Waterstreet Wonders

So, this is the wonderful woman sitting next to me at Waterstreet Coffee Joint in Kalamazoo, MI. We have the same shoes.... they're like my most comfortable pair, but I don't wear them that much because, well, I'm not like her. When I describe them to people I always say you would find them in a "Hearthsong" or "Acorn" catalogue, or on a sixth grade teacher who wears brooches and has a sweater for every single holiday.

I feel really sketchy having photographed the innocent people having coffee next to us, but you just don't see those shoes every day! It was actually my best friend Jordan who pointed them out to me, only because I have analyzed the fact that I own them over and over again. I bet this lady knits, maybe she is a librarian... I hope she has grandchildren! Most of all, I hope those shoes reduce her risk of arthritis or osteoporosis.

Life is good, I'm loving being back in Kzoo, and making friends two generations older than I am because we have the same shoes.

Caps Off to Capitalsim?

Greetings from Jupiter Island Florida!

I love my grandparents more than anything in the world, they're sweet, respectful, transparent, and want what is best for us and are willing to support us though whatever, whenever we need them. My grandfather worked exceptionally hard for what he has, and they are living, what many would call "The American Dream". My grandfather is an entrepreneur who built his life's work to support his family off of the free enterprise system in our "exemplary" and standard-setting country. This was all made possible by his ancestors who worked hard in agriculture building their income into family money that would then be passed through the generations in order to support our younger family members as my Grandfather's parents did for him, as he has done for my father, and as my father will do for me. Not to mention all of the cultural capital and high family expectations that have helped each new generations to achieve the success of or predecessors. This is the privilege that I come from about as watered down as I have ever looked at it, and it evolved into a massive "mind ^&%$".

Edward Cutahee Steele <3

It started out with a simple question: "So Charlotte, tell me about your frustrations with our agricultural system?" Wow. I didn't know where to start... and I certainly had not summed up everything I had learned in college thus far for someone... ever... so I was pretty uneloquent...

Naturally I started talking about corn, then CAFOs, then high fructose corn syrup, then "sustainability" and soil erosion, and then cheap food and McDonalds, and then food access, childhood obesity, diabetes... everything.

He came back with: "But then how do you explain all of the successful athletes and long-living people that we have today? Many of them are from black families that probably ate McDonalds (arg). If all of this food is bad for you, how do you explain all of the medical success we have today?"

And there it began, his perspective of success versus my perspective of failure. I was sweating now... started talking about how medicine and food are evolving simultaneously, and how its all very complicated and different for different generations.

"But really its not complicated, as the world evolves, we will be able to solve all of these problems through science. Are you saying that the food that you go to buy in a grocery stores isn't good for us?"

Well no, but it could be a lot better. I am not denying that grocery stores have evolved into enormously plentiful ways to access food... (ahhhh I wanted to start talking about food waste and portion size, and just go nuts but I had started backing down...)

"It's also really important to remember that the free enterprise system is driven by people's ability to choose what they want to buy and exercise their purchasing power, if this is what people want to eat are you saying we should take that away from them?"

From here I started talking about what people want to eat versus what they are able to eat and financially able to afford... but was realizing how socialist and ignorant I was sounding which made me feel smaller and smaller :(

And to top it all off we started talking about the disparities of capitalism, and how I wished that every baby had equal opportunities in this world, because a child's resilience is largely determined by their family situation, but of course our family situation is largely determined by our ancestors.

The fuel for all of my grievances

"So if you work hard and get A's and another student is getting C-'s do you think that for both of your amount of effort you should each get B's?"

And then I said yes and I was afraid because I didn't want to insult his hard work. I told him we need more scholarships, that student loans surpassed credit card debt, and he said that we have so many more scholarships than we did 50 years ago, we are doing so well. It was a constant battle for his appreciation of everything that he didn't have before, and my skepticism and dissatisfaction with everything we do have. Is it possible that as skeptics we have lost sight of everything we have to be thankful for? But who am I to say that... I have everything I need.

So there I was (feeling ignorant and selfish, realizing I have taken my entire life for granted) arguing my liberal-arts-student perspective staring across the table at him, someone who looks back on the way our country has grown with wonder and awe, resulting in his 100% faith and endorsement of the system.

I was feeling ashamed of the lack of consideration and education I have had about seeing the world from his point of view, and confused about if I still believe in mine... it was so hard to have a mirror held up to my liberal-arts-student face. What is this even called anyways? Talking about capitalism? free enterprise? the agricultural system? our country's system? But for me, its talking about life, and its really hard. Will I ever get better or smarter at this?

A snapshot of food handling in the Steele family household... this is what I came home to today.

Writing about writing...

For those of my followers, (maybe they are imaginary?) who are reading this out of context, I am now going to write and reflect about my writing.

Writing about food seems fairly easy. Finding the right language to use in order to provoke the same feelings in someone else that I experienced myself was incredibly challenging. Writing for this class really illustrated for me the power of words and using effective language to provoke mutual connotations and feelings surrounding food. Everybody eats, and values their eating experience very individually, but through all of our writing assignments I began to value more importantly the power of communication and unification through food, and to be consciously growing my capabilities of articulating my experiences with food. It was striking to me how plain this seemed in our readings. There were many sentences that made me want to jump up and down because I felt such a connection with a moment or scene in a story because of word choice. Setting out on our writing assignments, I wanted to create those moments for my readers.

Transporting someone else through food is challenging, especially when it is through our own personal experiences. The authors we read were admirably well-versed and polished in their communication of such universal feelings surrounding food. I often feel as though food is such an internal experience, it is difficult to reproduce that for someone else as something that will be mutually meaningful. Reading the works of others helped to infuse these skills and understand the potential for my writing. However, it was surprisingly hard to find just the right word or phrase, and many times it took more than one try… coming back to the piece after taking a long break. But other times in the moment, the language just came to me. Most of the time it was born from saying something out loud that sounded right or got a positive reaction from someone else. My primary struggle was definitely finding the right words to use.

After I had patched together what seemed to be some language we could work with as a class, I was always struck with how much my organization needed rethinking after a workshop. As with many drafts for my other classes I felt as though during the first draft I was able to get down raw ideas that would build the framework for my final draft. Playing with structure and organization was FUN! Again, I really felt like I had a lot of power to be really careful about how I conveyed what I was talking about to the reader… deciding how to open or close a piece, and deciding if certain parts should go together. I felt that the organization of my pieces set a rhythm and cadence to the flow that translated into the pace and climax of the concepts for the reader, and these qualities enhance the ideas as they are presented. This segment was an important part of my revisions.

Finally I am infinitely more comfortable using a journalistic style: short paragraphs, fluid changes in subject or idea throughout a piece, and finding my identity or voice within a piece. Through our three forms, memoir, personal essay and criticism and laboring over each, I realize how much of a process my writing became. Though process seemed overwhelming, by the end of the quarter I saw it as an opportunity to improve… even if only by a few words with each read through, every time I looked at a piece again I would get a new idea or gain insight from a new angle. There were many things the words said about one another when they were in close proximity, shedding light on unexpected angles of my experiences. In a way I don’t think I could ever really feel like a piece was perfect, but I felt as though some of them came pretty close.

The Day Julia Child and I Became One [final]

“Don’t crowd the mushrooms! Otherwise they won’t brown!”

I could here Julie Powell in a scene from the movie Julie and Julia, teaching herself out of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French cooking. I looked down at the mass of mushrooms on the cutting board, envisioning the sin I was about to commit. I carefully cooked them in small batches, and they quickly browned into utter perfection.

So there I was, trying to emulate my own fondness for Julia Child, Julie Powell style- by cooking her recipes. It was not as picture perfect as I had imagined it: I was wearing her signature strand of pearls underneath my lumberjack flannel with bunchy corduroys. The cookbook was faded, the pages thick with wear but sturdy and informative. My library copy was perched above the mess of activity with worn sticky notes marking the pages of attempt: the oh so famous Boeuf Bourguignon, always declared in a deep boisterous voice (which I did my best to imitate), Artichokes with Hollandaise Sauce, Rice Pilaf, Rockfort Cheese Quiche, and of course, Chocolate Souflee. These recipes are signature of Julia’s life’s work, and I wanted to capture the essence of Julia in my “perfect meal”. To me, the perfect meal means seeing every dish from start to finish, communicating a labor of love. The fact that these particular recipes have represented these things to so many people around the world made it even more meaningful.

Julia Child is legendary among aspiring American cooks. Her recipes represent many characteristics of perfection: that of a mastered elaborate, intent, and genuine approach to “French” cooking. To me, Julia Child represents the perfection in cooking as an art because she shares her love: she has not only mastered recipes that connect people around the world, but dedicated much of her life to sharing them.

Though I normally value buying foods that support the local community and were sustainable in their production, for the preparation of my Julia Child meal my first priority was to follow her directions exactly, buying the ingredients that she specified. I was prepared to venture outside my local comfort zone if it meant a more successful execution of her expertise. However, this did not change my grocery shopping approach: local businesses first, were I found grass-fed beef, eggs and butter, and commercial grocery stores for all that remained on my shopping list. Procuring ingredients was nothing short of a Grocery Store tour through Kalamazoo: The Park St. Market, Meijer, People’s Food Co-op, Sawall Health Food, and D&W. It turns out artichokes are hard to come by in the middle of winter, and Roquefort Cheese can only be found at D&W. Nonetheless, I found all of my “French” ingredients in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Although I tried to channel every aspect of Julia, her charm and her methods, certain parts of the meal resorted to conventionality as opposed to her manual, old-fashioned impressiveness. I couldn’t help but use the microwave, and lacked ramekin cups for the Chocolate Souflee, so I scrounged up a collection of matching school-cafeteria mugs. I was nervous about the risk of using the misshapen, tall porcelain for something so testy, but, I conquered a souflee, beautifully, successfully, and without ramekins!

The Hollandaise Sauce was the most intensive: not a second to breathe in the whole recipe, and so many opportunities to blow the whole thing. Hollandaise sauce requires consistent attention: constant whipping for 20 minutes or more. It is basically butter, with egg yolk and flavored with lemon. The idea is to heat the egg yolks, but not cook them, constantly aerating them with a vigorous whisking motion. If you are to stop or slow down, the eggs will scramble or curdle, ruining the sauce. I alternated whisking with one of my housemates, thinking of Julia Child’s man biceps and determination to persevere through any recipe. I learned that Hollendaise Sauce is justanother food myth: “impossible” in perception, but like poaching an egg, if you follow the directions it turns out just fine.

The most useful tool in the kitchen ended up being our onion goggles, as onions were used in almost every dish! The cooking was intensive, and time consuming, taking nearly five hours of straight mixing, prepping, baking and warming of finished dishes. The countertops were covered in dirty bowls abandoned in the midst of time-sensitive recipes. As we were mixing the last of the souflee, my housemates descended upon the kitchen, diligently picking up the slack on dishes that had accumulated. Once the souflee was in the oven, and the artichokes were on the table I was stunned by the resonating stillness of the previously kinetic meal, after constant chaos, it was finally time to eat.

The most important ingredient to a fantastic meal is an appetite, which everyone brought to our 9:30 PM meal. The artichokes were a tease for growling stomachs, so little meat with each bite, but the Hollendaise Sauce was hypnotic, sending each of us into a trance. Next came the Bouef, Rice, and Quiche. The quiche was punchy and strong with flavor, and light like warm cheesecake. The Roquefort cheese transported us beyond the simple idea of quiche, to impressively French technique and ingredients. The Pilaf was nothing more than rice cooked in onions, and of course, butter. It was the perfect counterpart to the melting, flavorful beef and vegetables that had soaked up red wine and herbs for the past four hours. The flavors communicated the design behind the recipe: the fusion of so many flavors into melt-in-your-mouth meat. The souflee followed, the most impressive of everything, with homemade whipped cream on top. Not only were they saturated with delicious chocolate, but they did not collapse!

There are strange expectations that come with preparing such a labor and love infused meal, the moment of enjoyment was more statically climactic than I had expected. Like everything edible, the food came and went. But for all that I put into each dish, I wanted more than just the hour that passed surrounded by exquisite flavors and people I love. The time the food spent in my mouth was not extensive enough to celebrate the process of the meal. But the memories and skills that I learned will remain… and I’ll probably make it again.

The Day Julia Child and I Became One

“Don’t crowd the mushrooms! Otherwise they won’t brown!”

I could here Julie Powell in a scene from the movie Julie and Julia, teaching herself out of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French cooking, as I looked down at the mass of mushrooms on the cutting board, envisioning the sin I was about to commit. I carefully cooked them in small batches, and they browned in no time.

The book is faded and loved, the pages thick with wear but sturdy and informative. My library copy was perched somewhere mess-free like a hymnal on a music stand. It had already taken a heart-stopping fall coming out of the grocery store where I had carefully been scouring for ingredients, saved by the bottom rungs of the cart from falling into a puddle. My worn sticky notes marked the pages of attempt: the oh so famous Boeuf Bourguignon, always declared in a deep boisterous voice (which I did my best to imitate), Artichokes with Hollandaise Sauce, Rice Pilaf, Rockfort Cheese Quiche, and of course, Chocolate Souflee. I far from mastered French Cooking, but wanted to capture Julia, and the essence of her work in my “perfect meal”.

The perfect meal to me includes insight, dedication, care and connection with ingredients and labor, it means seeing every dish from start to finish, communicating a labor of love. I regret not having more time to dedicate to the warmth and wit of her teachings, carefully outlined in each recipe of every kitchen tool and every cooking method.

Procuring ingredients was nothing short of a Grocery Store tour through Kalamazoo: The Park St. Market, Meijer, People’e Food Co-op, Sawall Health Food, and D&W. It turns out artichokes are hard to come by in the middle of winter, and Roquefort Cheese can only be found at D&W. It was overwhelming to traverse through Kalamazoo and realize the scarcity of some of my ingredients during a heavy school week.

Although I tried to channel every aspect of Julia- her charm, her ways and her methods, certain parts of the meal resorted to conventionality as opposed to her manual, old-fashioned impressiveness. I couldn’t help but use the microwave, and desperately lacked ramekin cups for the Chocolate Souflee, so I managed to find a collection of matching school-cafeteria mugs in our eclectic collection of school-provided kitchen supplies. I was nervous about the risk of using the misshapen, tall porcelain for something so testy. But, I conquered a souflee, beautifully, successfully, and without ramekins!

The Hollandaise was for sure the most intense: not an unoccupied second to breathe in the whole recipe, and so many opportunities to blow the whole thing. I was riding on the inspiration of my two sisters, who had successfully made the sauce before. Hollandaise sauce requires consistent, muscled labor: constant whipping for 20 minutes or more. The bulk of it is butter, with egg yolk and flavored with lemon. The idea is to heat the egg yolks, but not cook them, constantly aerating them with a vigorous whisking motion. If you are to stop or slow down, the eggs would scramble or curdle, ruining the sauce. I alternated whisking with one of my housemates, channeling Julia Child’s man biceps and ability to keep up in a male cooking class. I persevered, though, and learned that Hollendaise Sauce is another food myth: “impossible” in perception, but like poached eggs, and seeding pomegranates, if you follow the directions it turns out just fine. This world famous sauce was the reason for four of the four and a half sticks of butter used in the entire meal.

It was not as picture perfect as I had imagined it: I was wearing pearls, but underneath my lumberjack flannel with bunchy corduroys, and the most useful tool in the kitchen ended up being our onion goggles, as onions were used in almost every dish! The cooking was intensive, and time consuming, taking nearly five hours of straight mixing, prepping, baking and warming of finished dishes. The countertops were covered in dirty bowls abandoned in the midst of a time-sensitive step in a recipe. As we were mixing the last of the souflee, my housemates descended upon the kitchen, diligently picking up the slack on dishes that had accumulated. Once the souflee was in the oven, and the artichokes were on the table I was stunned by the resonating stillness of the meal, after constant chaos, it was finally time to eat.

There was much laughter around the table of eight girls, but mostly starvation, with a late dinnertime. The most important ingredient to a fantastic meal is an appetite. The artichokes were a tease for growling stomachs, so little meat with each bite. It was the first time many of my housemates had even seen an artichoke. I gave a classy demo about how to scrape the bottom of the top layer of the leaf off with your teeth. Next came the Bouef, Rice, and Quiche. The rice and quiche were for the vegetarian. The quiche was punchy and strong with flavor, and light like warm cheesecake. Not being a fan of “stinky” cheese myself, I was reluctant about the flavor but loved the idea of the authenticity, and was pleasantly surprised. The Pilaf was nothing more than rice cooked in onions, and of course, butter. It was the perfect counterpart to the melting, flavorful beef and vegetables that had soaked up red wine and herbs for the past four hours. It was more of a stew than I had imagined, and to be honest I wasn’t that impressed with the idea of Beef Stew for dinner, but the flavors communicated the art and skill behind the recipe: the ability to infuse so many flavors into the perfection of good quality meat. The souflee followed, the most impressive of everything, with homemade whipped cream on top. Not only were they saturated with delicious chocolate, but they did not collapse!

There are strange expectations that come with preparing such a labor and love infused meal, the moment of enjoyment was disappointingly anticlimactic. It was surprisingly hard to configure the timing of warming each dish, so many of the courses were lukewarm, a quality which undermines all of the care, and precision with which they were made. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it’s hard to justify 5 hours of work for one hour of enjoyment.