Process Writing

Each main writing assignment was very different for me.  The memoir assignment was something that I thoroughly enjoyed writing, as well as reading everyone else's stories.  This type of writing was by far the kind that came most easily to me, and I found the comments from the readers to be very helpful in my revisions.  The restaurant review was something that really challenged me.  I had to completely re-think how I was writing, as well as who I was writing to.  Even though I feel that I have learned a lot about writing for my audience, I definitely need more work in this area!  After my revisions, I thought I had corrected most of my problems that came up during workshop, but I found that I still needed work on my consistency.  I think I got carried away with my food descriptions!  Something that does come easy for me is the creative descriptions aspect of writing, and it was interesting and challenging to try and balance that with creating a piece that was both enjoyable to read as well as give the reader something more than just well-crafted descriptions.

Something that I really enjoyed was hearing everyone's writing!  Discussing their writing brought up things that I believe helped everyone with their writing, and also helped me to understand how readers interpreted my own writing.  This definitely helped me in developing more of a sense for my audience.  Also, the blogging made me think differently about my writing.  Usually my pieces are simply for myself, and I don't have people look over them or put them on the internet for everyone to see.  Blogging them made me realize that if I do want to write (in any capacity, whether it be journalism, research, or other), I MUST imagine my audience, and make sure my point is clear.

I enjoyed this class a lot, and loved the supportive and creative group of people that we had!

Final Draft: The Perfect Meal

College meals are a late-night greasy pizza and a marathon of Girls.  They are coffee and an all-nighter.  Chocolate and conversation.  When I think of what my perfect meal is, it is a college meal with a touch of sophistication.  This is what I had set out to do. 


I should first clarify that my version of 'sophistication' is equivalent to 'homemade.'  I am a college student, don't judge.  As I am a college student, I also have some awesome research skills, so I looked online and found a recipe for artisan white pizzas.  I LOVE carbs.  I also LOVE chocolate, especially in liquid form, so I decided to make a batch of 'sophisticated' hot chocolate to go with the pizza.  College meals tend to be thrown together without any thought put into them;  I wanted this one to be different- special.  So, a couple days before I wanted to have my meal, I sent out a fancy invitation to my suite-mates (okay, my version of 'fancy' is also equivalent to 'Facebook').  The date was set.  It would be Friday night and because I wanted to preserve the late-night ambiance of typical college meals, we would eat at 1:00am. 

On Friday morning I woke up early ('early' is '9:00am'), and got to work making the crust for the pizzas.  After an hour of flinging flour, mixing ingredients, dropping utensils, and kneading dough, I finally had a nice floured mound of dough that I put in a bowl to rise for the day.  Later in the evening when I came to make the rest of the meal the dough ball had doubled in size and the residence hall kitchen smelled like warm yeast. I went to work on preparing the pizzas and hot chocolate.

At 12:37am on Friday night, my phone timer went off, indicating that my small white cheese pizzas were ready to come out of the oven.  I opened the it and a fresh wave of roasted garlic, crushed red pepper, and perfectly-baked (if I may say so myself) homemade pizza dough.  It was some of the best dough I have ever made.  I placed the hot mini-pizzas on some paper towel and took the boiling hot chocolate off of the stovetop, which I had added a pinch of cayenne pepper to in order to give it the slightest kick. 

I haphazardly carried all of my ingredients plus my final product from the basement all the way to the third floor.  After nearly dropping everything down the stairs on not one but two occasions, I arrived to my room sweating and tired.  I went to work setting out plates and cups, lighting a few candles, and putting the food in the middle of our tiny dorm-room table.   

Emma came out of her room yelling, "FEED US WE'RE STARVING!"
Natalie followed jumping up and down, and Suyeon perched on one of the chairs looking at the food in awe, "It's beautiful, honey!" 

We were all settled around the small table, looking greedily at the garlic- and red pepper- infused pizza dough topped with Spartan- brand mozzarella and a pre-shredded blend of Italian Cheeses.  I poured everyone a cup of the hot chocolate and we waited for our last guest to creep from the confines of her room.  "SARAH!!!" Emma yelled.  She has always been good at being loud and persistent.

There was a stifled yell from behind Sarah's door, "I have to finish this assignment!"  Knowing her, it probably wasn't even due for another couple of days, so I got up and dragged her to our dinner.   Once she smelled it she seemed a lot more willing to take a break and eat with us.

I sat down and told everyone to start eating.  Everyone dug in, moans of delight mixing with clinging of glasses.  I took my first bite of the pizza, and indeed it was delicious!  The hot chocolate was a little overbearing, the kick of the cayenne pepper searing the back of the throat rather than giving it a smooth burn; the pot of hot chocolate went untouched for the rest of the night, but at least everyone tried it. 

I looked around at my suite-mates.  Everyone who had been with me through the ups and downs of this past year was here with me, mouths full of food that I had prepared especially for them.  The concept wasn't anything special-- it was cheese pizza and hot chocolate, a typical college meal.  The difference was in the preparation and in the intention.  I had wanted this meal to be about the defining aspect of college meals-- the people that you eat them with.  The pizzas reminded us of every other night we had spontaneously decided to order pizza after a long week of work and school; the hot chocolate brought back all the times that our conversations started with relationship advice and ended with life aspirations.  This touch of 'sophistication' brought back all of our memories together.

The Perfectly Imperfect Meal

“Cook the perfect meal.”  Wait, what?  When first venturing into this assignment, I was a little overwhelmed!  My mind raced through freshly pressed apple cider, hot goat cheese from Mattawan Artisan Creamery bubbling on a stretch of homemade dough smothered in garlic and marinara sauce made from ripened tomatoes picked from a small garden.  As for people, I wanted everyone to come!  I wanted a group of 25 people gathered around on a patch of green lawn, a red- and white- checkered blanket in our center displaying enough fragrant and home-cooked food to go around. 

What I described above did not happen.

Instead I took a hint from Michael Pollan and allowed for some mistakes.  As much as I wanted apple cider that had been pressed only hours before, I had to acknowledge that it is springtime and pressing apple cider is an activity to be done in the fall.  So instead I made hot chocolate.  With non-organic or local milk.  With highly processed not good-quality chocolate chips.  I had also wanted cheese from the Food Co-op, but seeing as I had little time and I have no car, I did not make it to the Co-op and had to settle for Spartan-brand mozzarella and a package of shredded cheese boasting Authentic 5-Cheese Italian Blend.  Now for the people.  As much as I wanted to share a meal with many people, I was not about to cook all of that food.  So I invited the people who have been with me since the beginning—my suitemates. 

After all of these modifications, here is what I got.

At 12:03am on Friday night, my phone timer went off, indicating that my small white cheese pizzas were ready to come out of the oven.  Throughout my cooking session, various residents of Crissey Residence Hall came into the kitchen exclaiming how good the food smelled.  I opened the oven and a fresh wave of roasted garlic, crushed red pepper, and perfectly-baked (if I may say so myself) homemade pizza dough.  I had gotten up early that morning to prepare it and let it rise all day.  It was some of the best dough I have ever made.  I placed the hot mini-pizzas on some paper towel and took the boiling hot chocolate off of the stovetop, which I had added a pinch of cayenne pepper to in order to give it the slightest kick. 

I haphazardly carried all of my ingredients plus my final product from the basement all the way to the third floor.  After nearly dropping everything down the stairs on not one but two occasions, I arrived to my room sweating and tired.  I went to work setting out plates and cups, lighting a few candles, and putting the food in the middle of our tiny dorm-room table.  There were five of us total.  We gathered around the table and I described what we were about to eat. 

I LOVE carbs.  I also LOVE chocolate.  Add those together, plus five college students late at night, and you get my version of the perfect meal.  The hot chocolate was made with milk, chocolate chips, cinnamon, and a little cayenne pepper.  Actually a lot of cayenne pepper—there were some complaints about it being too spicy.  The white cheese pizzas I made by drizzling an olive oil, garlic, and red pepper mixture to each pizza, topping it with mozzarella and the Authentic 5- Cheese Italian Blend, and adding a little lemon juice on top.

The meal was so much better than my initial vision of a group of people singing Kumbaya and eating a plethora of locally- raised and organic food.  I mean, it would have been nice, but it wouldn’t have been my perfect meal.  Actually, many of the sacrifices I had to make didn’t even matter when it came down to sharing an awesome meal with some truly awesome friends.

The point I am trying to make here is that I had to narrow my focus.  Was it really important for me to have a lot of people, or to have an intimate gathering with people who would truly appreciate and honor the food I presented?  Did I want to have the creamy, sizzling goat cheese from Mattawan Creamery?  Ok, yes of course I did, but was it more important for me to have the goat cheese or to spend more time preparing homemade dough that would taste like it came right out of a brick oven in the heart of a small Italian restaurant—and let me tell you, IT DID. 

Omnivore's Dilemma: Part III

The third part of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma was by far my favorite part of this book.  It incorporated all of his research and Pollan also applied it to himself.  On page 327, Pollan asks, "Are these good enough reasons to give up my vegetarianism?  Can I in good conscience eat a happy and sustainable raised chicken?"  This brings up a good point for my own vegetarianism, and the health benefits that I see it inflecting on my body.  I have read countless articles about red meat and its effect on the heart and arteries, but all of these have been in the context of just how much meat U.S. Americans eat!  If eating red meat on the daily, and at times more than once a day, of course there will be side effects.  Add to that the antibiotics and whatever else is added to our industrial meat and you add a whole new danger factor!  But it is not only the meat industry that has had negative effects on people's bodies, but there have also been countless accounts of salmonella in spinach and a whole slew of non-meat related food scares.  This is not a question of industrial meat, but of all processed and packaged foods.  If I am a vegetarian because I do not feel safe consuming industrial meat, then what about packaged spinach and highly processed foods?  Pollan makes a great point when debating the morality of eating meat - "What's wrong with eating animals is the practice, not the principle" (328).  In other words, if an animal is raised to not suffer and is killed swiftly and humanely, is there something morally wrong with it? 

In the last section of this part, entitled The Perfect Meal, Pollan gathers fungi and vegetables and hunts himself a wild boar.  Everything at his meal he has produced/gathered himself (with the exception of things he uses that are already in the pantry), and he cooks the meal himself.  The meal is something out of a dream to me.  To go to all of that work and to produce something so tasty and from my view wholesome is something that I would like to do all the time.  But in reality this is not realistic, and also not an end-all solution to our bigger food-related problems.  Pollan states that "this is not the way I want to eat every day. I like to be able to open a can of stock ... But imagine for a moment if we once again knew, strictly as a matter of course, these few unremarkable things: What it is we're eating.  Where it cam from.  How it found its way to our table.  And what, in true accounting, it really cost" (411).  He brings it all back to the process.  The way in which we think about food and how we go about producing and consuming it is paramount to a revolutionizing of the American food industry. 

Rustica Review: Part III

When I first decided to conduct my food review at Kalamazoo’s Rustica, I was a little overwhelmed.  I had imagined very fancy attire being needed to go along with fancy dishes.  The truth is, though, when I first walked in, while it was very crowded and a little cramped, the atmosphere felt more familial to me, like this was a place for both fancy dinner occasions as well as comfortable enough to bring one’s family (maybe older children) to.  It is a place that is expected to have delectable food, but the only requirement of the customers is to have a good time.  I saw no one in a black dress, as I stated was an expectation of mine, and there were many ties but also come t-shirts thrown in.  It was daunting before I entered but after dining there, I felt very comfortable and well taken care of! 

In regards to its “authenticity” I am not fully sure as to what it was trying to accomplish.  Its sign states “Rustic European Cuisine,” but even with that I am not sure what it meant.  Europe is a broad category.  I am left with many questions.  Where is the roasted duck supposed to be from? What about the bone marrow?  The asparagus? I really am not sure!  Then again, the restaurant’s ambiguity may be helpful when it comes to issues of authenticity.  It does not say, for example, “Rustic Italian Cuisine,” in which case I would expect more pasta, sausages, and pizza.  In a way, Rustica’s promise of “Rustic European Cuisine” allows us not to dwell on the restaurant’s authenticity, but on the quality of its food. 

From this experience, I will take with me the reminder that food is an experience, and while there are many restaurants that boast “authenticity,” the only way to really get it is to visit the place of origin, which is convenient because I will be able to do just this when I go to Costa Rica in September!  I will also take with me a sense of openness with the food, as well as the curiosity of the food traditions in which the dishes I experience have come from.

Omnivore's Dilemma: Part II

In chapter 10 in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was struck by the simplicity of grass farming, and furthermore the huge turnout that simplicity supplies.  Pollan describes this simplicity, stating that “grass farmers grow animals—for meat, eggs, milk, and wool—but regard them as part of a food chain in which grass is the keystone species, the nexus between the solar energy that powers every food chain and the animals we eat” (Pollan 188).  The work of a grass farmer like Joel Stalin is to bring the food system back to its natural state.  The way in which Pollan describes Stalin’s farm and how Stalin views his work, saying that “to be accurate,… we should call ourselves sun farmers.  The grass is just the way we capitalize the solar energy” (188), is reminiscent of my sophomore high school biology class.  Everything starts with the sun; a percentage of energy from solar rays is converted through photosynthesis, then an animal (say a cow) eats it, and a lesser amount of that energy is transferred to the cow, and when humans eat it, an even lesser amount of energy is transferred from the cow to the human.  It’s pretty basic, and Stalin along with his other grass farmer friends are utilizing the simple and efficient transfer of energy as they farm.  But, when we add petroleum to the mix, it becomes less efficient, and when we add other energy costs that come from industrial farming, it becomes even more inefficient.  Allan Nation describes this problem nicely, saying that “all other methods of harvest and transfer require higher capital and petroleum energy inputs and these necessarily lower the return to the farmer/rancher” (188).  But it is hard to keep it simple, and requires a lot of organization and nuanced information on Stalin’s part. 

Pollan goes on to describe the cow’s grazing patterns, and how the “native grasses evolved to thrive under precisely such grazing patterns; indeed, they depend on them for their reproductive success” (193).  The process is called management-intensive grazing, and involves the herd of cows (around 80 or so) munching on a patch of grass for a day, then moving on to a new patch the next day, then another new one the day after that, and so on.  Stalin makes sure that each patch of grass has had time to recover, and his cows eat it at exactly the proper time, and their manure will help to fertilize it after they leave the following day.  I need to say here that this seems crazy to me.  I have looked into the industrial food system, as has Pollan (and to a much deeper extent than I have, I might add) and have always been struck by just how much is going on, where things are coming from and arriving to, and how it all keeps going without completely caving in on itself (however, this day may soon come…).  But Pollan describes Stalin’s Polyface Farm, and I get it.  It all makes complete sense to me, and it is sustainable.  There is a lot going on under the surface, as Pollan describes, but it is a naturally-occurring system, and it is so cool!  Take this and compare it to the CAFOs and dried-out grazing lands of industrial farming.  Stalin’s farm is sustainable and beautiful and simple.

Rustica: Final Draft

The pristine white plate holds a brownie, its dark and rich body crumbling like nutrient-dense earth crumbles from well-worn hands.  A thick blanket of glistening chocolate ganache drapes over its top while a scoop of Palazzolo’s chocolate gelato settles against its side, melting slightly in the wake of the brownie’s warm center.  Whole hazelnuts dot the dessert, little white beads of subtle crunch complementing the backdrop of intense chocolate.  

The Callebaut Chocolate Brownie takes up the same space that a regular sized stapler would occupy on a desk, but at Rustica, the size of a meal reveals nothing of its quality.  Situated on Kalamazoo Mall, only a 15 minute walk from Kalamazoo College’s campus, you will find the small yet oh-so-satisfying restaurant, Rustica.  The concept of “Rustic European Cuisine” is at the forefront of its theme, as is its use of locally-sourced foods.  When looking at its simple menu, in the top right corner you will see the many establishments and businesses that Rustica proudly supports.  These include venues such as Otto’s Poultry, MacKenzies’ Bakery, and Mattawan Artisan Creamery, to name a few.  Further down on the menu are the food options with a short description of each meal under it.  Simplicity seems to be an important part of Rustica’s mission… until entering the restaurant.  Upon first entrance there is an overwhelming amount of tables and the dim lighting and loudness of the place only adds to a slightly chaotic feeling.

Most tables are prepared to cater to groups of four, but scattered sparsely among the crowded white-clothed, candlelit sea are a couple tables with room for up to six people.  Every seat is occupied.  Guests are chatting and smiling over glasses of French Pinot Noir, 2008 Spanish Monastrell, and Michigan’s own Wyncroft Riesling.  Conversations smash into each other and collect in the extra space of the high ceiling, giving the cramped area at least a little breathing room.  Servers wearing clean black shirts and dress pants with white towels draped over their forearms skillfully maneuver the jumble of tables to take food orders consisting of Roasted Bone Marrow complemented with olive tapenade, house jam, and grilled bread; Braised Lamb Shank served with Swiss chard gratin and roasted artichoke; and Pan-Roasted Michigan Chicken flanked by seasonal mashed potatoes and sautéed greens, complete with roasted garlic jus.

After a moderate amount of time, the food arrives via a black-laden stealthy server, who enthusiastically clears up all confusion of word meanings on the menu.  The starter is a small nest of grilled asparagus sprinkled with olive oil and fines herbes, topped with a poached egg nestled delicately in its center.  The asparagus has a robust earthy aroma that tastes like sun-baked garden, the fines herbes adding the slightest deviation of flavor to keep it interesting.  The yolk of the poached egg spills over the shoots of asparagus to create a mouth-watering dish that brings images of free-range chickens, fields of sunflowers, and a well-fed sweaty farmer to mind.

Next is the Baked Seafood Tagliatelle.  Its smell is slightly overpowering, the shrimp and parmigiano reggiano combining to create a very distinct, if not somewhat unpleasant odor, somewhere in between the muted smell of warm milk and an aquarium.  The flat noodles wind around five sweating bulging shrimp while the scallops and leeks take on a less ostentatious role, hiding under the layer of slightly crisped noodles and baked cheese.  The first few bites prove difficult, as the top layer of noodles have been hardened and are stubbornly sticking together.  The initial smell is not too hard to get over with the juicy, just-caught-this-morning taste of the steaming shrimp.  The scallops reveal themselves steadily throughout the dish, tasting of ocean breeze.  Halfway through the meal, the juices of the shrimp, scallops, leeks, and endive are discovered all congregating together near the bottom of the bowl.  It would have been nice to have these juices more evenly distributed throughout the dish, as they would have made the noodles stick together less.  Consistency is always appreciated, but the Tagliatelle needs a little more work in this department.

Then there is the Callebaut Chocolate Brownie.  This is the confectionary excellence of the brownie world.  The first bite is absolute bliss.  It is rich and not too sweet; the flavor of the cocoa beans used in it has tones of wood and dried fruit.  It is perfectly bitter, bringing out the subtle hints of roasted nuts; the aftertaste continues to intrigue and delight the taste buds long after.  It is wholesome.  The accompanying gelato comes from the Kalamazoo local Artisan shop Palazzolo’s Gelato, its creamy deep chocolate flavor adding the perfect amount of sweetness to the bitter notes of the brownie.  It has the power to render any restaurant-goer speechless and moaning in sheer chocolaty hazelnut ecstasy.

Wholesome and utterly satisfying food is something that Rustica strives to bring to the table, and it succeeds.  The service is exemplary, the food even more so (however be careful of the noodle dishes; when in doubt just order the brownie).  While the space is a bit cramped, the overall atmosphere has a feeling of closeness rather than crowded, and the tight seating adds to the restaurant’s warm and welcoming demeanor.  If getting an appetizer, entree, dessert, and a glass (or a few glasses) of wine, expect to pay anywhere from $55 to $70 for the evening.  However, if sharing with other guests, one can leave without paying more that $40 total.  The importance of locally sourced food is at the forefront of Rustica’s dining experience, and the wholesome ingredients used in its dishes make for happy taste buds, good conversation, and full stomachs.