Category: Journal

What does Coca-Cola mean to you? Even if you don’t drink it, how do you think about it as a force in the culture? What do you associate with it?

Two steps to this one: 1) Think of something you love to eat and then write the recipe for it. Don’t look up recipes as reference. Just do the best you can and write it in your own words. 2) Once you’ve written the instructions for the recipe, go back and write an introductory headnote for it. Remember: The headnote is basically a place to tell the recipe reader/user some context that will help them better understand the history of, occasion for, and/or technique to produce the recipe. As you saw with the recent reading, the headnote can be any combination of personal history, food history, cultural history, ingredient context or technical detail. But it needs to flow. It can’t just be a hodgepodge of things. Like a story, it should have some internal logic.

In your Journal, make a list of at least five foods about which you have strong feelings. The feelings can be good, bad, mixed, complicated. And for the purposes of this assignment, “food” can mean anything—a single food (eg, Red Delicious Apple), a category of food (eg, beans or chocolate), a dish type (eg, burger or salad), or a brand (eg, Amy’s frozen burritos). “Food” can even mean “drink” or “candy” or basically anything else that you can digest.

Once you have your list, pick one of those things and write about it for 5-10 minutes.

It’s week one and I’m already cheating. Technically, this active-writing assignment is really three active-writing assignments, but I’m choosing to call it one active-writing assignment with three parts.

Part 1: Write about your first food memory (or an early food memory).

Part 2: Write about a memorable food journey you take (or have taken). What do I mean by “journey?” Whatever you want it to mean.

Part 3: Write about your saddest meal. Interpret “sad” however you’d like.

Aim for at least a longish paragraph on each. Your entry should be written in your Journal before class starts at 11am on September 3, 2024.