APU SOCI 315 – Assignment 1 FOOD MEMORY

APU SOCI 315 – Assignment 1 FOOD MEMORY

Subject: Sociology    / General Sociology    
Due on: 01/21/2017
Question
SOCI 315
Assignment #1
FOOD MEMORY
Write a description of a food memory, preferably from your childhood. This could be a
memory of tasting or liking/disliking a particular food, or it could be a memory focused
on a dish from a particular eating event, collective or individual. Pay attention to as
many senses as you can invoke to evoke this memory.
Do a bit of research to place your memory in wider context. Discuss the cultural,
symbolic, social, structural, or other meanings of this dish. Specify the social group for
whom it has meaning, for what kinds of occasions and settings is this dish prepared, who
is involved in the preparation, serving, and consumption of this dish, etc.
Is this a food that unique to your culture? What are its traditional names? (And do these
names have any special significance and/or meaning?) What ingredients go into making
these foods? How and when are they eaten? Are there unspoken family “rules” about
food consumption (e.g., what’s okay, and not okay, to eat; how and where should one
eat, etc.)
There are many ways to approach this assignment:
1) If you recalled a dish at a specific event, talk to others who were also present and see
how they remember the dish and the event; analyze the similarities and discrepancies
between your recollections;
2) If you remembered a specific dish, you might also try to find the recipe for it. You
may find multiple, slightly different recipes for a regional dish (say, gooey butter cake or
black eyed peas) – if so, see how many varieties you can collect from friends, family
members, and other sources (do not only look in Better Homes and Gardens or some
other standard cookbook, or the internet for a general recipe). If it is a family recipe
that has one ‘original’ source (say, a great grandmother), see if others with access to this
recipe have come up with modified versions. You might also try to interview at least one
other person about his or her memories, feelings, associations with this dish and/or
recipe. DO NOT HAVE MOST OF YOUR PAPER BE THE RECIPE! Just summarize it
into ONE, particularly if you have several! This paper needs to be 4 pages or more. You will need to use .12 Times New Roman
Font. You need to double space and provide a cover page/reference page, following
APA-formatting guidelines. These two items are NOT part of your page count. ___
“Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are.” ~Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826). The Physiology of Taste, 1826. ~ “When I walk into my kitchen today, I am not alone. Whether we know it or not, none of is. We bring fathers and mothers and kitchen tables, and every meal we
have ever eaten. Food is never just food. It’s also a way of getting at something else:
who we are, who we have been, and who we want to be.”
~Molly Wizenberg, A Homemade Life~ “American food is in crisis. Never before has there been such a rapid and profound change in what we eat and how it grown…We have become a society too rich to
farm, too busy to cook, too preoccupied with our created selves to acknowledge the
legitimate and very read needs of our natural selves…We are a society addicted to
the idea of unblemished cheap food. Americans spend less of their incomes on food
(on a percentage basis) than any other industrialized country in the world. It has
been, however, a Faustian bargain.”
~ George Schenk, “American Flatbread.” ~