Living a Foodie Kind of Life: Boston, Friday (3/22)

Following a very full day on Thursday, I woke up Friday with a rush of enthusiasm for the even fuller day ahead. The Eastern Sociological Society's first ever Mini Conference on Food Studies--a testament, in my opinion, to the growing recognition and acceptance of food studies as a viable and relevant field in academia--had finally arrived. Without going into too much detail here, this mini conference (organised by Barbara Katz Rothman and Alexandrea Ravenelle from City University of New York) was divided into four back-to-back sessions, each focusing on a different intersection with food. I was part of the first panel which addressed food as a tool for learning and teaching, specifically from the angles of ethnography (Richard Ocejo and Connor Fitzmaurice) and pedagogy (me and Helaine Harris). My paper focused on the food and culture programs and research I have led over the last year and a half or so at Denison, leading up to our Food and Culture Colloquium. Subsequent sessions focused on food as a tool for social control, as a tool for constructing ethnic identity, and as a tool for media representations. To have been fortunate to dream up and construct my own understanding of food identity, and to create a tangible mechanism for seeking to understand the connection between food and culture, continues to be an important highlight of my professional journey to date. To have been fortunate to engage with others who are going through similar processes has helped me in this orientation, to further recognise that we're all still learning through and with food. Now, after a full day of this (14 presentations within a span of 7 hours), and with a quick snack run to Au Bon Pain, I was ready to take it easy for the evening. For me, of course that more often than not involves cooking and the consumption of food.

Pizza with Personality: Mikey's Late Night Slice

 

After my second round of handing out samples of Snowville products, this time here in Granville, I made my way to Columbus, just before the monthly Gallery Hop began. Usually, I take the time to restaurant hop and I take in the energy of the Short North when the lights are lit up and the shops and restaurants look packed. This time around, I had a different set of goals: to meet Mikey Sorboro, CEO of Mikey's Late Night Slice, and to try some LNS pizza. However, given recent local and national attention at Mikey's, I wasn't quite sure how crowded the place would get (and especially if it got crowded what the likelihood would be that I could meet Mikey). Not only was I able to try the pizza that was, in part, at the root of the recent attention given to LNS, but I was also able to interview Mikey and get some questions answered that I hadn't been able to find in reading others' articles about LNS and the attention to which I've been alluding.

A Wednesday Foodie Kind of Evening

After this past Wednesday's Food and Culture Colloquium, colloquium participant and Denison colleague Maureen and I went to the Charity Happy Hour at the Veranda of The Hills Market which we had learned about at the tail end of Bear Braumoeller's presentation on Slow Food. Every Wednesday, a special guest serves as bartender (in this case, Bear) while a portion of the pizza sales goes to the group raising money (in this case, Central Ohio's support of its nine Terra Madre delegates).

Stuffed Thin Crust Cheese and Bacon Pan Pizza

About two weeks ago, I made my own pizza dough and had yet to use up the remaining half of it. And with bacon, cheese, and a slew of other ingredients that aren't necessarily the healthiest, I set out to make a stuffed thin crust cheese and bacon pan pizza... just because.

Personal Pan-Size Four-cheese Italian-style Thin-crust Pizza... with Fresh Basil

When it comes to making pizza dough from scratch, there are two pretty big hurdles to pass in particular, so as not to end up with a very doughy, and a not-so-very-good crust. The first major hurdle is working with the yeast itself: too cold and the yeast won't activate, whereas too hot actually "kills" it. As could be gleaned from my yeast packet, if the water itself is far too hot but not hot enough to kill the yeast, it's best to mix the yeast into the flour; otherwise, it could be dissolved straight into the liquid. (By the way, for more fun reading on this particular fungi, click here.) The second hurdle is overworking the dough to the point where it will never rise; just think "elastic" and "springy" as adjectives you want your dough to be described as.

I acknowledge I've never actually made pizza dough before and have once again (this time, with much inspiration from this site) come up with a few techniques that yielded a result far better than my own expectations, especially as I don't have a cooking thermometer nor have had much luck with doughs in the past (though I am getting better).