Eng. 151H: Pollan, Foer, and the Complications of Food

This is one of those days where I should not be awake, let alone functional.  I got next to no sleep last night, the alarm went off at 5:00, and I haven't had as much caffeine as I expected to by this point in the morning.  But I am not one to question such blessed energy, so off we go into the wonderful world of Michael Pollan and Jonathan Safran Foer on this glorious September Friday.

We have been reading our way through Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, spending the first part of the week talking about corn and industrial corn production, which has been quite the experience for my students.  This is the end of our second week in Writing Project 2, on food systems, and today, the first interview they're doing for this project is due (I haven't seen them yet, but I'm pretty excited).  Some of them went to the Farmer's Market down in the Haymarket last week (I hope they go tomorrow as well) and I get paid this weekend, which means the food budget is replenished, which means I can go too without torturing myself.

Today's section of Omnivore's Dilemma was about pastoral grass and Joel Salatin's farm--but the sad part of the day is that we didn't get as much time to spend on it as I wanted to, since I wanted to spend a good chunk of our time on Foer, as a new voice and a new perspective in this ongoing exploration of complications.  I waved around the book, Eating Animals, where I took the portions about storytelling and gave it to my students for today.  I talked about what Foer was doing as a Writer (which is not to say that Pollan is not a writer, but the differences between their styles and execution are marked) and what it would be like to apply Noah Lukeman to both of these texts to discern what their sentences are doing.  I talked about the use of his pages, manipulating the page to also do what he wants it to do.  I love writers who do that.

Then, free writing:

• How does JSF complicate what we've been talking about?  Where did you highlight, underline, comment?  What do you still think about after you've put it down?
• What new ideas and perspectives does he bring to this conversation?
• How does he bring us back to the micro level that our class is themed around?
• If you can, interpret what we've been talking about through the lens of your major.  There are pre-med, political science, etc. majors--what perspective does that offer?  If you can't filter this topic through your major or intended major, think about it through your own personal history.
• How did your interview complicate this topic?

We talked about storytelling, how pretty much everything Foer is doing in these pages is a variation on storytelling, changing a story, and what it means to do either.  My students pointed out where Foer specifically mentions Pollan and we talked a little bit about the dialogue that is going on in Foer's book.

We ran out of time to discuss Pollan's section in depth, but we'll get to it next week.  At the end of class, one of my students brought up a really good question (about "why does it matter, if the animal is dead?)--which I would like to say is typical of this particular class.  This class asks truly excellent, difficult questions.  These are questions that seem simplistic or antagonistic or "duh" questions on first glance, but the reality is they are incredibly important questions.  Asking "why does it matter?" is a valid question.  I have one particular student who is really, really good at forming these kind of under-the-surface-complex questions, something that was often brought up in the Natural Disasters 150 I taught in the spring.  If farming was so tough during the Dust Bowl, why did people stay?  Why didn't they go somewhere else?  That's not a dumb question--that's a truly excellent question.  What would have prevented them from going somewhere else, doing something different?

And then, as I was riding the elevator back to my office, I have that moment that most teachers do:  I really hope this class is going as well as I think it is...because this is awesome.

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Eng. 151H: Mixing it Up

Today is one of those days when the work that's not due for a couple of weeks is much more attractive than the work you have to do right now, for tomorrow.  Today is my writing day and I need to get moving on the essays that will make up my dissertation (on the city of Galway), but I keep getting distracted.  I have books to read that look like more fun (like Declan Burke's Down These Green Streets: Irish Crime Writing in the 21st Century which arrived this week)--and that particular distraction got worse this morning by a call for papers from Eire-Ireland that's looking for work on Irish crime for a special issue in 2014.  This, of course, sends me into a tailspin of wanting to take the previous informal writings I've done on the subject (here and here and here) and see what I can come up with.  Which makes me jot down notes to bring up when I meet with the vice-chair of the department on Friday to ask some questions about various things.  And then I get nervous because I haven't written the paper I'm giving at the American Conference of Irish Studies in less than a month.  One thought leads to another.  And this is not productive for the writing I actually have to do.

Because I'm reading at the No Name Reading Series on Friday the 28th and I want to read something new.

So, naturally, I feel the need to work on something else--like reflect on what's going on in my 151H class.

My 151H turned in their final drafts of their Silent Spring rhetorical analysis on Monday and we transitioned to the second Writing Project by watching the apple section of the documentary The Botany of Desire (which is instant on Netflix if you'd like to check it out).  The book (by Michael Pollan) is better, but this was a good way to give my students a little break in the brain area while still getting them to think in this new direction, to see how what we've been doing in the last few weeks transitions into what we will be doing in the next few weeks.  I've got a fondness for apples--published an essay called "The Inheritance of Apples" a few years ago in Silk Road Literary Review.  And I found out that yesterday, my sisters were going to pick up Gram from her assisted living, bring her back to their house, and make pies.  (Also found out that because Gram--who is 89--couldn't really do any of the tasks anymore, that made her extremely critical of everything--the apples were cut too thick, the pastry cutter wasn't as good as using a knife and fork, and more.)  I adore my grandmother.  She's a hoot.  And a champion pie baker.  So I get excited about apples.

The purpose of the project is to investigate food systems and for my students to consider the choices they are making and how the complications are related to what we're talking about in the class.  We talked about how the rhetoric of apples changed from the demon fruit that was getting America drunk to An Apple a Day Keeps the Doctor Away.  I also brought up something I'd seen on the LIncoln Journal-Star that morning, about BPI (makers of pink slime) suing ABC news for defamation--and this was something that will get brought up when we watch Food, Inc. in a couple of weeks (I had no idea these veggies libel laws existed)--so what we're doing is incredibly current.  The point of the project is to become aware of the rhetoric used by all of these different groups, to explore why this idea of food systems is not as simple as either/or.

We had read the introduction to The Omnivore's Dilemma (which is our text for this project) for the day and I gave them a couple writing prompts to get the class started:  I pulled out a few quotes from the first couple of pages about the rules and traditions and such that govern how we eat, not just what we eat.  So I had them write about what rules governed their food lives.  Then I asked them to consider what issues and complications that Pollan brings up in this introduction that we should be aware of as we proceed.  This seemed to be a good way to start things off, to give them space to think through their pens.

We talked through what they had written and they brought up meals with their families, we talked about holiday meals and what rules governed those traditions.  They spoke of their holiday meals coming mostly out of cans, some meals were completely from scratch, one of my students said that her family actually goes out and shoots a turkey themselves.  One of my student's family has lutefisk as their tradition, which brought up "what is lutefisk?"  So he and I got to share that mental image of fish jello with the rest of the class--but the larger issue we connected to there was what that food (if one can actually call it food) represented.  It represented the food that was available, it represented a culture that needed to preserve food for the winter so they didn't starve.  Ah, they said.  I got to tell them the story of the Hunter's Suppers we had at my church when I was growing up, the lutefisk, the lefse, the meatballs and potatoes, the whole shebang.  That too, was part of a tradition.  The food system we are a part of is pretty complicated.

After Monday's viewing of the apples, we pulled out some of the complications--we talked about the role of business (small vs. large growers), we talked about culture and tradition and how that shifts and changes, we talked about how apples were part of how the continent was settled.  On Friday (tomorrow), they will have read the potatoes chapter of The Botany of Desire, so I'm excited to talk to them about what they find there.

Especially as I plan to mash some Yukon gold potatoes with butter and milk for my lunch.  Mjolk och potatis, to raise a fork to my Swedish grandmother.

State of Mind: Post-Election and Week 12 Meltdown

A lot of things are on my mind, place-related, this morning, some of them pedagogical, some political, some personal--and some food-related.

My 150 students and I are not connecting well with each other right now and I'm supremely disappointed in them, for several reasons. The last straw was yesterday, when we went to Morrill Hall, the natural history museum on campus, to get some ideas for our third Writing Project, and when I asked them what they found, if they learned anything new, they just stared at me. Even "what was the weirdest thing you saw?" elicited blank stares. There will probably be a come to Jesus meeting with them tomorrow if this continues. Guess how much I'm looking forward to that. As a result, there is much stress in the Babine household today--and I'm going to cook my way out of it. Roast chicken, chicken stock, baked oatmeal, carrot ginger soup, and chocolate chip cookies.

My 252 is continuing to discuss Kent Krueger's Iron Lake and Andrea Barrett's Servants of the Map. They're loving both books, for different reasons, and that just makes me happy. We discussed the middle section of Iron Lake last night and I love how discussing a book with students helps me to see things I never noticed before. The discussions last night of how many ways place and landscape and weather are active participants in the plot were spectacular. Next week, Antonya Nelson and Robert Boswell are visiting campus and their reading is during our class time, so we're going to go hear them read. Should be a good time.

On a completely separate place-related note: at the grocery store this morning, the produce is displayed so it's the first thing you see. It's still apple season, so the apples are front and center. I am an apple nerd. Not an expert, but a nerd. My grandparents managed an apple orchard in New Ulm, MN in the 1950s and I've learned quite a lot about Minnesota apples. Earlier in the fall, Hy-Vee was selling Haralsons--and it's been years since I've had a Haralson, let alone seen them anywhere outside Minnesota. And then today, there were Firesides. It's been even more years since I've had a Fireside. I was so excited that I had to call my mother.

"Don't get the green ones," she said.

"I know," I said, "or it'll taste like a potato."

"Your grandmother will be so proud that you remembered," she said, laughing. Firesides are late apples and they have to ripen fully on the tree or they have no flavor at all.

The depths of my apple nerd-ity were also confirmed as I was watching ABC's new show Once Upon a Time. The evil queen--in her mayoral persona--was telling Emma that she has her own special apple tree, of Honeycrisps, though the link to the poisoned apple is obvious. However, the apples she has in her basket--and the ones that are on the tree in later scenes, are absolutely not Honeycrisps. They're not the right color or the right shape. The evil apples are Red Delicious, which in my own apple snobbery, seems about right.

I am a nerd.

But I'm also conscious of politics this morning and what it means to live in a place at a certain time. Yesterday, Ohio overturned SB5, which severely limited collective bargaining power. And Mississippi failed to pass its Personhood initiative, which would legislate that a fertilized egg is a person, with all the legal rights guaranteed to a person who has been born (except, as I saw one article say, a woman of childbearing age...). Dear students, if you don't think that place influences you, you only have to look at how different places define what it means to live there, or not live there, or the living conditions you are entitled to--or not--while you live there.

I hope Thursday's discussion in my 150 can convince them that the bubble they think they live in doesn't exist--and the world's a lot more interesting out here than it is in that bubble.

Spatula!

What a great way to begin October!

It's true that part of my love of place is food-related. Maybe it goes back to childhood and the insane garden that my mom kept, the vegetables that we'd eat right out of the garden, just barely rinsed at the spigot, maybe it was the sense of camaraderie of preparing those veggies to be frozen or canned for the winter. Maybe it was just a satisfaction of growing something. I don't know. I just know that I miss having a garden.

When I was living in Bowling Green, I didn't miss a garden so much because I had the amazing Toledo Farmer's Market, that I frequented with my good friend Amanda nearly every week during the summer. I'd brew the tea, pick her up, and away we'd go. Sometimes we had shopping lists, sometimes we'd see what was good. That was the first place I'd seen brussels sprouts on their stalk. I never knew they grew that way. But I knew they were tasty. A friend of mine from church helped out his family at their stand and he always cut me a deal on canning tomatoes.

Amanda and I taught in the same English department at the university and we knew each other long before we became friends, probably through her husband, FDR, who also taught in the same department and is an amazing poet (Amanda's no slouch in that area herself). I'm sure that the change probably had something to do with food. We discovered that we only lived one street away from each other, so discussions of food became "Hey, I just made this, want leftovers?" or "Hey, I just made this, I need a second opinion!" And across the street we'd go. We started walking in the mornings, sometimes with her tank of a black lab, Bleu, who still thinks he's a puppy. (He may always be a puppy to us.)

Most of those conversations were discussions of various Food Network shows, expressions of love for the awesomeness that is Jamie Oliver, talking about locally sourced food and more. She's the one who introduced me to kale, sautéed in a bit of olive oil and butter till it's just wilted, spritzed with lemon juice, lightly sprinkled with salt and pepper. She made me Jamie Oliver's steak and guinness pie for my birthday once and I swear I could hear angels singing. That fall, we split a quarter of a cow, locally-sourced, grass-fed beef, and it was the greatest thing I'd ever done.

We are the people who take pictures of our food when we go out to eat. If you want to see us in action (albeit in written form), click here. Amanda herself writes for her very cool blog Everyday Palate.

As a cook and an eater, she's completely fearless. (But, she's not a baker. Completely different skill set, she would say. I was the baker of the two.) Part of that has to do with the influence of one Sarah Lenz, who writes on a very cool blog called Prose and Potatoes. I don't know Sarah as well, but she also teaches in the same English department. Sarah is even more fearless than Amanda, especially when it comes to unmentionable bits of various animals. She raises her own chickens. If it can be made herself, she does it.

Amanda has been the Food and Wine editor of the online journal Connotation Press for two years and this fall, they've morphed the written element of the column into a video. Sarah and Amanda have their own cooking show, Spatula. It's amazing. One ingredient, two ways. This month, it's beef and they're making burgers. Amanda is using locally sourced ground chuck from the grocery store and Sarah is grinding her own from chuck and short ribs. I started to drool, I swear. Real burgers are a work of art. These two have personality, they have skills, they have a love of food that is as evident as the finished product. This is a cooking show that you'll want to keep an eye on, if for no other reason than it's fun. Food Network, watch out!

I have heard rumors that Sarah is coming to Omaha over spring break and may drag Amanda with her--I hope so! I can see it now: Spatula: Tiny Kitchen Edition.

Farm Tours

Today, I went with my friend Aubrey on a tour of three local farms. It was sort of an open-house kind of day for them and I like farms, I like food, I like local food, so she let me tag along as long as I agreed to navigate. I thought this was a fair trade.

We started at the Caruso-Rozzano farm, which specialized in Italian heirloom tomatoes, among other things. We looked at the rows of different tomatoes, noting differences in shape, mostly, because the ripe ones had already been picked. Aubrey bought a pint of cherry tomatoes from a little blonde girl selling the tomatoes at her own Fisher-Price stand that was right next to her parents' larger table of goodness. The tomatoes tasted like candy. And it's impossible to say no to little five year olds when they're selling anything.

Leaving Caruso-Rozzano, a B-2 flew overhead, came around and made another pass. At least I think it was a B-2. Could have been an F-117, I suppose, but as my Air Force father tried to teach his three daughters about planes, the only one I can identify on sight is a C-130, which he navigated while he was in the Air Force. But going with him to any place there are planes is always great fun. Lincoln is having an air show today and tomorrow and I bet he'd like to be here.

From there, we went to Common Good Farm, where Aubrey gets her summer CSA. This was the most interesting of them to me and I wish I'd been smarter and packed a hat and some sunblock because I only made it through part of the farm tour before I had to get out of the sun. But we walked the rows of kale and tomatoes and peppers, sampled fresh pesto and rhubarb jam. When the farm tour started, that's when things got really interesting. We saw two pens of chickens and they get moved every so often to fresh grass and grasshoppers, free range and running around. They got very excited when the little kids threw lettuce to them. We learned about the owner's reliance on non-kill methods of protecting his chickens from hawks, because Fish and Wildlife won't let you kill them. But as the farmer told us about the noise cannon things he used to scare the hawks--now they won't come near the farm--that also means that the ecology of the area is still intact. Just because you may kill the hawks that stalk your chickens doesn't mean that your problems will go away just because you kill the hawks. If you remove the predator, that has effect further down the line. (This chicken looks sketchy because of a protein issue, nothing else.)

I won't remember everything he said about his pigs (about a half dozen of them) and how he's using his pigs to get rid of bindweed--the whole process is just brilliant. He'll never be completely rid of bindweed, but the pigs have done a better job of taking care of the problem than any of the chemicals that other farmers use. Even if you spray for bindweed, you'll still need to do it every year. So that doesn't solve any problems. The pigs fertilize and chew up the soil, benefiting the soil itself, and in the fall, they're quite tasty.

From there, we went to Branched Oak farms, lured in by cows. Cows = excellent cheese, ice cream, and more. We didn't stay too long here. The reality is that cows also equal more flies. It just reminded me of stories my grandmother tells of the cows she grew up with, the milking, the dedication required, how even things like the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services were set around the milking schedules of the local farmers.

Aubrey and I also talked briefly about Wendell Berry (she's an expert on him; I am not) and advocating for solutions in terms of systems, rather than one solution for a problem. We also talked a little about my canning/urban discussion that I almost had with my class and we discussed how the local food movement has been criticized for being elitist--and how that relates to this rural/urban mindset when it comes to food. When does something like a CSA become a political choice, rather than what you do because you must? Of course, we did not fail to notice how many Priuses we saw in the parking areas of each of these farms.