmers by large seed corporations:

• Catechi, David. “Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Patent Right.” Hastings Law Journal 56.4 (2005): 769-770.

EDITED 5/29/08 for citation correction

The Future of Food

This was a really well-done film. It gave a lot of information that can be hard to find on your own, and for that I give thanks. My understanding of plants has revealed to me that they are indeed living organisms and as such, have the right to thrive in their place in the grand scheme of things. It is an insane and absurd idea to me that anyone would want to bypass morality and ethics to make a profit, especially by claiming ownership over the rights of another living organism. I’m still a bit baffled as to how the Supreme Court decided it was just to patent the genetic makeup of something. It’s going to mutate and adapt throughout future generations in order to survive, so how can one lay claim to unpredictable happenings that haven’t even happened yet?

I am really glad that we have local markets that don’t rely on shipping foods from undisclosed locations that may or may not be genetically engineered. The beauty of local farming is that you can actually talk to and maintain a relationship with those who you receive food from. I’ve been fortunate in growing up that I have always lived in places that have had such markets. We are all quite fortunate living in this region of the world, that we can even bypass the market and actually forage for our own sustenance. It is very important to me that as humans, we try to take a path of progress towards eating natural foods that are nearby.
I feel that it is extremely important that foods be labeled as containing GMO’s. In the video, it was stated that consumers are very powerful, but need to be informed in order to utilize that power. If we have no knowledge of what is in our food, we become uninformed and oblivious as to what we are consuming, along with the impact that the production of such foods has on the rest of the world. I was raised eating corn with almost every dinner it seemed. I love the stuff. But I have since stopped eating corn when it’s not in season, and when it is, I want to make sure I get it from somewhere within the same area code. Corn that shouldn’t be growing naturally during the winter shouldn’t be eaten in my opinion. It is hard to find out what foods you can be assured are natural, but every effort should be made to eat those. I know for a fact that my diet consists of genetically modified foods, but I feel that taking steps to eliminate those items is indeed the right thing.



MacDonald, Chris, and Melissa Whellams. "Corporate Decisions about Labelling
Genetically Modified Foods." Journal of Business Ethics. 75.2 Oct. 2007: 181-189.