FCC Field Study Trip: Part III (Dayton)

Following our visits to Cincinnati and Fairfield, our Food and Culture Colloquium field study trip group headed about 40 minutes north to Rue Dumaine in Dayton, where both their Americanised take on regional French (Provençal) cuisine restaurant and their emphasis on seasonal and local ingredients caught my attention.

FCC Field Study Trip: Part II (Fairfield)

It took less than an hour from Findlay Market and our first stop in Cincinnati to get to the original, Fairfield location of Jungle Jim's International Market (there's a second, recently opened location in Eastgate). I've been to Jungle Jim's only once (this past August, as part of my visit to Cincy) and even then it was an overwhelming experience. This time around, we only had a little over two hours to explore the six acres of space, an establishment that I affectionately refer to as the Toys 'R Us for foodies. As most of our field study trip participants had never been to Jungle Jim's, and since there are no guided tours on weekends (because of the high volume), I put together a brief scavenger hunt that guided them through the market. Below, you'll find the scavenger hunt script, along with accompanying site photos to introduce you to different areas of the market. Of course, for the true Jungle Jim's experience, I'd encourage you to check out the market the next time you're in the area!

FCC Field Study Trip: Part I (Cincinnati)

Following the conclusion last Wednesday of the modules and practicums of this year's Food and Culture Colloquium, the much-anticipated field study trip to Southwest Ohio finally arrived this past Saturday. The trip, eight months in the making, served as the capstone event to the Colloquium and brought us to Findlay Market in Cincinnati, Jungle Jim's International Market in Fairfield and Rue Dumaine in Dayton. Presented in three separate posts, this one shall serve as a brief overview of the first third of our "more than a foodie" experience.

FCC: The Final Four (Modules 21-24)

I can't believe the flyer I put up back in September has remained the entire academic year!

In the spirit of the recent conclusion of March Madness, or rather in actuality because of the madness that is April in academia, I present to you in this post brief recaps of the final four modules of the 2012-2013 Food and Culture Colloquium at Denison University. Of course, the ideal situation would be that I have tons of time (and energy) to write up much more in-depth recaps as I've done for the first 20 modules (search: FCC) and our six In the Kitchen practicums (search: ITKP). Having said this, and knowing full well these recaps won't do justice to these presentations, I hope these turn out to be enticing enough appetizers to tide you over until the recorded video sessions of all of our modules have been posted on-line.

FCC: Food and Communication

Greetings from CMH! For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been in Boston since this past Thursday, attending the Eastern SociologicalSociety’s annual meeting. I’ve definitely been enjoying the foodie scene and taking in Beantown, but before I get too ahead of myself, I must first catch you up on last Wednesday’s Food and Culture Colloquium. Last week, Communication Professor and Department Chair Amanda Gunn’s FCC presented on food communication, a timely module as we soon prepare to close out the Colloquium in about a month’s time. In retrospect, her presentation was especially helpful for me both personally and professionally as my participation in this week-end’s ESS meeting was geared most specifically to its Mini Conference on Food Studies.

FCC: Food and Southeast Asia

Last week, we focused our attention on lesser known (yet very much integral) aspects of Chinese and Japanese gastronomies, "lesser known" being relative to typical American sensibilities. This week, our Food and Culture Colloquium module further exemplified the intimate connection between food and cultural (and even personal) identity, and the relationship between national/regional food identity and personal preference and heritage. Further, as we looked to Malaysia and the Philippines as our southeast Asian "case studies," it became (or at least, it should have become) even clearer that the intimate relationship food and culture affects the identities of both the individual and the group.

Food, Creativity and Courage: The 2013 International Food and Culture Festival at Denison University

This year's IFCF logo was created by Freda Okundaye '14 and digitised by Bryan LeBlanc '15. Bryan also compiled images of international sites, as well as food and items from our Center, to create this year's IFCF banner. The quotation (by Roman philosopher Seneca the Younger) written on the orange peel of our above logo reads "The mind without culture can never produce good fruit."

Yesterday, more than 525 students, faculty, staff and community members from and outside of Granville found their way into Curtis Dining Hall, bringing with them not only a satiable appetite for food (and I hope a bit of culture), but also metaphorical suitcases of history, heritages, family recipes and memories that filled the space which for me yielded an emotional state of success and a validation of the hard work put into our second annual International Food and Culture Festival. Feeding off this year's campus wide theme of Creativity and Courage, creativity was key in executing the global, gastronomic representation of this year's menu: a purposefully diverse collection of ingredients and techniques in the form of 26 dishes (arguably, 29) spanning six continents, the menu of which was developed over the past three months and refined over the past few weeks. But perhaps even more importantly, everyone brought with them their own amounts of courage-- the courage not only to cook dishes that ranged from recognisable and extremely familiar and personal to completely "foreign" and arguably unpronounceable, but to in some (if not many) cases step outside of one's comfort zone and eat whatever happened to be presented on the plate. [Note on the aforementioned link: instead of individual country dish videos, this year I asked faculty, staff and students to do their best in trying to pronounce this year's menu offerings. Throughout this post, I have linked each pronunciation along with the suggested recipe (if available) for each dish.] On one hand, this second IFCF was a matter of relative redemption and a challenge to one up last year; on another, it's truly an opportunity to bring people together. But aside from meeting folks I would otherwise never have the opportunity to meet, and introducing folks to new dishes and techniques, engaging in conversations about how folks had grown up eating one of many variations of the same dish, receiving the outright approval of properly executed dishes and hearing comments such as "wow, this brought me back to my childhood and being in my grandmother's kitchen" make the work put into the festival that much more meaningful.

FCC: Food and Discussing and Writing Food Identity

Of the many food and culture programs I have been a part of since their introduction to campus over a year and a half ago, this week's grouping undoubtedly tops them all in terms of the sheer number, frequency, scope, content and (arguably) impact not only on Denison's campus, but on my own personal and professional life. In addition to highlighting all of that, the next few posts (I hope) emphasize in particular the growing food movement and attention recently being given to food in central Ohio, the landscape of which has helped shape me and my interests in seeking to understand the connections between food and culture. To that end, I begin with a recap of this week's Food and Culture Colloquium module.

FCC: Food and a (Brief) Gastronomic History of Spain

Yesterday, I returned from my last PossePlus Retreat; and with all of the logistical planning this past week for the PPR, I haven't been able to get to writing my recap of this past Wednesday's 16th module of our Food and Culture Colloquium. And so, here we go!

ITKP: "Breaking the New Year Resolution: Chocolate Confections"

At the start of any new year, one of the most common resolutions is to lose weight. While there are many points of view in order to accomplish such a goal, one way is to cut out as much as sugar and dairy fats (e.g., cream and butter) as possible. For yesterday's practicum, the first of our second semester of the Food and Culture Colloquium, we delved into the complete opposite of cutting out foods from our diets and instead focused on simple desserts that require a cup of courage to look beyond the caloric count. On the menu: Brazil’s brigadeiro and France’s truffes au chocolat.

FCC: Food and Campus Food Culture

Well, folks, a countdown in my world has begun: with the conclusion of yesterday's Food and Culture Colloquium module, we have only 9 more sessions to go. Eish, in those terms, this semester is seriously going to fly by quickly! This week, we welcomed Carmen Black and Alex Frantz, Midwest Field Organizers of the Real Food Challenge (RFC), and reflected on our shifting notions of what it means to be part of food-based movements, particularly from the angle of the residential campus experience.

FCC: Food and the Middle East

After a successful start to our second semester of the Food and Culture Colloquium, we continued our exploration of food and culture with a focus on connections between food and the Middle East. Yesterday, we welcomed Hanada Al-Masri (Assistant Professor of Arabic in the Department of Modern Languages), Jessica Elsayed and Saliba Ishaq of the Middle Eastern Cultural Organization (MECO), and Fadhel Kaboub (Assistant Professor in the Economics Department).

FCC: Second Semester Kickoff, Local Food Culture and Bystander Intervention

And I loosely paraphrase: "When it comes to moments like these, I sit and try and figure out how to connect pizza with equality and how that can be packaged and presented by one of those cat memes." Amidst sharing and discussing a story that's resonated with me ever since I read this article in early January, Grant Stancliff and our three invited guests to the second semester kickoff of Denison's Food and Culture Colloquium imparted notes of humour alongside a wealth of experience from off-campus, repackaging a publicly intimate example of hate speech and bystander intervention for our Denison crowd. In the end, and I emphasize here before I continue, the reality we all must face is that what happened to Joel and Ethan could happen (and has recently happened) to anyone else throughout the entire spectrum of identity.

FCC: Food and the Humanities

Quite fittingly, our final Food and Culture Colloquium lecture for the semester focused on food writing, with particular emphases on food literature and food blogging. This session, co-presented by Associate Professor of English Dennis Read and Assistant Director of the Writing Center Susan Kanter (both of whom also teach food-themed first-year seminars), also served as a wrap up to our month-long focus on intersections between food and liberal arts. To set the stage, Dennis and Susan shared with us the first half of this video (if you're more of a Hulu fan, you can check out the same video here). A direct response to Pete Wells's New York Times review of Guy Fieri's recently opened restaurant in New York, the cut SNL skit prompts us to think about the thematic curiosity of whether or not food writing means anything to anyone these days.

FCC: Food and the Social Sciences

For our eleventh Food and Culture Colloquium lecture-based session, I joined Associate Professor of Political Science Jim Pletcher in focusing on our November "Liberal Arts" theme, with an intersection of food and the social sciences. While we both centered each of our presentations on our research and experiences in sub-Saharan Africa, we unintentionally shared a common thread of talking about corn (a crop which has made its way into other presentations, as well).

FCC: Food and Art

Continuing our focus on intersections between food and the liberal arts, today's Food and Culture Colloquium session took a look at food from the angle of well, the arts. And as if this wasn't liberal artsy enough, our presenter crossed food and art with environmental studies, as Associate Professor of Environmental Studies Abram Kaplan shared his personal journey through ten years of art and his lens of our food system through art culture.

FCC: Food, Gender and Sexuality

With the end of October (Happy Halloween, by the way) came the end of this year’s Food and Culture Colloquium’s focused theme of food identity (or rather, the general intersection of food with aspects of identity). Following September's introductory themes, we began the month with a session on deep listening skills and self-reflection to help us identify what we are passionate about and to use that as motivation as we work toward instilling change within and outside of our communities. Over the last three weeks, we focused on food's intersection through three pairs of identities: language and ethnicity, religion and spirituality, and nationality and citizenship. Gender and sexuality took the stage this week and without question revealed that any one of these pairs could rightfully be singular themes for an entire colloquium series. Before I continue, though, I would like to direct your attention to the above video clip (in fact, there are a fair few for this post), as today was Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF Day (as well as National Caramel Apple Day).

FCC: Food, Nationality and Citizenship

Well, this past Wednesday was certainly a packed day, and perhaps even that's an understatement. In addition to celebrating the 10th anniversary of Campus Sustainability Day, our campus celebrated quite complimentary celebrations of the United Nation's 67th year of existence via United Nations Day and the second annual National Food Day. And as is the case with most any day, it's particularly exciting to celebrate each of these with food!

FCC: Food, Religion and Spirituality

Following an extended weekend away from campus, and the end of fall break, I returned to an even busier Denison, if that's even possible. Also returning this week was the Food and Culture Colloquium and our continued look at the complexity of food identity, and by extension the identity of food. With a focus this week on the religious influence on our diets, we welcomed as a presenter Mark Orten, University chaplain and Director of the Center for Religious and Spiritual Life, to the colloquium stage.

FCC: Food, Ethnicity and Language

With Molly's presentation last week, the stage was set for Mónica Ayala-Martinez, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese in Denison's Department of Modern Languages, who continued the colloquium's October theme of "Food Identity" vis-à-vis a presentation exemplifying food's intersection with language and ethnicity.