Raining Cats and Dogma

They are perhaps the most maligned of all foods, or at least all vegetables--haggis remains the king of foods with bad reputations. They are the butt of jokes; they are smell of elementary school lunchrooms; they are the image of a Victorian self-deprivation in the name of good health. And yet, despite the fact that they have come to represent everything that our mothers have insisted are good for us without actually being good, Brussels sprouts, those under appreciated, leafy-green, pungent nuggets, are, in fact good.

Of course, the reputation of the Brussels sprout is irrefutably bad. Keyword searches on them as often call up articles on how much we hate them as articles on ways to prepare them, or articles on their health benefits. Online encyclopedia Wikipedia mentions (but does not cite) a 2002 British survey that names Brussels sprouts "England's Most Hated Vegetable (Brussels Sprout)--not "least favorite," but "most hated." Now that's ire. And no wonder! Most people's experience of Brussels sprouts is of a mushy, bitter, over-cooked glop, frequently done no favors by their pairing with some kind of vinegar accent. Given that overcooking food to within an inch of its life is notoriously a British national pastime, the most-hated designation makes perfect sense. Add to this the fact that when cooking, Brussels sprouts prepared in any way smell pretty wretched. It is, however, my secret contention that were you to conduct frequent informal polls (which I have been doing for years now), that you would find that a good third-to-half of your data sample (or my data sample, to be precise) will confess, perhaps a bit defensively, that they "love them, actually." They have merely been shamed into a little cabbagey closet by the PR machine.

And there's so much to love. When cooked properly (more on that later), Brussels sprouts are crisp without being too crunchy, bracing but also delicate, flavorful without being acrid. They can be eaten straight, or in a variety of preparations. And they are, like lobster, a perfect conveyance for butter to the mouth. My go-to preparation for sprouts (when I am allowed to prepare them), is to steam them lightly, usually only about four minutes, and then pick them up out of the steamer and sautee them for twenty or thirty seconds in a glistening pool of melty butter. The butter offers a mellow richness while the anti-oxidant powers of my little leafy darlings brings an astringency that scores a perfect spike of flavor. This way, you are able to avoid having to overcook them to the point of mushiness. Plus, by pairing them with butter instead of vinegar, the flavors complement one another instead of combining to push the limits of bitter/sour tolerance.

They are also more versatile than simply this basic approach. My first contribution to family Thanksgiving, for example, was a melange of roasted winter vegetables: parsnips, beets, sweet potatoes and halved Brussels sprouts in a lovely balsamic glaze. Roasting the sprouts with the other, sweeter vegetables balanced the flavors beautifully, letting the invigorating strength slice through the round sweetness of the root vegetables in the dish. Admittedly, I am not alone in my Brussels-love in my family, but the new approach was a hit. Or, take what has become one of my favorite gourmet salads, one I was introduced to by Bob Kinkead's Colvin Run Tavern in Tyson's Corner, Virginia. Here the sprouts were shredded into a lacy slaw, topped with scarlet and golden beets, sliced thin, and rounded out with a dollop or two of a smooth chevre. A light champagne vinaigrette was drizzled over the entire salad to add a touch of sophisticated elegance to the dance of flavors. Whatever preparation you choose, you must let the strength of the sprout--that telltale sign of bitter healthfulness--fulfill its destiny, and let it complement ingredients that might otherwise be too sweet or too rich on their own.

And let's not forget the reason our mothers do make us eat them: they're healthy! This description from Whole Health MD gives you just a taste of what the sprout does for you: "Nutritionally, they have the same cancer-inhibiting potential as cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables (such as broccoli and cauliflower) because they contain the nitrogen compounds called indoles and a significant amount of vitamin C. Brussels sprouts also supply good amounts of folate (folic acid), potassium, vitamin K, and a small amount of beta-carotene" (WholeHealthMD.com). These vitamins in combination help fight cancer, heart disease, birth defects, and stroke. They help build our bones, our immune systems, and even the cell walls throughout our body. The vitamins and minerals in Brussels sprouts don't just help with one aspect of your health; they help the entire body. And with the exception of a little butter fat that you might be compelled to include with your serving of these power-packed buds, there is absolutely nothing harmful about them. I'm feeling virtuous just thinking about it.

But that virtue is bound up in what must be the most compelling feature of the Brussels sprout and its aficionado: the psychology. What kind of vegetable, you may ask, has a psychology? To which I would answer: a very complex one. And the Brussels sprout is so complex that it has both a psychology and a religion, as it is perhaps the most protestant food around. To explain: Despite the virtue I experience with every anti-oxidant nibble, I am also ashamed of being a sprout devotee. That third-to-half of my data sample admitted to enjoying the food, but only hesitantly, with some embarrassment. Liking Brussels sprouts just isn't cool, and so we who do like them must enjoy them in a closet. I'm not allowed to even cook them in my own house unless every one else is gone. But the shame of Brussels sprouts stands not just in contrast to its virtue: it is the source of its virtue. I feel like a better person because I eat my yummy sprouts, because I am forced to feel shame for enjoying a veggie treat that is both tasty and healthy. Once, right after college, my roommate was out of town, and I steamed up a whole pint of sprouts and ate them--and only them--for dinner. I tell people this story with a bit of a red face (what kind of loser eats an all-sprout dinner?), but I am secretly proud that at least one of my freakish vices is so so so good for me.

My mom was right: Brussels sprouts are great for me. They're great for my heart, they're great for my mouth, and somewhere way down deep, they're good for my soul. Maybe you should think about accepting Brussels sprouts into your life today. The altar's open. Come and worship with me.

Posted by at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Although we missed class on Monday, we would have discussed three articles that bring together the ideas of food and sexual desire, as a prelude to thinking about how to write a food encomium.

Jessamyn Neuhaus’ “The Joy of Sex Instruction” looks at women’s marital self-help books from the first half of the 20th century, and argues that these books frequently use cooking as a way to express certain anxieties about women’s role in marriage: preparing a meal often becomes a metaphor for women’s perceived sexual obligations in marriage. Indeed, her argument is most compelling when she explicates examples that specifically equate cooking and connubial bliss, suggesting that women had better do well in preparing the home-cooking, lest their men--who deserve to eat according to their tastes, not their wives’ tastes--grab a snack down town. What I find compelling here about the way that these metaphors work is how clearly they construct the man as consumer: not only does he eat the meals (and his wife), he literally buys them with the salary he uses to pay for his wife’s upkeep. Here the wife becomes an employee of her husband as well as his consumable commodity. Desire is therefore expressed in economic terms (through food as metaphor), not the actual terms of emotion or physical lust upon which we might want to base those concepts.

Andrew Chan’s article, “’la grande bouffe’: Cooking Shows as Pornography,” makes a more direct link between comestible and sexual appetites by looking at cooking shows and examining them as if they were a certain kind of pornography. His first point is that a host of cooking shows use sensuality (if not sexuality) as part of their appeal. Shows like Nigella Bites with the voluptuous cooking of Nigella Lawson and the cheeky dishes of Naked Chef Jamie Oliver rely upon much the same visual vocabulary as adult video. His most compelling point, however, is that cooking shows actually serve the same simulation-as-stimulation appeal as actual pornography: cooking shows are not about instruction, but about emulating the very same pleasure of being cooked for through visual stimulus.

Finally, an article by Laura Esquivel entitled “Intimate Succulencies,” a self-described “philosophical treatise on cooking” is something of an old essentialist argument about returning to some edenic past (she literally begins with the forbidden fruit) where cooking and food and sex are all part of a conduit to a more ethical world. There’s a lot of talk about male and female energies, and active and passive roles, and generally silly stuff, but the point again is clear: food and sex are related, and not just in metaphorical ways.

Food and sex are life sustaining pleasures, and more life-sustaining the more pleasurable they are. We talk about food and sex together when we think about decadence, even though their pleasures lead to decay (all of these three elements, food sex, and decay are contained in the image of an over-ripe fruit).

What I hope can be compelling about our thinking about food writing is the idea that the writing, for once, can similarly be a source of pleasure. While cooking shows may be designed to stimulate visual pleasure by simulating savory pleasure, perhaps writing about food can provide a similar (but perhaps more substantive) pleasure.

Posted by at 11:01 AM | Permalink

Today in class we discussed briefly the frequent and powerful use of memory in connection to foods and their aromas (aromae?). Of course, I mentioned the research (which I sadly cannot cite) that suggests that the proximity of olfactory bulb to the hippocampus facilitates a very strong connection between odors and the long term memories we associate with them.

Of course this makes perfect evolutionary sense, no? Most other animals use scent as a powerful communication and early warning tool, communicating fear, desire, and danger all at once. The fact that men often find the scent of pumpkin pie arousing is a testiment to the long-lasting and primal psychological functions that revolve around the olfactory.

But that doesn't explain why these memories make such compelling writing. Sure, madeleines made Proust remember his childhjood, but why is Proust's memory so evocative without the cookies to super-charge them?

Perhaps, then, this phenomenon works the other way--perhaps the most evocative (and identifiable) memories similarly evoke the sensation of the aromas and flavors themselves. While I don't taste brownies when I read about them in Lisa Yockelsohn's "Brownies: a Memoir," I sure do salivate, which is the Pavlovian next-best-thing.

Heck, I don't even have memories of my mother making Oaxuacan Black Mole like Laura Esquivel's mother does, but when I read her essay of that name, I find the evocations of the warm kitchen, the warm spice of the mole in the back of her throat, all far more compelling than the rest of the essay, precisely because I have those kind of warm-kitchen memories from my childhood.

So this is another compelling component of food writing: its ability to tap into powerful memories and experiences through the olfactory mainline gives its authors--without the use of the yet-to-be-developed smell-o-pen--an uncanny pathos.

Posted by at 3:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Today we discussed how food works in the backyard of GW. Specifically, we discussed a smidge of Naomi Klein's No Logo, in which she convincingly demonstrates how public schools and uniersities have fallen to the branding demon that has infiltrated every other aspect of global life (those aspects of which are covered in other chapters in the book).

This reading provided the context for a series of articles in the GW Hatchet on recent controversies surrounding Aramark, the university's outsourced food service provider, which runs some generic storefronts in GW's Marvin Center, but also appears to be the franchise-owner for such storefronts as Burger King and Taco Bell (or Booger King and Toxic Smell, as I have been wont to call them).

Add to this scenario GW's new Colonial Cash program, wherein students are able to use their account dollars at local vendors like Au Bon Pain and Bertucci's. This is not merely a debit system to be added on to the meal plan; these dollars are part of the meal plan, and can in some cases be used on non-food items. Students, while they overwhelming approve of the system, have occasionally found themselves with a completely depleted meal plan midway into the semester.

Finding revenues dropping because of increased competition and pull from better managed and sexier places off-campus, Aramark accordingly cut hours for some venues on campus, and abruptly laid off several workers right at Thanksgiving, provoking small but significant student protests on behalf of those workers, and a series of opinion pieces in the Hatchet.

This was the context for our discussion today, which, compelling enough, brought to light the idea that with the Colonial Cash system, the university is selling access to their students as consumers, that students are both gaining and losing in this exchange, and that food because of its status as a persistent necessity and its connection to students' bodies, makes this a more contentious issue than if we were talking about books or sweatshirts, which are also controlled by an on-campus monopoly (The GW bookstore is run by Follett, much as UMCP's bookstore and many others are under Barnes and Noble control).

What is remarkable, although certainly explicable, is that not one student mentioned that they intended to change their eating habits based on this new information. I'm not sure I would either, although I might aspire to. I'm not sure if this says more about how deeply entrenched we are in this consumer culture, how inflexible we are about what we eat, or how apathetic we are (I include myself in here as well).

Perhaps one of the most compelling issues to arise here was the degree to which this called into question the very idea of the university. Klein's full chapter makes an argument that universities in general have been by and large bought by corporate interests, and GW's food court is certainly evidence of that. No more so, however, than UMCP's deal with Pepsi, the AT&T teaching theatre, Comcast Center, or, well, name it. What entities on the UMCP campus are de facto Pepsi products? Does it matter? There seemed to be some disagreement about how right or wrong this consumerist university was anyway. To what degree is the Comcast Center different from Van Munching Hall, named after the distributors of Heinekin (a well-know UM campus fact)? What came into question, and what I did not have time to explore, was whether the university was indeed a business. I cringed to hear one student (employing a common enough rationale, and who may, be reading this very entry) opine that his education was a service in a service economy, being exchanged for liquid assets. He's not wrong in the strictest sense, but I think most of us find this conception of the university a harrowing one, one that makes knowledge production a commodity in much crasser ways than we like to understand it, and one that divests faculty of a great deal of power over their own intellectual pursuits. (I'm sure my own attention GW's upside from the Colonial Cash system isn't precisely "good for business").

So, from the Marvin Center to the idea of a University in fifty minutes. It will make for a very interesting semester, one that has begun with a very interesting week.

Posted by at 2:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

So the questions I posed to my class yesterday, in the form of an icebreaker exercise, were the following:

If you could be any food, what would you be and why?
Choose a food that you consume fairly often. What does your consumption of this food tell people about you? would they be right in their assumptions?

When I was applying for college, my personal statement was an attempt (vaguely successful, I think) at 18-year old creative humor. My essay title? "My Life as a Granola Bar." The basic argument was that reading my application materials was like reading the box on a granola bar: test scores, trasncripts, letters all painted a very wholesome nutrictional picture, but they gave no taste of whatI was really like. For that you had to get inside the wrapper to experience the Almond-sweet nuttiness, or the earthy quality from my metaphorical oats (the wild ones had yet to be sown). It went on for a couple of pages this way.

Yesterday, I introduced myself (depending on the class) as either a dark chocolate bourbon truffle or a pecan bourbon brownie--they are crowd-pleasers, slightly decadent, a bit nutty and have just a splash of something a little tawdry.

I also told them that you couyld probably learna lot from my obsession with the Toblerone bar--it says that I aspire for higher quality things, but still want to buy them at a grocery store. It says that despite all of my lefty impulses, I'm still vaguely europhilic, and that if you watched me eat one in its entirety between the grocery store and my car, you would learn that I like to multitask, and that I'm an unrepentant chocholic.

What this all leads to, beyond some mildly amusing insights about how I view myself, is the way that food serves as a cipher for any number of self-identifications, anxieties, desires and aspirations. And it can be used metaphorically in so many ways. While many of my students cited ice cream for its versatility and sweetness, no one said, "I'm like ice cream because I'm frigid."

In gauging some of the reasons my students took this course, I see those trying to come to terms with the way that extensive food allergies shape their experience, I see those wanting to experience "the exotic" (In those words, and words I would also have used as a freshman), students trying out vegetarianism and finding food a site for other moral stand-taking, and students who fancy themselves sensualists.

When I first proposed this course, I think some saw it as a bit of a vanity class--they guy likes to cook so he is teaching a writing course through the theme of food. But as I explore the topi furtehr, I am beginning to recognize the extreme degree to which the very food issues I tackle in class tap into my students anxieties about their own deveoping identities, and about the way we as a culture think about ourselves.

I'd be lying if I said that my desire to elarn to cook, and my subsequent forays into Martha territory weren't signs of my own economic aspirations, my desire to signal my upward mobility, just as my student who says she loves chocolate-mint Clif bars is signalling to others her concern for her health and fitness.

I thought this class would be a lot of fun, and so far (its early) I'm right, but it is going to be charged at every turn, which may make the class even more exciting.

Posted by at 12:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Today's opening exercise was for students to brainstorm some keywords (a la Raymond Williams) for a class on the pleasures and poltiics of food. I am currently in between sections, but the list is already compelling. I started with the first three items, but the whole list thus far includes taste, appetite, consumption, cuisine, sweet, nutrition, refreshment, fat, health, diet, thirst, hunger, allergy, cafeteria (style), fast food, meal, calories, nourishment, starvation, and server. I'll be interested to see what comes up in the next discussion.

In the meantime, we spent some very nice time one th notion of consumption, noting the inexorably negqative connotations of most of the definitions in the OED, with destruction and waste making prominent appearances. What I think becomes compelling is when we think of food consumption in its most literal of terms through a critical framework that takes into account industrial consumption. With this reading in mind, can we ever eat without being consumers? Is the linguistic correlation between nutritive and economic consumption part of the reason that many of the most powerful economic interests in the U.S. are wrapped up in the the stuff we put in our mouths an chew every day?

I'm sitting here eating my peanut butter and Jelly sandwich, knowing that choosy mothers choose Jif, and that I choose the sour cherry preserves I'm eating in part because they had a very cool jar. Even though I'm drinking water (Deer Park, from the office cooler), I'm drinking it from a Coca-Cola bottle that I've recycled. I had a Power Bar for breakfast. The degree to which my survival-based consumption positions me in the system of American economic power, despite my desire to work against that system, makes it clear how inculcated we are with American notions of entitlement and waste.

The key for me and my students this semester will, I think, be the task of balancing the very necessary process of scrutinizing the very processes that make up and undergird our eating habits, with the equally important desire to enjoy that which we eat. Because even if Choosy mothers choose Jif, it tastes good, too.

Posted by at 12:11 PM | Permalink

For some reason, the new Year really begins for me on the first day of the Spring semester, which this year at GW, is quite early. The intervening days between MLA and today, then, which are usually good times to catch up on a little writing, were spent syllabus planning (and burping babies, but that's just the new reality of my reduced productivity).

The bad news is that two articles on parody (on parody as psychic excess, and on parodic spectatorship) remained unrevised, and another on narration in Death of a Salesman and Streetcar remain unresearched.

The good news is that I've got a great syllabus ahead of me, and some exciting things to do with writing about food. Accordingly, this space will often be a test space for ruminations on the class, the discussions we embark on, and occasionally even my own responses to the prompts I give my students.

Of course other ruminations will surely make their way into the discussion, but for a few months, this will be a website obsessed with appetites and consumption.

And finally, Happy New Year (since according to my academic calendar formula, today is an odd interpretation of New Year's Day). May all of your best syllabus intentions come to fruition.

Posted by at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)