Gastronomy Events – September 2011
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
Karen Solomon talks about her book Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It as part of Practicing Gastronomy Series.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 17
Writing Workshop for Gastronomy Students
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19
Dr. Warren Belasco, “The Stakes in our Steaks”, Pepin Lecture Series, reception followed by lecture.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
“Welcome Back” social for Gastronomy students and faculty.
For more information and to stay up to date check our events page.
Beginners Tricks: Food Styling and Photography
By Meg Jones Wall
As a full-time graduate student, it’s always tempting to spend as much free time as possible slacking off. Classes are tough, research papers are grueling, and for these brief three weeks between the second summer session and the fall semester, Gastronomy students finally get to breathe a sigh of relief and relax, at least until our reading lists show up for fall classes. But one thing that I personally want to spend this short break doing is practicing my writing and photography skills, working on my blog as much as possible and hopefully developing stronger abilities with my camera, both in and out of the kitchen. I know I’m not the only aspiring photographer/writer/stylist/food blogger in the Gastronomy program, but I have gathered a number of solid, incredibly helpful resources that I’d love to share with my fellow Gastronomy students who are pursuing the communication concentration.
As a beginning photographer, I was very intimidated by the fancy equipment, expensive editing software and years of experience that the photographers I’ve met seem to possess. And while nothing can replace a lot of practice, I’ve found a few wonderful (and free) guides that can help get you started with a bit more confidence. There are hundreds of photography blogs and websites out there, but PhotoTuts tutorials offer helpful tips on everything from lighting to ISOs, giving information on all types of photography without too much technical language. The blog on Food Pixels gives more specific advice on food photography, often featuring reader photos, and Learn Food Photography provides articles on equipment and techniques, as well as interviews with successful photographers, stylists, and food writers. And if you’re not checking Lara Ferroni’s blog regularly, you’re missing tons of great insights on photography, styling, and food writing.
In addition to websites and blogs, I’ve collected quite a few books on each of these subjects. While every author offers unique tips and an individual perspective, much of the basic information gets repeated between texts, particularly those on photography and styling. Finding a few authors that you really trust is much more valuable than having stacks of books that you hardly use, and for me, Helene Dujardin’s book Plate to Pixel has been an invaluable resource that I can’t recommend enough. Dujardin is a beautiful writer and a very talented photographer, and her simple explanations and encouragement are extremely helpful. Dianne Jacob’s Will Write for Food is another great resource for food writers, giving information and advice that applies to blogs, newspaper articles, books, reviews, and memoirs. Jacob offers tips on how to break out of a writing rut, how to get published, ways to increase traffic to a blog, and what to look for when writing restaurant reviews. She provides information that’s helpful to both beginning and experienced writers.
Armed with all of these resources, you can feel a lot more confident entering these fields. But the most important advice I’ve been given as I struggled to grow as a writer and photographer is this: practice. Don’t make excuses, don’t apologize for your work, and don’t just sit at home and pray you’ll magically get better. Make time to write, cook, take pictures, style food every day, and you will improve. Get connected with people in the field who will push you and look at your work, offering their opinions on what looks good and what needs improving. And don’t worry about your equipment, software, ingredients or notebooks--good photographers can take a beautiful photo with a cell phone, and a great writer doesn’t need more than a piece of paper and a pencil. Enjoy your time away from classes, but don’t forget to keep on doing what you love.
A Seedling Project: The Gastronomy Gardening Club
By Mayling Chung
During the past two Sundays, the Gastronomy Gardening Club worked on its new plot in the Fenway Victory Gardens. For the first work day, we cleared along the fence line as an important first step in planning the garden. We wrestled with invasive plants, discovered some items and plants we'd like to reuse, and couldn't help but chat about our sensory experiences as we worked. Wafts of thyme floated into our nostrils, then mint; sunny yellow black-eyed susans swayed together; thorny branches kept us aware of our movements; the low hum of both honey and bumble bees; and the feel of soft soil releasing the roots of the plants. Ah, gastronomes in the garden!
The Gastronomy Gardening Club was recently created for Gastronomy students and affiliates with interests in gardening and related activities. It is intended for any and all levels of gardening experience and we want to learn from one another while getting our hands on some plants and in the dirt. Dr. Rachel Black planted the idea at the end of end of the Urban Agriculture course, and since then a small group of students have been working to organize a variety of opportunities for growing food and interacting with garden communities.
There was a lot of progress made and there is more work to be done. Our hope is to create a welcoming place for gathering, growth, connection, and inspiration. The Fenway Victory Gardens has been a wonderful source of support and partner with a shared passion for education and collaboration. We are really excited to continue to interact with and be a part of their garden community and we hope to make more great connections through the gardening club.
Please stay tuned and we would love to hear from you! One of our plans is to transition the Urban Agriculture course blog into a platform for the club so we’ll be looking for gardening-related write-ups. Send any ideas for educational opportunities, volunteering, and ways to give back to the FVG community to maylingc@bu.edu or Erin Ross at rosserink@gmail.com.
Alumna Profile: Joyce Lock
Gastronomy Alumna, Joyce Lock, never played a trivia game she could win but longed for a day when she could demonstrate her true trivia talent; not through history or pop culture but through a topic she was passionate about--if only there was a game about food and wine! This wish became a reality during Lock’s last year of study in Boston University’s Gastronomy Program. For her master’s thesis, Lock invented a food-related trivia game and went on to turn her brainchild into an impressive list of bestselling trivia games!
In 2002, Lock earned her Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy at Boston University where she also received certificates in wine and spirits and the culinary arts. Following graduation, Lock has been very busy with her career. She is the owner of Stir, a company that in between game projects provides culinary consulting, recipe development, and food writing services.
She serves on the board of Practical Farmers of Iowa, and has enjoyed being a judge for the James Beard Foundation Awards and Cochon 555, a heritage breed pig culinary competition. Lock’s entrepreneurial endeavors do not end here, as she is best known as the inventor of Foodie Fight: A Trivia Game for Serious Food Lovers (2007), Wine Wars: A Trivia Game for Wine Geeks and Wannabes (2009) and Foodie Fight Rematch (2011).
Lock’s eclectic interests span from how to make the best pie crust to U.S. agriculture policy. This eclecticism is reflected in her trivia games. Each topic is well researched and strives to engage the culinary novice and challenge the boastful foodie. Trivia questions are plucked from a battery of topics such as: kitchen skills, growing and preserving food, farmers markets, and food production and designed to outrun even the fastest running food trends.
Lock’s motivation is clear: “In all my games I strive to challenge the experts and engage reluctant players with fun, useful, surprising, and thought-provoking content—not merely random trivia. Game fans tell me they don’t mind losing a round because they have fun and appreciate that they’re learning new things.”
Lock’s approach to food is thoughtful and engaging. Lock’s work demonstrates that she has her finger on the pulse of the food world: “I think of food as the ultimate ‘social media.’ It connects us to friends, family, and strangers; to our histories, cultures, and the environment. Food is a social expression of who we are in relation to our world. Maybe this is why today’s appetite for all things food—including food games—seems insatiable. I hope Foodie Fight Rematch contributes to the conversation in a fun way!”
Joyce Lock is certainly a woman to watch as her initiatives continue to forge unique pathways to all things Gastronomy.
To find more information or to purchase Foodie Fight Games visit: http://www.foodiefightgames.com
A Gastronomy Manifesto
by Taylor Cocalis of Good Food Jobs
Identifying the field of gastronomy as your chosen career path is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is in the wide open opportunity and the option to be creative in the path that you take. The curse is that there is no set path. The road ahead, yet unpaved (or uncleared, shall we say? We don't want to encourage putting any more concrete on the earth.), will take exhausting amounts of time, energy, enthusiasm, expertise, and a healthy dose of faith in ourselves and each other.
There is no guarantee that what we are doing will indeed make a difference, but we all feel that there is merit in pursuing it. The prospect of failure is far less painful than the regret we'd feel if we never tried.
So we ask you all to step out of your comfort zone - choose the path less traveled, find satisfaction in the small strides that you make - they may be smaller steps, but they are meaningful ones.
And while this path does not yet promise fame or fortune at the outset, it will provide community, rebuild culture, and provide a sense of wealth and security that money can't buy. When you are feeling like the world is against you, casting a judgemental eye on how you've chosen to devote your time, energy, and precious educational funds, come find us. We'll have a seat ready for you at our table, welcoming you to celebrate your interest in all things living, and inspiring ideas as to how we can continue to be the change we want to see in the world.
We know from experience that the first step is the hardest, and we're here to help you. We urge you to do this: tackle one small issue . . . one seemingly insignificant contribution to the world. It can be selling expensive (but worth it) artisan cheese to those that can afford it, introducing the idea of growing food to those who will listen, or providing accounting expertise to agricultural start-ups. You can teach someone to take an extra ten seconds to taste every day, bake fresh bread for your buddies, or pick-your-own fruit for the first time. You can teach, you can eat, you can support, or you can savor. You can approach food from the politics, the pleasure, the production, the economics, the ecology, the psychology, the sociology, the culture, or the agriculture. It can be a career, a job, volunteering, or acting as an engaged citizen. But please don't be afraid to do something . . . anything . . . to start taking steps in the right direction.
In isolation, none of these individual acts will save the world, but together they have the power to slowly and steadily rebuild our food culture and change the world for the better.
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Taylor Cocalis co-founded Good Food Jobs in 2010, but her path to food enlightenment started long before that. At Cornell University she studied Hospitality Management and upon graduation in 2005 she completed a Masters in Food Culture at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Parma, Italy.
After three years of running the education department at Murray's Cheese in New York City, Taylor teamed up with a fellow Cornell alum Dorothy Neagle to create Good Food Jobs, a gastronomy focused job search website designed to link people looking for meaningful food work with the business that need their energy, enthusiasm, and intellect.
This blog post also appeared in the most recent Good Food Jobs newsletter.
Grow with Gastronomy
Boston University's Gastronomy Program cultivates change as it branches out to look at food production in cities. The launch of the Urban Agriculture course this summer was an important step in developing a holistic approach to studying food systems. Read more about it in BU Today: "One Class, OnDay: Urban Agriculture Takes Root"
BU’s Gastronomy Program was mentioned in a recent Christian Science Monitor article: America’s new culinary renaissance
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From tea party to tea braised? Is the recent “food craze” a mere trend or a culinary revolution that will celebrate its time in American history as the Era of Food? At the forefront of this surge, BU’s Gastronomy Program was mentioned in this Christian Science Monitor article which gives great voice to this growing topic: http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0709/America-s-new-culinary-renaissance.
To San Francisco: In Support of Culinary Entrepreneurs
By Annaliese DeNooyer
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It’s Friday morning and the kitchen at 2948 Folsom is kicking out its
usual fusion of smells. Thick tortillas sizzle on the stove and slabs
of dough destined for chocolate babka span three feet of the metal prep
table. Businesses work side-by-side at the stations, methodically
prepping for the weekend's markets, cart sales, and pop-up dinners.
From 6am to midnight seven days a week, this kitchen at La Cocina is
open to provide an affordable kitchen space to the conglomerate of
program participants and commercial-renters from the area.
Specifically, La Cocina is a non-profit incubator kitchen in San
Francisco’s mission district. In addition to the low-cost commercial
space, the organization gives hands-on technical assistance to
low-income and immigrant women entrepreneurs who are launching,
growing and formalizing food businesses. Working as a mobile food and
policy intern for La Cocina this summer, my day-to-day schedule is
wildly different from the folks who populate the kitchen every day;
but ultimately the entirety of my work revolves around them.
From the moment I discovered the non-profit's website last year, I
immediately knew their mission was something I wanted to associate
myself with. At the time, I was awaiting the commencement of my
Gastronomy studies at Boston University, a considerable venture by its
own merit. Nevertheless, I had a vision for what my summer could be.
Now, seven months later, I'm in San Francisco, fully immersed in all
things La Cocina. I came on-board with the organization amidst the
final planning for our two biggest events of the year: the Street Food
Festival <http://www.sfstreetfoodfest.com/> and National Street Food
Conference <http://www.sfstreetfoodfest.com/conference.php>. The main
focus of the festival is the incredible tacos, tapenyaki,
and latkes of the women who participate in our incubation program, and
is followed by the conference, which centers around the culture,
economics and public policy that affects street food. As an intern, my
time is divided between outreach and planning for the conference,
assisting with logistics for the street food festival, and researching
economic possibilities for food carts in the city. Each facet of the
internship has allowed me to experience gastronomic food policy in
action.
One full-time semester is complete, and I'll be eager to return to
Boston to resume classes in September; but for the next two months
it'll be cooking classes, Sunday suppers with El Buen Comer, and
tamales, all of the time.
Notes from the International Conference on Food Styling and Photography at BU
by Meg Jones Wall
“How many photographers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Ten. One to screw it in, and nine others to say, ‘Oh, I could’ve done that.’ ”
You may not be laughing, but Clare Ferguson’s joke was a big hit at this weekend’s third bi-annual International Conference on Food Styling and Photography, hosted by Boston University’s Gastronomy program and organized by industry leaders Lisa Golden Schroeder and John Carafoli. Bringing together professionals from across the food industry, this conference covered a wide variety of topics highly relevant to both experienced and amateur photographers and stylists.
The four-day event began this past Friday, covering advanced food styling and photography techniques. The morning was spent with Delores Custer, author of Food Styling: The Art of Preparing Food for the Camera, and the afternoon followed three sets of photographers and food stylists, allowing attendees to watch them create sets of photos built around a central theme - cheese. Among the photographers and stylists were Viktor Budnik, Deborah Jones, Jeffrey Kauck, Karen Tully, and Nir Adar. Saturday and Sunday, the main portion of the conference, featured presentations by a number of accomplished professionals, including Ilene Bezahler, David Ledsinger, Jamie Tiampo, Clark Dever, Kate Baldwin, and Antoinette Bruno. Monday’s sessions focused on food blogging, exploring successful elements and photos tips, as well as looking at how to incorporate video and multimedia services into a business model.
As a gastronomy student developing a food photography blog and a searching for a place in the food world, this conference was inspiring - and incredibly intimidating. I attended all four days of the conference, and the morning before the first session, I was so nervous I thought I wouldn’t last the day. But most of the participants were thrilled to meet both professionals and students, sharing their tips for breaking into the business, resources for learning industry skills, and ideas for growth and development. I made a lot of contacts, as well as some new friends, and I can’t even begin to express how much I’ve learned - it’ll probably take me at least a week to sort through my notes and process all the information.
I’ve been asked about my conference notes, and am happy to share them once I get them typed and organized - if you’re interested in a copy, feel free to contact me. I’ll also post them to my blog by the end of the week, separated by day (http://ginger-snapped.com).
For more information on the International Conference on Food Styling and Photography, as well as a full list of speakers and presentations, visit the conference website.
Meg Jones Wall is a full-time student in Boston University’s Masters of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy program. She is an avid writer, photographer and cook, and plans to complete her thesis this fall.
Update: All four days of conference notes are now available at ginger-snapped in downloadable PDF format.
From Seeds to Weeds: The Urban Ag Class is in Full Bloom
It's hard to believe there is only one week left of Summer Term I! There was barely enough time to watch seeds germinate and turn some compost in the garden. Nonetheless, the Urban Agriculture course has been a huge success for the Gastronomy Program.
Students have learned the challenges of starting tomatoes from seed and how to fight pests using organic methods. The class has visited gardens throughout Boston from the culturally diverse Berkeley Community Garden to the inspiring Carter School Sensory Garden. Topics of discussion have ranged from food and identity to urban agriculture and food security. In the end, the students seem to agree that urban agriculture has an important place in the city as an outlet for education. Whether learning practical garden skills, gaining knowledge about nutrition or encouraging civic mindedness, urban agriculture may just be a key piece in solving food and governance issues in the United States and beyond.