My Food Life: BF

I love food! Like a lot. There’s not many foods that I don’t like or that I wouldn’t try. I even date a professional cook and devoted a large chunk of my thesis in architecture to tupperware and cooking utensils- go figure.But I have been taking food for granted. Challenge Detroit is a unique opportunity that exposes you to really smart people with unique views and issues that you’ve never even thought about. I never realized how food is really a platform for many different ways of thinking and I thought I would share how my idea of “food” as expanded.

WHY?

First off, I am currently designing a mobile kitchen that has to fit TONS of different cooking things into a transportable unit that can fit into a passenger vehicle. The unit will be used as a “facilitation” station for high schooler’s that will give cooking lessons to elementary students who take part in the programs run by Detroit Food Academy (my current nonprofit partner). I am working on this project with 5 others fellows, and we have been talking a lot about food- so that is why, all of the sudden I am obsessed.

WHO?

My Food Life: New Cappuccino Maker

Maybe just asking questions is a great start to thinking about anything. Where does my food come from? Who has access to what food? From what culture or historical event did this food originate? Even before we could write, we made food. So in a way food is much deeper than the spaghetti you put on your table. It is an anthropological collection of ways to use a resource. I cook potatoes because some guy dug in the ground and said…”This is weird, I’m gunna eat it.” But not only are we historically connected to what we eat, in the present we should be thinking about what the consumption of “stuff” really means.

DEMOGRAPHIC.

Food sources are directly related to income. I visited a high school with Detroit Food Academy, and the conversation during the session was about how there are more corner stores in low income areas and more “market” like stores in areas of higher incomes. Just some food for thought.

PLATFORM.

My Food Life: Steak Ornament

Food is actually a great platform for introducing tough topics that make people uncomfortable. I never thought about food as a way of introducing serious conversation until this Challenge. SO INTERESTING. OK, the logic. So people love food and they can relate to where it came from. So instead of just jumping straight to the punch about, for example, Thanksgiving which is still related in media to pilgrims and indians sharing food, we bring up whats on the plate. HOT TOPIC for obvious reasons, but a DFA employee brought this up with me saying, “Let’s unpackage the Thanksgiving table and really talk about where these dishes come from and how they relate and how they evolved over time.” Then you get to really understand what happened to people, where they went, and how things changed. Another example, could be Soul Food, specifically chitlins, which date back to times of slavery when scraps from the Big House were handed out. This seems like controversial dinner table talk and maybe you’ll look at that fork and spoon a little differently, but food is a tool to celebrate each others cultures- to heal, to share, and to understand.

IDENTITY. So this blog could go on forever, but I thought I would end with this one. A fellow “Fellow” in my group recently made a very bold statement saying that food is the most intimate object humans interact with- “We literally put it in our bodies… you don’t do that with anything else.” The way people think about food says a lot about them and what they value. When you want to get to know someone, you take them to dinner. I live with two vegetarians, and as a life long meat eater, I am growing by asking them why they eat what they do and it has informed my decisions as well. Our families define our palette. Every Christmas I lovingly crimp dough balls into little pierogi. Food is tradition, but after this year with Challenge Detroit, it is so much more to me. It is a way to identify myself and to learn about others. Food is much more than what is on the plate.