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.