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Each member of my family eats a different dinner at a different time. This is how it has been since I was old enough to use an oven on my own at 12. I was oblivious to how families spent mealtimes together. The way we ate was practical. With our conflicting busy schedules, different tastes and preferences I just can’t imagine how we could have all eaten the same thing at the same time. So we ate separately.

When I was 14, everything about my parents’ eating routines bothered me. My father, when told at age 40 that he was irresponsibly overweight and his heart in poor health, immediately and fully committed to a vegan lifestyle. He still eats one meal a day around 4:30 PM. Before 4:30, all he consumes is coffee. Two or three large lattes with soy milk (not almond and definitely not oat or coconut) in a mug, not a paper cup, while he works. My mother begins every single day by making coffee with her prized possession, a Keurig machine, which requires no time and even less work to brew a cup of coffee.

When I was younger, I knew my parents’ food-related preferences, quirks, and schedules by heart and questioned them. Why were they so dedicated to their identical cup of coffee every single morning? If they were so committed to their coffee schedules, why couldn’t they commit to eating with their children like every other family? I grew resentful of my parents. I felt as though they were depriving me of something, although I wasn’t quite sure what. Normalcy? Food? Love?

I was proud to be less picky than my parents.

I started drinking coffee when I was 16, in order to show the coffee drinkers at school that I was one of them. Gradually, I grew to like the taste. As I got older, I started to care less about my lack of a family mealtime, though I still rolled my eyes when my dad would complain when there wasn’t soy milk at a coffee shop or when my mom refused to use a coffee machine other than her Keurig. For the rest of high school, I drank one or more cups of coffee a day, with any type of milk and from any type of bean or coffee maker. I was proud to be less picky than my parents.

When I was 18, I decided to go to college across the country in New York City. When I moved, my dad came along to help, even though I insisted I could do it on my own. I have always prided myself on my emotional resilience, so I was shocked to find that the beginning of college was hard for me. Once I had moved into the dorms, something inside of me changed, and I found myself terrified, and, alas, crying. My dad was surprised by my reaction, but had an idea for what to do.

Every morning for my first week of college, in accordance with his routine, my father sat at The Bean on the corner of Ninth and First, drinking his soy latte, responding to emails, reading, and working from 7 AM until 10 AM. On my move-in day, he gently suggested that I leave my dorm early and join him for coffee the next morning. He said it could be for five minutes or an hour, whatever felt right. Initially, I was skeptical, but he kept repeating that if I changed my mind, I could find him at The Bean, seated across from an empty chair.

The next day, I woke up early and quietly got out of bed. I made the short trek and as promised, my dad was sitting at a corner table, across from an empty chair. I bought a small black hot coffee with room for milk and sat with him for 10 minutes. I told him about the painter I had befriended at my first hall meeting; I complained about the weather; I asked his opinion on my outfit; and we discussed our thoughts on A Ghost Story, a film we had both just seen and liked very much. It was pleasant and casual and not at all like I had just moved across the country, afraid and uncertain of the future. So I found myself at that exact coffee shop at that exact time for the entirety of his stay in the city.

They loved their coffee the way they did because they loved the routine.

My parents’ strange behavior became unambiguous to me. They loved their coffee the way they did because they loved the routine. They loved the schedule. They loved the dependability. I, too, had developed a habit of drinking coffee each day, and without realizing, was drinking it for the same reasons as my parents. Once I understood that dependence on coffee was something we all shared – not a dependence on the caffeine or the sugar, but on the habit – I understood coffee as something that could bring us closer, that could give us what I always thought we lacked without a family mealtime.

Now, my mom and I bond over a shared dream of one day upgrading to a Nespresso machine. We buy each other silly and sentimental mugs. When I am home in California, in the early hours of the morning, we make ourselves coffee and read her stack of cooking magazines, ogling the recipes we will never make. When my dad leaves the house for his lattes, I tag along without uttering a single complaint when he refuses to try a coffee shop that does not have soy milk. And in New York, every morning, on my way to class, I stop at The Bean for a small black coffee with room for milk. It‘s The Bean on the corner of Twelfth and Broadway, but it gets the job done, because it always tastes the same.


Lily Majteles is a writer and filmmaker living in New York City. She is a student at The New School’s Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts.

Featured image via MaxPixel.

Online Dating Profile

We probably won’t like each other much
There probably won’t be a spark
Or we will like each other
Just enough to wound each other now
Leave each other later
Anyway I stand in front of the fridge
And eat pickle relish from the jar
With a spoon or just
My finger
And for dessert
Peanut butter from the jar
Definitely just my finger
This is my two-course morning
In the glow of the open refrigerator
Eyes cruddy with mascara and liner
Not having bothered to wash my face
Before bed
Maybe your days alone are messy
Maybe there will be a spark
Two fingers in the same jar
Some messy union
But some of us are better
Off alone
Oh please
Write me just
Touch me anyway

 

Unknown

 

Wende Crow lives in Atlanta, where she teaches computer literacy to refugees . Her poems and essays have appeared in New Haven ReviewPloughshares, The Bakery, and other journals.

We are proud to introduce a new feature: The Inquisitive Eater Poet of the Month.  Each month a contemporary poet will present three poems and one personal essay in which food is consumed, passed over, or reckoned with.  Please welcome our inaugural poet for the month of October, Wende Crow.

by Brad Jones

As a theoretical concept, craft has long been associated with the production of utilitarian objects with domestic intent (Metcalf 1993). Furniture, textiles, pottery, and metalwork are all frequently classified as such. But despite being innately utilitarian and implicitly domestic, food is rarely designated as such. What then makes “craft” and “artisanal” foods artisanal?[1] Is it the small-batch mode of production, the hands-on approach of passionate people, the respect for the raw material, or the mentality of its making? Is it some combination of all the above.

Moreover, what makes the artisanal approach to food particularly attractive to the producers themselves? Why are well educated individuals leaving careers in high-paying and well-respected industries to become manual laborers? Who is taking part in this movement and who stands to benefit from its success? How does craft production propose itself to be more than an anachronistic way of thinking and doing?[2]

In an attempt to answer some of these questions, I turn the microscope on a Somerville MA based culinary incubator. Kitchen Inc. serves as a hub of culinary craftsmanship and offers itself as a convenient and transparent window into the world of artisanal food production.  Because craft production is often (although not necessarily) small scale, and small business start-up costs are high, nascent producers of artisanal comestibles have faced significant barriers.

One means of successfully navigating these barriers has been through the development of locally based incubator kitchens: organizations that provide an important economic buttress by reducing upfront capital costs associated with owning property and buying equipment. In addition, they often offer support services such as entrepreneurial classes as well as assistance in getting the certifications necessary to produce food intended for sale.  Perhaps most importantly however, I argue that these incubators act as a supportive community space in which individuals can network, socialize, share ideas, and quite literally collaborate.

This article is discusses two of the five culinary entrepreneurs operating out of Kitchen Inc., Black Magic Coffee and Union Square Donuts. These businesses offer a spectrum of artisanship: a barista with a hand-crafted mobile coffee cart who sources their product exclusively from small batch roasters, and a chef-instructor who makes handmade gourmet donuts. I argue that Kitchen Inc has simultaneously helped to reinvigorate the local community and has provided a breeding ground for engaged, passionate, and community focused culinary craftsman and entrepreneurs.
Black Magic

Black Magic Coffee is one of the most recent additions to the Kitchen Inc. family. David, the owner and operator, has created a small café on wheels. He drives this mobile coffee cart to catered events and to public markets and pulls espresso beverages for a “more discerning” audience. David is a former occupational therapist who says he took an interest the art of making coffee a few years after his wife bought him a small home espresso machine. He decided to follow his passion into the industry, took a managerial position at a local café, and began perfecting his craft. However, it wasn’t until he was laid off from that job that he decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.

It quickly becomes clear that David’s appreciation for the quality and variability of raw materials is an essential element of his craft. In Cheese Chronicles, Liz Thorpe notes that “Artisan cheesemakers change their recipe, and their cheesemaking technique, to accommodate the shifting fluid medium that is milk. Commodity cheesemakers take all possible steps to forcibly create a consistent fluid medium that can be made into a consistent final product, without modifying their approach” (Thorpe 2009; 135).

The characteristics and quality of raw milk changes from season to season, even from day to day. It is the relationship the cheesemaker has with this variability that Thorpe suggests distinguishes the artisan from the producer of commodity cheese. If we are to accept Thorpe’s definition, an artisanal product expresses variability rather than standardizes it; artisans work with their mediums rather than against them. David discussed his own artisanal approach as, “experimental by nature. [Coffee] tastes differently every day that goes by and is prepared differently. Even a shot of espresso is different, different temperatures, different doses. It’s highly experimental. You have to be open to that. You can’t be a rigid person and work in coffee. You have to be open to variability. That’s coffee. It changes, it’s a seasonal product. You have to learn to work with it.”

I’m not sure that even David was aware, in his discussion of coffee, just how profoundly his comments articulated the concept of craft production. David Pye, a former professor at the Royal College of Art in London, makes a case that the distinction between craft and commodity production lies in workmanship—whether the production is an expression of a “workmanship of risk” or a “workmanship of certainty.” Pye claims that craftsmanship simply means, “workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity, and care which the maker exercises as he works” (Adamson 2010, 342). David would most certainly agree. But he would include raw material in the equation of workmanship as well. A barista and by extension an espresso drink, is only as good as the materials he works with. “You can make bad coffee out of really good beans,” he says, “but you can never make really good coffee out of bad ones.”

The raw materials are important for practical but also social dimensions. Certain roasteries are better not just because their beans taste better but because David has built personal relationships with the roasters themselves. He not only sources from various small-batch roasters throughout the country whom he considers to be doing the most interesting things with raw coffee, but also those with whom he shares a reciprocal personal interest.

In many ways it seems, the variables that primarily determine product worth based on the logic of rational neoliberalism (cost, quantity, profit, convenience) are being forgone for more sentimental aspects such as affection, social relationships, and moral certitude (Guthman 2008). Although culinary craftsman are making tangible objects with utilitarian intents, they are at the same time crafting community, nurturing relationships, and encouraging collective sensibilities.  The physical objects themselves are less a marker of Bourdieuian social status and more a vital component of a Maussian gift economy.

David’s coffee cart then provides insight into an affective component of the artisanal economy.[3] It’s not coincidental that the cart allows David to interact directly with his consumers. This interaction is a vital component of what makes his position of production rewarding. David noted, “I wouldn’t enjoy it if there wasn’t any human interaction. That would be a real loss, and it wouldn’t be of any interest to me.”

The romantic image of reclusive craftsmen quietly laboring in their shops, contently whistling while they work, must be replaced with a new narrative of sociability and the creation of personal relationships and affective ties. David is proud to offer his espresso beverages to appreciative clientele. Without that dialogue, both verbal and sentimental, it would neither be rewarding nor sustainable work.

Modern Homemade/Union Sq. Donuts

Modern Homemade came to Kitchen Inc when Heather, an accomplished pastry chef, had the idea of teach workshops on the principles of home economics in a modern way. She wanted to hold classes on sewing, cooking, canning, head to tail butchery, and even on balancing checkbooks; to teach things no longer offered in schools, but that are, Heather says, “skills that people need to know in order to live their lives.”

The narrative of knowledge lost fits into a more expansive saga of “deskilling.” Marx claimed that deskillment was a direct consequence of industrialization as the machine increasingly took over tasks formerly performed by man. Harry Braverman later went on to make the case that this degradation of work inspires an insidious form of alienation in which laborers are not only separated from the fruits of their labor but are distanced from the very skills necessary to autonomously produce. Heather’s comment suggests that recovering these skills is potentially “empowering,” capable of inspiring a fundamental measure of self-reliance. In his book Shopclass for Soulcraft, Matthew Crawford writes, “…we are led to consider how the specifically human manner of being is lit up, as it were, by man’s interaction with his world through his hands. For this a new sort of anthropology is called for, one that is adequate to our experience of agency. Such an account might illuminate the appeal of manual work in a way that is neither romantic nor nostalgic, but rather simply gives credit to the practice of building things, fixing things, and routinely tending to things, as an element of human flourishing.” (2010; 64)

Crawford’s “new sort of anthropology” (or should I say “sort of “ anthropology) towards the fountainhead of human flourishing might reasonably be amended to include not just the building, fixing, and tending of things but also the growing, baking, brewing, and making of them as well.

In the span of time that I conducted interviews at Kitchen Inc. Heather had shifted her focus from teaching modern day home-ec to the production of artisanal donuts. Making a short story shorter, another tenet, Josh, approached Heather with the idea. Within two weeks she had developed the recipe for her dough and two weeks after that they we’re selling donuts out of the front retail space of Kitchen Inc. The instrumentality of incubator itself in this whole process cannot be overemphasized.

Kitchen Inc. provided an environment for the like-minded Josh and Heather to meet and to build a relationship of mutual trust strong enough to go into business together almost overnight. Moreover, the open (physical and bureaucratic) structure of Kitchen Inc allowed a good idea to become a successful business in the amount of time it takes most businesses to fill out the first round of paper work. Finally, it is clear that the shared production space encourages creative dialogue and facilitates collaboration amongst artisans.

Turning an idea into the reality of small business ownership, no matter what structures assist in its operation and development, does not come about without a great deal of effort. Heather indicated that she works excruciating long days at an exhausting pace; most often from 4:30 in the morning until 7 at night. While to the objective outsider it may seem like a great deal of toil for a rather nominal reward (Heather noted that she ‘isn’t exactly raking in the dough’) it does not subjectively feel that way to Heather. “We have so much fun making donuts, I wouldn’t want anything else. I don’t care that I work 16 hour days, every single day of the week. I don’t care! Because it’s so much fun, and they make me so happy, and hopefully they make other people happy!”

Heather echoes an oft-repeated sentiment when speaking with artisanal producers—that their work is a labor of love. One consistently finds that these craftsmen and women have blurred the distinction between labor and leisure merging one almost seamlessly into the other.

Heather’s commitment to making a handmade product despite the processes inefficiencies and time requirements is reinforced by more than just love. There’s a social component to it as well. In the same way it was important to David that he interact with his customers, it’s important to Heather that she’s becoming part of the greater community. She reflected, “The other day I was walking and it just felt so good, because everybody knows one another, it’s a beautiful day, the sun was out, and they’re like oh hey, what’s going on, how are the donuts. People know me as the donut lady, I’ve been called that a few times and I’m like… alright. They see me and they think donuts, and are really friendly and excited and they’re asking me how it’s going. It’s this really great community. It feels really good…that was a good day.”

Heather’s recollection of a “good day” in recent memory shows how intricately her wellbeing is stitched into her businesses and its relationship with the community. It is, after all, called “Union Square” Donuts and it represents a vital association with and sense of place. Lovingly referred to as the “donut lady,” Heather’s hand-crafted product has become an important stitch in the fabric of her professional and social identity. Her sense of nourishing the community (effectively and affectively) lends credence to a way of thinking and doing seemingly all but anachronistic in the contemporary American economy and culture.

Conclusion      

What Black Magic Coffee and Union Square Donuts share is not only a common genesis in Kitchen Inc., but a tangible sense craftsmanship and an operating ethos of community engagement. This article uses Kitchen Inc. as a convenient forum to hold a discussion on the concept of culinary craftsmanship. Moreover, the craftspeople themselves demonstrate the creative and at times unexpected ways in which a distinct grassroots food system is in the process of being developed. The logic of industrial capitalism no longer holds In alternative provisioning communities such as Kitchen Inc. Things are not better simply because they’re cheaper, or because they’re easier. Quality is now being determined by a new metric, one that is attentive to the spirit of community, to engaged labor, and to relationships of affect.

The stories of the culinary artisans of Kitchen Inc aren’t offered here because they’re unique but rather because I think they’re quite common. What we find are artists and craftsmen, working with differing mediums, whether the medium is milk or distilled spirits, canvas or clay. Craft objects offer themselves as a convenient lens into contemporary perceptions of the economy, the environment, and society more generally. In doing so, they reveal how a grassroots (and potentially more sustainable) provisioning system is in the process of development, not from statutes of legislatures, but in the hands of artisanally-minded individuals taking part in daily acts of living.

Note: Since the time this research was conducted Heather has opened her own brick and mortar storefront a few blocks down from Kitchen Inc.

 

Brad Jones is completing graduate studies in gastronomy at Boston University where he researches sociocultural aspects of food production and is the founding editor of the Graduate Journal of Food Studies. Along with colleague Chris Maggiolo, he is the co-founder of to cure: a food anthology which features a behind-the-scenes look at artisanal food production in America. You can follow their 15,000 mile journey across the America culinary landscape at www.tocurefood.comHe would like to thank Dr. Heather Paxson for inspiration on the topic and for her constant support.

 

Works Cited:

Adamson, Glenn. Ed. 2010. The Craft Reader. New York: Berg Publishing.

Crawford, Matthew. 2010. Shopclass as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work. New York: Penguin Books.

Guthman, Julie.2008. “Neoliberalism and the Making of Food Politics in California,” Geoforum 39(3): 1171-1183

Hardt, Michael and Negri Antonio. 2000. Empire. Cambridge; Harvard University Press

Markowitz, Sally J. 1994. “The Distinction Between Art and Craft.” In Journal of Aesthetic Education 28(1): 55-70.

Metcalf, Bruce. 1993. “Replacing the Myth of Modernism.” In American Craft 53 (1)

Paxson, Heather. 2010. “Cheese Cultures: Transforming American Tastes and Traditions.” In GastronomicaThe Journal of Food and Culture 10 (4): 35-44

Thorpe, Liz. 2009. The Cheese Chronicles. New York: Harper Collins.



[1] The terms “Craft” and “Artisanal” will be used interchangeably throughout. I do not intend to suggest that their meanings are exact and am aware that historically they have been defined and valued independently from one another. Nevertheless, in contemporary culinary usage the words are essentially synonymous. (see Markowitz 1994 and Paxson 2010).

[2] Anachronistic here indicates a sense of temporal displacement from the foundational principles of “modernity”— positivism and progress. It is these principles that have led us to the efficient factory and the rationalized division of labor. Thinking teleologically in terms of this pervading logic. Hands-on and traditional production practices are a seemingly irrational step backward. I hope to discover why these artisanal food producers implicitly disagree.

[3] For more on immaterial labor and the production of affect see Hardt and Negri 2000.

by Fabio Parasecoli

from Huffington Post

Japan occupies an interesting place in Western popular culture: as one of the most developed countries in the world, its presence is warranted among the major players in the global economy and in international politics. Its industrial and technological products are among the most common household names in consumer culture across the globe. Its popular culture, especially when it comes to fashion, design, anime, and manga, has a considerable following outside its borders. The disasters following the recent tsunami have also contributed to a prominent spot for Japan in the global imagination.

Yet, when it comes to food, Japan has lost some of its mystery. Restaurant patrons are conversant with sushi, sashimi, and tempura, and shoppers are less and less surprised to see wasabi, seaweed, green tea, and even mocha in the “international aisles” of their supermarkets. The recent documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi reflects the interest of Western gourmets in a culinary tradition that, until a few decades ago, was shrouded in exoticness. Now we have access to delivery sushi; we can pick sashimi off little conveyor belts; and cookbooks, TV shows, and other media are contributing to make Japanese cuisine accessible and comprehensible. Still, there are still layers and layers that some Western foodies have yet to consider, including the many local traditions that stubbornly survive in parts of the country, the kaiseki dining and cooking style, and the ongoing evolution that has created relatively novel approaches like the Japanese-inflected wafu pasta.

Merry White’s new book, Coffee Life in Japan guides us along as we discover a visible yet quite unexplored dimension of Japanese consumer culture. An anthropologist by training and by trade (she teaches at Boston University), the author takes us from coffee house to coffee house, uncovering a whole world that would be hidden from those wrongfully believing Japan is only about tea. As a matter of fact, it is the third largest coffee-importing country in the world, with an internal market shaped by high prices, high quality, and high costs of production. Although the country’s love affair with the drink is more recent than Europe’s, cafes were thriving long before the arrival of Starbucks.

White proves that the drink has played a significant role in the process of modernization in Japan through its ability to adapt to political earthquakes, changing urban structures, and evolving behaviors. Cafes turn out to be places where people can take a break from social pressure and express one’s individuality outside the harmonious consensus that many perceive as a defining trait of Japanese culture. Throughout the book we get to explore wildly different establishments, meeting a curious cast of characters that have dedicated their lives to preparing the best café possible, each embracing quite different standards. Preparations, design, techniques, atmosphere and soundscapes may vary, but all the café owners portrayed in the book seem to take coffee and customer care with the greatest seriousness.

Kodawari, the disciplined dedication and attention to detail that these individuals display, is far from being the stereotyped perfectionism (bordering on the pathological) that many attribute to Japanese culture. As White points out:

“A café in Japan is not a ‘global space’ -unless one counts the Seattle-based chain stores – nor is it usually a deeply local place, forbidding to newcomers… There is no single model for the café… The very openness of definition, along with the cultural parameters of services and quality that make these places ‘Japanese’ is the draw and the preservative of the café in Japanese cities… Its cultural logic is strongly Japanese, but the experience of the café can break almost all the usual rules of being Japanese.”

White wanders from café to café, from brewing master to coffee merchant, with nonchalant pleasure. At times the book structure seems far from linear, returning to topics and concepts already touched on before, but White’s affection for the world she describes is infectious. The narrative often reads like a memoir, and the author is able to transport us to places and situations that are not only described with the eye of the anthropologist, but shared with the passion of a true coffee lover.

(As seen on the Heritage Radio Network Website)

A Taste of the Past – Episode 89 – Fabio Parasecoli

First Aired – 02/16/2012 12:00PM
Download MP3 (Full Episode)
From food culture in 800BCE to the present day, this week’s episode of A Taste of the Past will take you there. With the help of New School professor of food studies, Fabio Parasecoli, host Linda Pelaccio takes you on a world tour of food globalization throughout major world time periods. Parasecoli, who has also edited an encyclopedic 6-volume tome on the subject– A Cultural History of Food— discusses the rise of food scholarship in major learning institutes around the world as well how food, not just eating, is taking an ever-expanding presence in every aspect of daily life. This episode is sponsored by Fairway Market

“Food has become very important in social and political debates. So my question is were those debates already there at the Roman times, what happened in the middle ages? For example, is the family meal really an institution or did we create it 100 years ago and we just pretend its been there forever?”

–Fabio Parasecoli on A Taste of the Past

Hosted By
Linda
Sponsored by
Fairway