Summer Course Spotlight: Culture and Cuisine of New England
Looking to add another course to your summer schedule, but unsure how to choose? You might consider Netta Davis's course, Culture and Cuisine of New England. Without fail, this course receives rave reviews from all who take it -- from students who have lived in the region for years to those who moved here just for school.
Fast Food: A Global Perspective
Last night, BU’s Food and Wine program hosted The New School’s Andrew Smith for the final installment of the semester’s Pepin Lectures. The grandfather of culinary historians, and author or editor of 28 books on the subject, Mr. Smith captivated his audience during an hour-long journey through the history of fast food.
Styling: At the Intersection of Photography and Food
By Daryl Mogilewsky
I took a photography course last year while I was living in Austin, Texas. A few classes in, a fellow student asked the instructor if we would be covering “food photography” in the course material. Austin is a food hub, after all. The instructor replied with a slight smirk and a quip to the effect of, “there’s not much to go over.”
A Vegetarian Butcher
by Sonia Dovedy
I suppose I consider myself a flexitarian. Vegetarian most hours of the day, but always willing to expose my tastebuds to something other than what I know. That is, if it feels right.
Growing up in an Indian household, I was exposed to the smell of fresh mustard seeds toasting in the pan, the soothing hand-feel of smooth chappati dough, and lots of chillies! No one was allowed to leave home without nourishment. Food, as I understood it then, translated into love.
Bringing Food History to Nutrition
This is the third post in a series highlighting the ways students utilize Boston University’s many resources to cater the Gastronomy program to fit their own unique interests and needs. Don't miss Carlos' post on Entrepreneurship or Debra's on Technology.
by Kelly Toups
As an eager, young registered dietitian, I quickly realized I’d rather spend my time talking about the “food” aspect of nutrition than insulin and tube feedings. The BU Gastronomy program, which focused on issues of culture, policy, food systems, and cuisine, was exactly the kind of education I that I needed to specialize within my field, and transition to a more food-focused career.
Putting Gastronomy Theories into Action
This is the second post in a series highlighting the ways students utilize Boston University's many resources to cater the Gastronomy program to fit their own unique interests and needs. Read the first post here.
by Debra Zides
As a Gastronomy student who has grown up in a world very far from the foodies, I continually get asked the question, “Deb, what do you do with a Gastronomy degree?” During my time here at Boston University, I have developed two speeches that answer the question. My first answer ties back to why I entered the degree program in the first place – I wanted to turn my interest in starting up a small, artisanal tequila business into a reality. My second answer…well that is the story for this blog. I am going to tell you how I gained an appreciation for the current challenges and issues in our Food System, and how I am in the process of undertaking steps to solve one small problem leveraging technology to make the world a little better than when I found it. In short, how I am developing a capability that will allow households to circumvent “big” agribusiness, bringing decisive information to the people.
Course Spotlight: Cultural Entrepreneurship
This post is the first in a series highlighting the ways students utilize Boston University's many resources to cater the Gastronomy program to their own interests and needs.
by Carlos Olaechea
I’m sure many if not all Gastronomy students have run into a situation in which you are discussing your degree program with family, friends, or relatives and someone brings up this question: “What are you going to do with that degree?” Sure, there are many opportunities to find careers with employers in both the public and private sectors, but a good number of us also have ideas to start our own businesses or projects. Throughout our time as students, we receive a solid foundation in the theoretical aspects of food studies, and some of us supplement the core curriculum with courses in food writing, business, marketing, and culinary arts. Nevertheless, sometimes we need some extra insight into how to take our post-graduation plans from a concept to a viable venture. It was this need that led me to enroll in the Cultural Entrepreneurship class in the Arts Administration Department.
The Meaning of Mise-en-Place
by Claudia Catalano
One of the first lessons students learn in culinary school is the meaning of mise-en-place. French for "put in place", it means that ingredients are prepped, tools are gathered, and everything is organized before cooking begins. It's a grounding philosophy that keeps your head clear and your body poised to make things happen.
After almost a year in the BU kitchen, I have become intimately familiar with the concept. As part of my Gastronomy degree, I completed the Culinary Certificate program last spring, and was honored to be awarded the Julia Child teaching assistant position for the Fall 2015 semester. From September to December (that flew by), I fastidiously 'mise-en-placed' my way through veal stocks, bread dough, handmade pasta, fresh ricotta, Thai green curry, Punjabi greens, tres leches cake and much, much more. I gathered produce for daily recipes, measured ingredients for morning demonstrations, peeled, seeded and chopped tomatoes, and washed caseloads of chicken backs for the stockpot. My corner of the kitchen was rarely without a project.
Decoding Alternative Food Communities
by Ariel Knoebel
I stared down at the entangled green tendrils in the dirt, thinking to myself “What is tatsoi, anyway?”
I was embarrassed to ask. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what they were doing as they crouched between the rows of bushy greens, chatting while weeding with expert hands until perfectly straight rows emerged down the field. Eventually, I got over my first-day-of school jitters and spoke up, swallowing my pride for the sake of the soon-to-be-uprooted plants in my hands. From there, I learned not only about the small oval shaped leaves I was weeding around, but all about the farm crew members, where they came from, and what drew them to the hot, dusty, hard work of growing food for the community.
Wedding Cakes, Congealed Precedent, and that time I wrote a thesis
by Lucy Valena
From my first semester in the gastronomy program, I'd pretty much decided I would write a thesis. As a project-oriented person hoping to do independent academic writing in the future, it seemed like a good challenge that would help me prepare for the next step in my career. Additionally, I was feeling unsure as to whether or not I would apply for a PhD program after finishing my master's degree, but knowing there was a chance I might want to definitely solidified my choice.
Since the history and symbolic aspects of food are what that I find most fascinating, wedding cake seemed like a natural target for my research. I had also written a paper about wedding cake history for the intro class, so I at least knew something about the previous work that had been done on the topic.
Wedding cake has survived for such a long time (at least 300 years), and it shows no sign of going away; my question was, simply, why? The project ended up taking me all over the place: my research included reading historic cookbooks, interviews with producers of fake wedding cakes, and analysis of mainstream television. In order to really address my findings the way I wanted to, I had to cobble together theory from three different thinkers.
In the end, I found that wedding cake has survived because of its flexibility and constant shape-shifting. While its physical form has changed so much over time, the value ascribed to it has remained the same- a mixture of commodity fetishism and ‘tradition’, or what I call ‘congealed precedent’. These factors have allowed the wedding cake to remain fashionable and also symbolically important over the ages.
Writing a thesis was the most intellectually stimulating thing I’ve ever done. It was very difficult, and for the last few months of the year I spent working on it, I had the uncanny feeling that my project was eating me alive. I am a painfully slow writer, and I ended up rewriting the paper at least five times before I finally felt it was done. However, getting through it, seeing the challenge and rising up to meet it, was very empowering and invigorating. Since I got my undergrad degree in studio art, before this I had never written anything more than twenty pages (aside from the failed novel I keep in a drawer in my desk). After this experience, I have confidence and excitement about other research and writing I would like to do independently, a task I now feel I have the tools for. Obtaining those tools was my main reason for going to grad school in the first place, and with that in mind, I feel great about the experience.
In the time I was writing my thesis, I got married. In addition, I sold my business of five years, and subsequently underwent the somewhat dramatic lifestyle change of no longer being self employed. Sometimes, life is like that, and everything shifts all at once. If I could do it all again I may have timed things differently, but there was also something magical and liminal about that intense year. Its almost as if I was transformed into a different person, in a time that was bookended by the beginning and finishing of this project. I’m still not sure if doctoral work is in my future, but if it is, I know that I will be much more prepared for it because I wrote a thesis.
Read more of Lucy's writing and follow her many baking adventures at her blog, Ink and Lemon.