I chose these recipes because they are pretty much the only things  I know how to cook. They were also things my mom regularly made for me.

Garlic Butter Salmon

This is the course website for RHE 309K, Rhetoric of Food. Our online community is a space to discover how, when, where, and why people write about food. We’ll be writing, reading, and researching throughout the year, sharing periodically on this website.

Check out the syllabus for more details about the course, and browse through the different sections to see and comment on student work.

Reading

Hear what students have to say about what they read; view curated selections of readings around topics from tamarind to Michelin guides.

Writing

Read original writing from our contributors: recipes and texts in various genres that students investigated throughout the semester.

As the class ends, I believe the Rhetoric of Food is mainly about the sharing, analyzing, and understanding of the writings of food. However, the writings don’t have to be writings, but rather any way of portraying an idea. So it food writing can be viewed as a text, as a visual, or as a verbal story. Any way you share an experience about food with someone is the Rhetoric of Food. And anytime someone shares an experience of food with you, and you are able to analyze and understand what they’re saying, you are participating in the same process.

Personally for me, the best text I read for this class this semester was the Eater Article about the worst restaurants in America of 2015 (http://www.eater.com/2015/12/23/10649488/scathing-restaurant-reviews-of-2015). In this article, it portrays how the authors dragged these restaurants through the mud due to their “incompetent chefs” and “brand new levels of absurdity”. Reading this magazine article really helped me realize what is important to include in a restaurant review, like visual language and honest opinions. I used this article quite often as a reference when writing my genre conventions paper.

When I described what the rhetoric of food meant to me in my midterm learning reflection, I focused on the rhetoric portion of that phrase, rather than the food portion. But the rhetoric of food is a phrase that cannot, or at least should not be broken down and examined as its component words. To me, the rhetoric of food means the surrounding and contained elements of a piece of food writing. This could range from the author’s background to the words that the author writes. The way that the author describes the food is extremely important, as they could be making social of political commentaries that you are not thinking about. For instance, Michael Twitty’s piece that we read as a class was a great example of how food writing can comment on the culture at large. The rhetoric of food is exceedingly complex and connected with a whole host of other genres and topics of writing. These interconnections really need to be taken into account when talking about the rhetoric of food in order to get the best and most complete view of any piece of work.

From the very beginning of the semester, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I really didn’t. But as time was passing, after I took on the challenge that was this class, I slowly began to realize that the rhetoric of food was more than just something you eat. It’s about having an emotional bond, a connection with food that’s so compelling it can bring out emotions and appeal to audiences. It’s being able to talk about it with others. I learned about this through the projects of my fellow peers, through the discussions I had with them, learning more about what their interests were in regards of food and listening to what kind of texts they’ve encountered in the past that deals with food. I was encouraged by several of them to seek out what I was passionate in doing when it comes to food. When it came to my recipe, it was something that I had cooked before and I had a special connection with, therefore I was able to communicate my piece as a text with ease. My original composition was something I grew passionate about and communicating my interests in respect to food as well as eating healthy was something I found to be second nature. It was because I grew an emotional connection to each project that I became aware of such a bond with my experience of food, that I had the desire to share it with others in the best way I knew how. The Rhetoric of Food is a relationship, it’s an experience that the author has with the text. It’s how one expresses themselves to their audience through of others and themselves.

One of the best assigned readings that I read throughout the semester was “Tacopedia.” I liked it so much because of the great depths it went to describe a taco. From the very first page, it gave a length definition of the word taco, in Spanish, which I thought was incredible. Then throughout the text, the wonderful use of visuals were not only enticing, but they were used effectively to captivate and engage the reader. It was also reminiscent in regards to my life, whenever I would make dough with my grandma back in Mexico, many years ago. Reading Tacopedia really took me back and it really hit close to home.

Another great reading from the semester that I read for my personal research was the “Unique Ships of the U.S. Navy.” I stumbled across this text during my annotated bibliography project. My topic at the time was ice cream and the reason this text was one of the best that I read because I grew a greater appreciation for the Navy. They used ships to transport tons of ice cream to soldiers out at sea. It was very interesting to learn about the military using ships in such creative fashions. You’d think they would be using them as battle ships but it turns out that they were delivering soldiers ice cream because alcohol was banned and they needed a different substance as a coping mechanism. Also, this reading was a fan favorite from my group whenever I presented my annotated bibliography, leaving me no choice but to choose this text as one of the better ones.

My favorite assigned reading this semester was most definitely “If White People Were Described Like “Exotic” Food” by Jaya Saxena and Matt Lubchansky, this satirical piece brings light to the fact that everything is a little exotic if you’re from the right part of the world. Reading this gave me a good laugh and has made me realize I should probably second guess calling something “exotic”, when to someone out there that food or meal is the comfort they can’t wait to come home to.

Before I began this course food to me was just something I ate when my body told me to, but after just a few months I can say with complete confidence that food is a language of its own. Food is a way for some to speak when words cannot express what they are feeling or seeing- similar to art or music. Food is a means for bringing people together, whether that be my all time favorite of Thanksgiving or the simplicity of a family gathering for dinner, food is the basis on which so many of our memories are built. The rhetoric of food runs so much deeper than just food on plate; it is history, it is culture, and it is the story of our world. I am so thankful for this course and the opportunity it gave me to gain this amazing insight.

We’ve read some interesting “texts” this semester. My favorite assigned text for the semester was Chapter 5 from the Adler reading earlier in the semester. There was a unique sense of authenticity in Adler’s writing that I really identified with. As someone who loves cooking, the asides about having too many wooden spoons and using your microwave as a bookshelf were great. Adler’s text appeals to people like me, avid cookers.

Outside of our required readings, I had the pleasure of discovering some great texts this semester on my own. My favorite of these readings was probably Austin Eater’s 38 Essential Restaurants, Fall 2016. I love the interactive nature of this text. It allows readers to engage with the text all while delivering relevant information in a convenient manner.