Project: Food Diary

Day 1

9:30am One egg, over easy, over sautéed kale and red cabbage on top of a flour tortilla. Cooked in vegetable oil with salt, black pepper, and Creole seasoning (garlic, onion, red pepper, etc.) Small glass of HyVee not-from-concentrate grapefruit juice.

11:00am One cup of black coffee.

3:00pm Two small flour tortillas, each filled with sautéed kale, red onions and red cabbage. Vegetable oil with salt, pepper, and cumin. Glass of 2% Vitamin D milk.

6:45pm Pizza: White crust, pre-made tomato sauce, spinach, mozzarella, Sriracha. Glass of water

10:00pm Half of a wrap I made in the caf and snuck out: Large flour tortilla, green peppers, cheddar cheese, lettuce (presumably iceberg), radishes, coleslaw (presumably white cabbage, carrots, mayo, sugar). Glass of water

Day 2

9:30am One poached egg over breakfast potatoes made the day before: red potatoes, onions, vegetable and olive oil, salt, pepper, Creole seasoning. Glass of milk.

3:00pm Other half of the wrap from Day 1, added Sriracha.

6:30pm Bowl of soup made a few days ago: onion, celery, carrots, V8 juice, sardines, salt, pepper, olive oil, basil (dried), garlic salt, sugar. Cup of coffee, milk and sugar.

11:00pm Bowl of vanilla yogurt with half an apple. 

             

                There are an infinite array of ways to look at this food diary: As a consumer, producer, dietician, biologist, psychologist, anthropologist, sociologist, or historian; from the standpoint of self identity or group identity; from a social, economic, or political perspective; within a local, national, or global context. But it is just this conundrum of choices that brings to light the complexity hidden within our most basic and universal act... choosing what to eat.

                The convergence of Warren Belasco’s three prongs - Convenience, Responsibility and Identity - reveals who I am and where I stand. Could I scourge for food in the urban or semi-urban jungle with their planned and scattered natural landscapes? Would I find anything to eat that could sustain me? It is out of convenience and habit that I find myself within the comfort of a supermarket, a fairly modern and international bazaar. Hunting and gathering through the aisles, scavenging the shelves, reading the labels: This is my weekly forage.

                As you can see I stick to several main ingredients or food items: onions, cabbage, kale, celery, carrots, mushrooms, black beans, coffee, canned tuna, bread, tortillas; vegetable oil, olive oil, butter, milk; salt, pepper, cumin, sugar, and a spice mix. Even the fact that I have water at hand whenever the need arises says something about the context in which I live. I am provided with a refrigerator to store my foods and a gas stove to heat them; pots and pans to cook with and utensils to aid in the process.

                The fact that I choose, what I believe to be, such simple food products – as compared to pre-made and processed foods, fine cuts of meat, poultry or seafood, a worldly variety of spices and herbs – highlights my struggle between eating sustainably as I see it (responsibility), lack of time and money (convenience), and my personal taste as well as preference for cooking (identity). 

                Cooking enables a sense of control over food, something which has been lost within the agro-industrial context in which we live. But is this not self-deception? Do we still not all, including myself, rely on supermarkets, on fossil fuels, on refrigeration, kitchenware companies, and transportation? I put salt and pepper on everything, cook everything in fats, use flour-based items as most of my meals’ foundations, and more importantly, feed only myself in each meal. The historical context and progression of merged cuisines, individualism, and the more recent notion of sustainability founded on man’s fear of extinction all come alive with every meal I entertain. That there even exists a movement towards sustainability reveals a deep-seeded biological and psychological drive towards long-term species continuance. Can you argue that altruism is an integral piece of continual existence? How much can we truly survive and function without others, and are we not then a tightly woven mesh of personalities, knowledge, and bodies? Can such generalities, observations and conclusions be brought about from other everyday items? Or is food, its production and distribution, the treasured key to understanding the core paradigms upon which a civilization, a culture, or a community rests?