5 Food Journal Entries, Essay Example

According to my busy schedule, I have been running around everywhere. Between my studies and my work, things have certainly been extremely hectic. There still has not been enough time to make any significant alterations to my general food practices. What I have eaten in the past week was mainly fast food from various chain restaurants alongside some frozen meals. However, I did manage to take some time out on Sunday afternoon and prepare a nice spaghetti Bolognese. I found a classic Italian recipe on the Internet, which incorporates mushrooms into the Bolognese sauce. I cooked up the meal in a sizeable quantity for multiple portions. I was quite satisfied with how my cooking turned out. I applied some freshly ground Parmesan cheese on the meal and it melted flawlessly into the steaming pasta and sauce. One of the best meals I have cooked in a long time!

There was also an interesting documentary on television about the traditional Arabic cuisine of desert nomads. One of the most intriguing moments in the documentary was when they showed how the nomads cook a piece of spiced meat. They cooked it in a makeshift oven that was basically a man-made pit dug in the ground. The pit is covered during the cooking process and is opened after a few hours. The meal looked delicious! It is remarkable to think about the ingenuity of how people react to their natural environmental surroundings, and the depth and wealth of traditional practices.

The reading for this week »Re-Storing America’s Food Deserts« provided some valuable information about the American industrialization of food and food capital. The point about the diversification of supermarkets in terms of the services they offer can be understood in two ways. On the one hand, it indicates a desire by the food industry to provide a multi-faceted service to its customers, with a wide arrangement of services and foods offered. On the other hand, it seems to indicate the monopoly of different services by supermarkets. What about going to a local bakery, for example, if you need bread? Or a Polish butcher shop if you want some authentic klobasa? This led me to think about some further lines of research that could be examined, such as the relationship between capitalism and food. How does the basic capitalist model alter food practices? What are its pros and cons? As the article notes, there is a crucial relation between economics and the food sector. Economics certainly shapes possibilities in food purchase and eating habits. This definitely was reflected in my eating habits this week, which ran the usual gauntlet of Taco Bell, McDonalds, Burger King, etc.,. I realized that these are not entirely personal choices in my food habits, but are reflections of a greater economic and systematic effect on individuals.

The highlight of my week in food was the opportunity to attend a nice Macedonian restaurant with some friends. The waiter said that Macedonian cuisine is mainly related to Yugoslavian and South Slavic cuisine, with a noticeable Greek influence. We ordered chevapi, which are small sausages made from a combination of pork and beef. Apparently, the Muslim countries in Yugoslavia, such as Bosnia make their chevapi without pork meat because of Islamic tradition. Alongside the chevapi was lepinja, which is a special type of bread. It reminds me of some Turkish bread that I had in the past. This was accompanied with kaymak and ayvar. Kaymak is a dairy product, a cross between cheese and perhaps some type of sour cream and butter. It was delicious and fit perfectly with the chevapi and lepinja. The ayvar was a little too spicy for me – it is largely made of peppers and garlic.  It was a great experience to try some new foods. It made me think about the tremendous amount of selection that world cuisine offers. Certainly, one of life’s pleasures can be considered trying new foods – especially if they were as delicious as this meal!

The reading presented this week, »The Most Dangerous Job«, gave a vivid and somewhat disturbing picture of the slaughterhouse. It makes one think not only about the greater industrialization of our food, but of some ethical issues such as the treatment of animals. Certainly, in the past the consumption of meat was commonplace. However, the way meat is prepared in the modern time for mass consumption seems crueler. I guess this is what is meant by the term »factory farming.« The description of the various tools used in the slaughterhouse sounded like a horror movie! No less disturbing was the description of the cleanup at the end of the day. The line from the reading »a mess of monumental proportions« still sticks in my mind. The sheer quantity of animals that were killed in a single day could lead anyone to become a vegetarian! This was definitely a reading that makes one reflect on food issues.

The general absence of time this week led me to once again return to that American staple, the fast food restaurant. Everyone talks about the negatives of fast food – I myself have, in past journal entries – however, to be objective there are some positives. For example, the cost of fast food is generally very cheap. Of course, this has one major negative effect: This is a reason why the working poor are drawn to fast food, and also why there is such a deep weight problem. This led me to think about Michael Polian’s book “The Omnivore Dilemma”, in which he discusses the wide variety of options that are available to modern, Western consumers. However, perhaps this dilemma, in light of the economic crisis of the last few years is overstated. For those on a tight budget, there are fewer options available than ever. And the options that are available are unhealthy. This reminds me of a program of Jamie Oliver, where he mentioned that obesity and low economic status are connected. This ties into another positive of fast food – the time factor, which I have previously mentioned. For those who are very busy and without time, fast food provides a solution to fill your stomach. And those people who have to work long hours can also be of low economic status. Could this be a new front in the class war – food?  Did Marx ever talk about food?