Food Journalism

Write about a place you wish you could go for the food. It can be a specific event (the Maine lobster festival) or a specific place (a certain restaurant in New York or whatever) or a place and a time (for example, your grandmother’s house at Thanksgiving in 2019) or a region/country (Provence or Indonesia or whatever). Why this place? What do you imaging eating?

Popular music is overflowing with song lyrics that use food to convey something about love, hate, fear, lust, community, exclusion, race, class, gender — basically as a stand-in for some cultural touchstone. Today, I want you to pick one song that uses food to do this in some way and, in your journal, break down how the song does this. Other than AI, you can use whatever resources you want to help form your thoughts. Just be sure to mention any sources or influences on your thinking.

Your response to the reading below should be in your Journal before class on Thursday, October 17.

Please read the following (longish) stories:

• Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace (Gourmet)
• Crunch: Building a Better Apple, by John Seabrook (The New Yorker)

Adding one more after class on Tuesday:

• In Slammer, Honey Buns Sweeten the Situation (St. Petersburg Times)

Call three people you know — family member, friend, etc. — and tell them that, for your food-writing class, you have to come up with story ideas that touch on the intersection of food and culture. Ask for some ideas. Log these ideas in your journal — even the uninteresting, ridiculous, or incomplete ones — and then pick one that you could envision pursuing in some form. Write a 150-word pitch for this idea. We will discuss these in class on Tuesday 10/8.

To what extent, if at all, do you think/care about where your food comes from? What do I mean by where? Whatever you want it to mean. Geographically, ecologically, figuratively, metaphorically. If you do think/care about this, why? And to what degree? And for what specific foods do you most think about this? If you don’t care about this, why? As with all these journal entries, there is not a right answer here. I’m just curious how much, if at all, you think about the point(s) of origin of the food you eat.

• Go into a gas station or find a vending machine and get something. Bag of Cheetos. Roll of Sweetarts. One Atomic Fireball. Combos. One of those small boxes of Lemonheads or Johnny Apple Treats. Whatever. Some junk food or candy that you like.
• Find out as much as you can about the origin of that thing you’ve bought. Don’t just use Wikipedia. See if there’s a number or contact info for company who makes it. Call. Write. Do some research. If you’re feeling especially go-gettery, you can even use Nexis Uni or some database from the UA library to look for old newspaper articles about the thing.
• In addition to the origin of the thing, you could look for episodes throughout history when the thing had a cultural moment. Did a president love them? Or were they on a famous TV show or were they featured on a big Super Bowl commercial or in a viral TikTok? Has Kelis tweeted about them? Etc.
• Write all this in your journal.

Pick one of the following and ask some questions about it. Come to class on Tuesday with some interesting questions/trivia about it:

• Antarctica
• British food
• Ethiopian
• Italian
• Hot dogs in NYC
• Mexican fruit with candy
• Korean corn dogs
• Birria tacos
• Tik Tok pasta
• Rolled ice cream
• Krispy Kreme burger
• Cucumber salad
• How I Met Your Mother (Minnesota salads)
• iCarly (spaghetti tacos)
• Coraline (all the food the other mother cooks)
• The Bear
• Reese’s Puffs rap
• Danimals
• Chipotle phone method
• Doritos Super Bowl commercials

For your journal today, you’re going to make a list. For each category, write one or two answers.

• Name a culture or region whose food you’d like to know more about. Be as broad (Italian) or as specific (gnocchi dishes in Veneto) as you want to be.
• Name a street food you’d like to know more about. This can be something you are used to seeing (hot dog carts) or something you’ve never seen/had (arepas in Colombia, chili crab in Singapore, etc.).
• Name a food trend — current or past — you’re curious about. Avocado toast? Pumpkin spice latte? That dumpling/cucumber salad or some other recent viral dish? A viral food challenge?
• Name a TV show/movie you’re curious about in which food plays a central role. This can be but doesn’t have to be a “food show” such as “The Great British Baking Show” or “Home Movies with Alison Roman.” It can be a TV show or movie that has food-centric scenes or references.
• Name a memorable food-related commercial or brand campaign.