JLoeats.com

Will all the FOODIES in the house please stand up, please stand up…?

Flashback almost two years ago, in a similar styled financial district apt cutely dressed in attempt to draw in some comfort and separation between the crazy world that is outside of that window – aka, Manhattan, Post Grad (what a time! what a transition!), and me on my cell phone in desperation and complete clusterfuck of emotions, with a good friend*

“is this Industry really for me? i don’t know! was i too quick to throw away my theater path?  i’m terrified and i couldn’t wait to get out of there faster than a bullet train, except, i was crying the whole time whilst on it, imaging my misery if i was to spend my thanksgiving and xmas working there.  was it worth it to give up all my holidays and sacrifice for something i have a choice in choosing to claim as my new identity?  Do i love it that much? Of course it was useless trying to conceal my tears on a crowded 2 Train on a Saturday night, still wearing my stinky uniform smelling like a burger and people dressed to the nines to go out … but i looooove food.  Culinary school is so much fun, it’s HARD as heck, i’ve never worked so hard in my life, but i’m not so sure i love working in a restaurant as much as i love eating at one…”

“yea i know it’s been hard for you, ask your chefs instructors for advice…don’t right it off yet, it was just one night. talk to people in your industry… find another kitchen, try something else, who knows!”

“yea it’s just so crazy that some people were born to do this, like they knew, when they were 13, that they would be working in a restaurant, that they want to own one, that they claim to be CHEFS right off the bat, i’m not sure if i just like that title, or if i really love what i do.”

“well, honey, if there’s one thing you’ve figured out in the past 6 months, is the fact that you are definitely a FOODIE. all that other stuff, you’ll figure out later…”

It’s now ‘later’.

About a year and a half later, wiser, once again post grad, culinary grad, with a beautiful teaser of what it would be like to be a food stylist, a cook, a stage, a food blogger,

To present day, i am student again.  i come out bewildered, exhausted, and overwhelmed from my 6:45 pm food systems agriculture class on a tuesday night, after a year in between culinary school and a whole lotta soul searching, all the heartache, home, and 4 months of pounding out some expeirence in a super high volume restaurant in Toronto included.  and after deciding that immigration laws are no longer going to drive my decisions about my life, they are only a factor of my ’situations’ that i need to solve, i will now let my dreams lead me.

I’m back in New York. and the stench of this city only reminds me of how nitty gritty and grimy working for your dreams can be when you’re still stuck and lost at the bottom of your mountain to sort through.

My fellow collegue comes out of the same class, flustered and completely frustrated asking me,

“Do you also find that class completely irrelevant? i mean how does all this theorizing and hating the system of industrialization and capitalism relate to me in a PRACTICAL way??? How is a free formed discuss of jaded second years hating the world going to help me as a food scholar when the rest of the time is spend regurgitation the thousands pages read of historical readings we had to do in prep for it!!! i mean, prof has so much knowledge about the history of Agriculture in America, but there has to be a better way of teaching this at the graduate level, what am i paying all these big bucks for?”

Amazed and a bit guilty for hating on the system weeks before myself, (pretty much since this program started) — “I too have been having trouble grounding myself to a particular focal point in which i can devote all my time and energy into “fixing” or working towards change for the greater good that relates to everything we’re been doing”

Honestly, i’ve spent the last three or four weeks of school extremely overwhelmed, frustrated, and desperately searching for something to grab onto myself, that gives me some sort of clue as to where i fit into the picture, of where my role comes into play for this cultural revolution we are having with food and how food gets from the dirt to our plate and then how waste is treated.

Into this system, this industry, this food world that i had dipped my feet into on the other spectrum a mere two years ago. from cooking for one or two in college, to privately cooking for four with private lessons, for a dragonboat team or theater group of 40, to cooking for 500 in a restaurant,

From working with media in food styling, to testing recipes in a test kitchen, to writing about what i eat or don’t eat, to trying to take pictures of what i do eat.

From loosing my appetite from heartbreak, to limiting my diet or including foods i’ve never seen before for health and wellness,

From studying food policies in effect for the hunger and overfeeding of cheap calories, to actually feeding the hungry in a soup kitchen and seeing these policies in effect and all the issues around it,

From traveling and eating from different parts of the globe, tasting culture, ‘organic’ and sustainable practices in a soup spoon, to over eating and getting fat from calories and non nutrition,

From storytelling with food to storytelling about food.  Aghh finally a point of departure in a language i’m used to hearing :)

I found that when i came out of my Research Method’s class on Monday night, i had finally understood what qualitative research meant, and what my role is as a grad student.  Why i embarked on this journey had been a fuzzy intention, other than the fact that i needed more time, to discover what i wanted to do with all of this passion, love and knowledge for food that i have.  And in the most lyrical and poetic voice i had ever imagined hearing in grad school (everyone else just seems so serious all the time)

“Your job as a researcher, as a food scholar is to take someone’s story, find the most saturated picture possible, and re-tell it, accepting your role and given perspectives and biases as yourself, as a passionate human being talking about food, and hopefully find something new to say about the subject.”

“You must therefore be open to the fact that all you have are questions, questions that you want to find the story to. it differs in quantitative in that you’re not out to prove anything, only that a story exists, and hence a different perspective on your chosen topic exists…and since this is an emerging field, go all out. There is so much out there that needs to be discovered!”

Finally. Inspiration. in it’s purest artist form. something i have been hungry for this entire time. because the more i study food, the more i realize it is in every aspect of our lives, it is weaved throughout our life’s tapestry, and that we can never escape talking about the human experience without including the factor of survival that is food.

So where do i fit into this entire food chain so to speak, the whole idea, that we are all connected through food, like a chain, whether it is visible or not? Be the story teller that you were trained to do, search for the story, the culture, the animation, the passion, that exists in food… that is your mission, at least for the next two years,

and everything else, well, my deer grasshopper,

you’ll just figure that out later*

xoxo

-J