The Rhetoric of Food, I believe, means something different to everyone. The act of debating, discussing, praising, or just consuming food is a different experience for every person, and each experience builds that person’s feelings about food. How they express these feelings depends solely on the person: they can spread their ideas through conversation, through multimedia, through art or through writing. Writers express their ideas about food through careful consideration of their audiences and the broader social context of their piece. The rhetoric of food is extremely complex, with intentions for writing ranging from sincere love of a food to the ethics of killing animals for consumption to absolute hatred of a restaurant. If there is one thing I have learned this semester, it is that food is hardly just a part of sustenance: food is power, food is culture, food is love, food is a core piece of so many people’s identities.
Author: Callie
Callie’s Favorite Readings
For me, there were many notable reads this semester both in our shared texts and my personal outside readings. My favorite reading from the syllabus was David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster.” This reading synthesized many interesting aspects of eating one normally does not think of: science, social class, and ethics. I expected to read a light hearted review of the Maine lobster festival, but instead was greeted with a debate about the humanity of killing lobsters for consumption. This reading was one of the best in my opinion because it was extremely insightful and intriguing.
My favorite self-selected reading was Minerva Orduno Rincon’s “The Authenticity Trap of Mexican Food in America.” Her humorous view into the world of authentic Mexican cooking challenged stereotypes about what makes a dish truly “Mexican” and shed light on how these stereotypes can negatively affect people. An excerpt from my writer’s notebook displays how I felt after reading:
[Rincon] thought it was absolutely ridiculous that critics often judge a Mexican restaurant by such a petty thing as whether or not the tortillas are handmade. She ponders the absurdity of this critique: Why should this be what determines authenticity? Why can’t the more substantive critique of the food’s actual flavor be what critics care about? Why are we, as Americans, so hell-bent on such petty aspects of Mexican food, and what is really important about the way a tortilla was made?
I thoroughly enjoyed her article and it helped significantly in forming the topic I chose for my annotated bibliography. In my opinion, this reading was one of the best because it kept a humorous backdrop while discussing a more serious topic in food culture: authenticity. It effectively kept the reader engaged and entertained while informing them about a problem in food critique, something I feel is difficult to do and should be commended for achieving so well.
Dallas Dining: Battle of The Burgers
I’ve always had a disposition to eat at locally owned restaurants. I also have always wondered which restaurants are the best of the best. Following Buzzfeed’s Worth It style, I set out on an adventure to determine which Dallas restaurant had the best burgers at its given price point. I chronicled this in a video posted to my YouTube channel here.
For additional information about the restaurants I tried and a more in-depth written review of them, read here.
Genre Conventions: Food Tasting Videos
My genre is food sampling videos, usually called “(Group of people) tries (type of food) for the first time”. These are commonly posted to YouTube by a variety of digital media companies, including Facts., WatchCut Video, Buzzfeed, and many more. These videos have gained extreme popularity, with regular view counts in the millions.
Food sampling videos commonly are between two and ten minutes long. They often include a short interview lasting about a minute prior to the tasting, usually regarding what the tasters are expecting out of the food. The videos then transition into the actual tasting portion, in which anywhere from one to six dishes are sampled one at a time and each of the interviewees gives their opinions on the foods. Usually, about one to two minutes are devoted to each dish before moving onto the next one. Occasionally, when addressing an entire cuisine, the video follows the setup of a normal meal, beginning with an appetizer, moving onto an entree, and finishing off with a dessert. However, there appears to be no order when sampling different types of the same food (i.e. teas from around the world) or food from a particular establishment (i.e. Taco Bell). After the tasting ends, these videos will sometimes include a reflective interview lasting about a minute asking whether or not the interviewees liked the foods or will eat them again. Most of the time, after the video ends, the production company will include a brief slide regarding credits and promoting other videos the company puts out.
These videos serve many purposes, but they primarily function in the realm of entertainment. Sampling videos are often humorous and lighthearted in tone. Food tasting videos also ultimately serve as a type of food critique, placing them into the larger category of reviews. In the case of digital media giants like Buzzfeed, these videos also serve to promote their company in its other endeavors by encouraging viewers to visit their website or watch their other videos about different subjects. All of the distributors on YouTube who produce this type of content use it to promote their social media following by urging their viewers to subscribe to their channels so that they may receive notifications about when new content is posted.
For my genre analysis, I will be focusing on the “Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time” video produced by Buzzfeed, the “American Kids Try Tea from Around the World” video produced by WatchCut Video, and the “Irish People Try Surströmming (World’s Smelliest Food)” video produced by Facts. I chose these three videos because they all have tasters from different regions, backgrounds and ages. Each of these three videos are about a different section of food cuisine: one for a specific restaurant, one regarding how a food varies culture-to-culture, and one focusing on a single food with a notorious reputation. These shorts have very different contexts, but they all ultimately fall into the genre of food sampling videos.
Callie’s Mentor Text
An unconventional piece of writing, Buzzfeed’s YouTube video “Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time” depicts a few Mexican families trying United States fast-food giant and “Mexican” chain, Taco Bell. The short is set up interview-style, with two to four people in each section. The video begins with a question asked to all of the participants before they try the food: what do they expect? After each person gave their answer, the tasting process began. Each dish was presented to the audience and was followed by the reviews, in which each set of people conversed about how they felt about the food: its taste, how authentic it was, and whether they would eat it again. The interviews were wrapped up with a follow-up question about their newfound thoughts regarding Taco Bell.
The video contains bright and clear visuals, easy-to-read subtitles for the audio in Spanish, and a coherent flow between each dish and set of people. This video falls under the broad genre of food reviews, but defined narrowly, it is a filmed series of critiques with a humorous undertone. This texts functions primarily for entertainment: it is short enough to keep the audience’s attention, funny enough to make the audience appreciate it, and relates to an establishment many audiences will be familiar with. It additionally functions to provide feedback about Taco Bell’s dishes, but this is not the only purpose: after all, most of the audience have tried these foods before, they just want to hear what the interviewees have to say about it.
I think this text represents a good example of the genre of video food reviews because it serves both the normal purpose of a food review, to inform an audience about what the authors think of a particular restaurant; and a different purpose, to entertain an audience for a short period of time, a task which I think is greatly influenced by the video’s distribution via YouTube. This text should serve as a mentor for my own writing because it was extremely successful (currently, it has nearly 13 million views), the content is both funny and insightful, and the quality is extremely high in terms of audio-visual production.
“Mexican People Try Taco Bell for the First Time.” Youtube, uploaded by Buzzfeed, 8 March 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWSOiZrs3oA.
Perceived Authenticity: a look into the role of Mexican cuisine in the United States
Image Courtesy of BevCooks.com
Being from Texas, I’ve always been surrounded by Mexican food. Having family which hail from Harlingen, a small town in the Rio Grande Valley about 20 miles from the border to Mexico, I had the privilege of being exposed to good, authentic Mexican food at an early age. However, growing up in Dallas, I have also experienced many traditionally “inauthentic” Mexican dishes, mostly of the Tex Mex variety. Both varieties of “Mexican” food taste very good, but in our society, the “inauthentic” dishes are regarded as lesser. Thus, I’ve been researching how people perceive authenticity of Mexican cuisine in the United States, and have found an interesting trend. It appears that, in this context, people generally care more about whether the food is authentic than how the food tastes.
Read more here.
Callie’s Research Topic
In my last post, I discussed the starting formations of my topic. After reading the excerpt from Tacopedia, I knew I wanted my topic to have some relation to Mexican food and the culture associated with it. In my early research, I primarily used the UT Libraries ScoUT feature. Through this, I found Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA, a book focusing on how Mexican food fits into the vast and varied food culture of the United States of America.
After this, I hit a block in my thoughts. I didn’t really know where I wanted to go with my topic, I just knew I wanted it to have something to do with Mexican food in the broader context of the United States. So, I took to Google, and through many blog posts and journal articles, I found my specific topic.
Within the US, many of the foods we eat are americanized versions of foods enjoyed in other cultures. Often, it is looked down upon to enjoy these “inauthentic” variations rather than the originals. What I’ve chosen to explore through my research is how we perceive authenticity of food in America, specifically focusing on Mexican food. The article which inspired me to choose this specific topic was Minerva Orduno Rincon’s “The Authenticity Trap of Mexican Food in America” from the Phoenix New Times. Her article lightheartedly criticized food critics who judge the authenticity of a restaurant by whether their tortillas were house made, a common facet of perceived “authenticity” in Mexican cuisine.
My bibliography will include a variety of sources, but a majority of them will be articles and blog posts. I hope to include a diverse selection of authors. Currently, my authors are all of Mexican descent, but I have sources from both male and female viewpoints. I’m hoping to find sources which focus on this topic from the minds of non-Mexican Americans to compare their viewpoints to that of Mexican Americans.
I’m still debating whether my topic is right as-is or if I should change the scale. Would it be beneficial to broaden the topic to cover perceived authenticity of all cultural foods in American cuisine, or should my focus remain on Mexican food only? On the other hand, should my topic be narrowed down to a specific food in Mexican cuisine: perhaps just tamales or enchiladas? Right now, I think the scale of my topic is where it should be, but I’m curious about your opinions.
My Research Update
After the first few weeks of research, I’m starting to develop an idea of what my topic will be. I was really intrigued by our introductory reading in this unit, Deborah Holtz and Juan Carlos Mena’s Tacopedia. Having grown up in and around Mexican culture, it was very interesting to read more about how corn became so vital to sustenance in early Mexico and to see how corn usage has evolved over time. My initial interest with Tacopedia led me to look into other sources relating to Mexican food culture. In research, I have found the UT Libraries scoUT function extremely helpful to finding relevant and credible sources. One source I’ve found that I think will make a really interesting addition is Gustavo Arellano’s Taco USA, which recounts the importance of Mexican food in the melting pot that is United States food culture.
Although I’m finding plenty of sources, I’m still struggling with finding a good way to organize them. The traditional folder of web bookmarks isn’t cutting it anymore, and I’m wondering, what are you guys using to organize your documents and your thoughts about them?
Overall, I feel like my research is coming along nicely. I believe that I’ve settled on a good topic I have a lot of interest in. I’m still in the early stages of documenting my ideas about the sources I am finding, but I think I’ve found many sources which will be complementary to my finalized annotated bibliography.
Pumpkin Chocolate Loaf
Pumpkin Chocolate Loaf
An Introduction
Each year of my childhood, autumn brought many things: cooler weather, school, anticipation for the holidays, and perhaps most important, the return of my mother’s pumpkin bread. Once October rolled around, my mom churned out loaf after loaf of her famous bread: perfectly moist, wonderfully spiced, just the right breakfast for chilly fall mornings. After 18 years of the same fall-time tradition, one of the most bizarre parts of my transition to college this year was a sudden and severe lack of pumpkin bread. Thus, this past fall, I gathered my own ingredients for the first time and set out to make my own batch of pumpkin bread. With my roommate to help me, I got the keys to my dorm kitchen and began my work.
Halfway into preparation, my roommate posed an idea which changed my viewpoint on the recipe completely: why not add some chocolate chips? With enough batter to make 10 loaves, I figured we might dare to make the recipe even better. Therefore, I added half a cup of chocolate chips to half of my batter, we baked the bread normally, and anxiously awaited what was to come.
After the loaves baked and cooled, we each cut ourselves a slice. I was greeted with not only the taste of my childhood, but also a subtle extra layer of sweetness: the decadent chocolate. From this point forward, I knew one thing: pumpkin bread would never be the same.
Supplies
10 mini aluminum foil pans [Can be bought at WalMart]
2 large mixing bowls
mixing spoons
Baker’s Joy
cookie sheet [optional]
gravy ladle [optional]
Ingredients
Dry:
3 c. white sugar
3 tsp. baking soda
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. nutmeg
3.5 c. all-purpose flour
Wet:
1 c. oil of choice [we use canola]
2/3 c. water
4 eggs [pre-beaten; slightly fluffy]
2 c. canned pumpkin puree
1 c. mini chocolate chips
Steps
Mix together white sugar, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and all-purpose flour in a large mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, thoroughly mix oil, water, eggs and pumpkin puree. Adding in a cup of the dry mixture at a time, gradually mix the two bowls together. After the dry mixture is well incorporated into the wet mixture, add in the mini chocolate chips. Once mixed together, place the aluminum pans on a cookie sheet and grease the pans. Using a gravy ladle, place the batter into the pans, leaving approximately ¼ of an inch at the top of the pans. Place the pans into the oven and bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 25 to 30 minutes or until a toothpick comes out of the loaf clean. Wait 20 minutes for the loaves to cool and serve each slice with a pat of butter.
The Rhetoric of Recipes: How Food Facilitates Communication
Recipes. A broad genre of work, they can involve everything from a simple peanut butter and jelly sandwich to a complicated turducken. Although varying in content, their purpose remains the same: to give instructions on how to synthesize ingredients and create a food. Sometimes, they include a spin to a certain direction: cheaper foods, luxury items, authentic cultural cooking, homestyle, and many more, but they always are written to instruct. Often, they include an introduction, a list of ingredients, a set of steps, and a photograph to illustrate what the finished product should look like. However, sometimes these are omitted: for instance, Marco Canora’s “How to Make Gnocchi” leaves out an ingredient list. Recipes use multiple step structures, for instance, they could be written as numerical steps, in bubbles of instruction, or occasionally in one large block of text. This affects how people navigate the recipe, along with many other factors: sometimes, different parts of the text are written in different sizes of font indicating varying levels of importance. For instance, the biggest text is the name of the dish, the ingredient list and steps are in the middle, and the smallest is the yield.
Cookbooks and recipe websites usually include a plethora of recipes, organized by type of food (appetizers, main entrees, desserts) or by cuisine (American, French, Italian, etc). Sometimes, recipes are made as adaptations of others, for instance, Maricel Presilla’s “Grandmother Paquita’s Chunky Calabaza Puree” in Gran Cocina Latina. The audience for recipes includes, simply, people who desire to make their own foods. Often, this person is an upper middle class homemaker, but some cookbooks appeal to others. For example, Brown’s Good and Cheap book is targeted towards people looking for simple and inexpensive meals, such as people who are newly on their own and looking to budget their money. Also, Σουηδός Μάγειρας’s “Old Fashioned Sokolatina”, published on cooklikegreeks.com, appeals to another audience: people who want to create an authentic cultural dish.
Recipes should, to be of good quality, include clear and detailed instruction to make the process of making the dish as foolproof as possible. Bad recipes are often hard to follow, not well explained, and result in lots of mistakes.
Recipes, in general, serve one united purpose: to portray to an audience how to make food. Although the format in which this is done varies from author to author, all food writing is essentially similar. Recipes exist to inform and share information about one of the most integral parts of human life: preparing and eating food.