As the semester comes to a close, I think that I am able to sufficiently define the rhetoric of food. When I first signed up for this class, I had no idea what to expect from it. I had no idea how much effort and thought goes into writing the simplest of recipes, whether the author is trying to show the true historical roots of the recipe, or just a blogger trying to portray his/her passion for food and food writing. I think the rhetoric of food also encompasses the connection between different cultures—there are so many ways to prepare a certain dish and each culture has a different way of doing so. It is so interesting that the authors of these recipes will include the how and why of each preparation. Food texts represent so much more than food; it represents the history, culture, and passion for food and preparing food from different human beings. I think that recognizing food as more than just something humans eat to live or to enjoy and turning it into a text is the best definition I can think of for the rhetoric of food.

This semester, I gained knowledge about the different ways to analyze food texts through many different varieties of texts including recipes, blog posts, and food reviews. I never knew that the “rhetoric of food” would be so interesting and deep; I now know how much effort and deep thought goes into writing even just the simplest recipe. For this reason, I chose the true Italian pesto recipe as my favorite piece of assigned writing during the semester. I was inspired dedication to writing the recipe as close to its Italian roots as possible. The author truly had a passion for her recipe for pesto and wanted to share it with the world, which is one of the most crucial techniques to writing a meaningful piece of food text.

Secondly, my favorite food text that was not assigned for the class to read would be the food blog “North Wild Kitchen.” I used this food blog as my mentor text when creating my own food blog and I am so thankful that I did; the parts of the blog that I chose to mimic from this blog were some of my audience’s favorite parts about my own blog.