Reflection of the Semester

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect coming into this First Year Interest Group. I knew that I loved food and I loved to cook, and that it went pretty well with my major, which at the time was pre-dietetics. Coming out, I have learned so much about things that I didn’t particularly have interest in learning about until I took the classes in this FIG. I am so much more conscious of myself as a consumer and I am more aware of how the farms I see when I leave Madison are related to a much larger system. I learned more about myself and that through cooking and eating, I realized that dietetics is not the career path for me. I am more interested in the art of food rather than the science of food. Laurie Beth sort of indirectly inspired me in a way to become an art major. I came to the conclusion that I wanted to be an advocate for people of color and other underprivileged group in America and one of the best ways to do that was to become a teacher. Particularly, an art teacher.

As for the Monday classes, I enjoyed the meals that we made at the beginning of the semester more than the ones at the end of the semester, with the exception of the last class. I loved having the freedom to make my own pasta dish and salad dressing on a whim the first day we cooked without the guidance of a recipe. I was able to just cook something that tasted good. I also really enjoyed the pesto pasta dish because we were able to make it in a similar fashion to the first pasta dish. I really really liked the improvisation aspect because that’s how I cook at home. It was pretty cool when each group made a different dish to serve to the class in a buffet, but I did miss some of those opportunities to improvise where each group cooked for themselves towards the end.

Some of my other favorite dishes we made were the fried catfish with greens, and black eyed peas and rice because it reminded me of the holidays with my family, the huevos rancheros with the rice pudding (I experimented a little bit by adding some salt and that’s exactly what it needed), that spaghetti dish from when Grazia was our guest cook, the glaze that we put on the squash when Chele was our guest cook, and of course the last class meeting where everyone chose their dishes.

Some dishes I didn’t like so much were the Slavic dishes because they felt very heavy in my stomach and I really needed something to balance that out like a salad, the okonomiyaki, which was a little too weird for me, the bacon brown butter pasta because the pasta was under cooked and the radicchio was too bitter and overpowering for my taste, and the quiche because we did not have enough time to execute it well, and it was a bit under cooked as well.

The one thing that I’ve become known for in the class is my love of salt and unfortunately, I was missing a lot of it this semester, especially during the Slow Food lunches. I think that I am going cook for myself from now on haha.

While I did just spend the last two paragraphs complaining because I’m a food snob, I undoubtedly learned something with every new cooking experience we had. I’d never made my own pie crust before, or made fresh pasta, or knew what Slavic people ate or really what their culture was like at all. I’m very grateful for all the guests that we had this semester and I really did learn a lot.

I also want to thank the other guests we had on Wednesdays and for Slow Food for providing a fresh and unique meal for us every week. I have to say that Lindsay Christens was my favorite guest because I was so engaged with her speaking the entire time. While other guests were still interesting, they did not hold my attention as much. I also really enjoyed the guest, that I unfortunately can’t find the name of, who gave a presentation on Fermentation Fest. I thought that the artwork was incredible and I am interested doing the tour sometime in the coming years if they can keep it going.

As far as the readings go, my favorite reading would still have to be the first article that I read with Grace about the food culture of Mexican Americans and the way that gender roles intertwine with that food culture.

Lastly, another thing that I loved about this class was the bagels and the chicken sandwiches that Laurie Beth brought in during our first couple meetings. They were both AMAZING and I felt like such an adult when I ate them.