Food Narrative and Memoir - "Lasagna Has Shaped My Life"
Warning: This text contains the mention of death; nothing major, but if the topic makes you uncomfortable, then I suggest you leave now before any feelings get hurt.
Lasagna has the power to make me cry. I get emotional over a dish of pasta because the feeling of nostalgia that crashes down like a tidal wave beating on a shore. It isn’t merely the taste of melted cheese paired with juicy meat that cause my eyes to water, nor is it the memories of scraped knees and grass stained jeans. In that moment of vulnerability, my mind is is torn open and my precious memories flood back to me.
The wave of nostalgia leads me through my small part of town that I have imprinted in the back of my mind. I walk down the aisle at our local Smith’s and see elementary age children pleading with their mother about wanting Spaghettio's instead of the meal they have cooking at home. It makes smile and I bite back the urge to speak out and say “Believe me kid, when you grow older you’ll want the home cooked stuff more than anything you could get at the store.” Every time I enter the kitchen, I begin to reminiscence while looking over the granite counter tops. Browsing through the cabinets for the umpteenth time searching for a snack that I know isn’t there fills me with content. Even though so much has happened to this small kitchen, it still has that charm that it has always had since early childhood.
Sitting down at out old worn table, I am suddenly back in my kitchen staring at a loving cooked meal surrounded by a younger version of my family. My chest tightens with a bittersweet feeling of remembrance as I put two-and-two together. See, in my family anytime someone would celebrate a birthday my mother would cook her famous lasagna. With layers of melted cheese and long lasagna sheets, a perfect meal was served with sides of sweet corn and scalloped potatoes. As I watch I see my small family passing around pans and bowls; the only sound present is forks scraping against plates, our mouths are too full for conversation. I relive all the jokes and conversations shared between my brothers and myself ranging from the quality of the meal to pointless nonsense that only we as siblings would understand. Who would have thought a simple meal would have the power to unite those 3 children who not a minute earlier were at each other throats with Nerf guns in a full-fledged war?
Coming back to reality, I risk a glance to the recliner in our front room right next to the window. Bad idea as I begin to sob, putting my head in my arms as I lean against the worn table. Almost perfectly, I can see my mother sitting there and looking outside at the roses blooming before our front window. She’s laughing and smiling at us running around with muddy feet from the backyard and dirty faces covered in who knows what. She would beckon me to her side, slowly, so I wouldn’t disturb the hummingbird hovering over the bush ever so delicately. I turn and see her in front of the stove, letting my brother and I taste the spoon as she expertly prepares 3 different sides at once all whilst holding my infant sister. It takes all I have to stand up from that table and continue with the rest of my day. The tsunami of tears I’m holding back finally break loose as I leave my seat.
On my 17th birthday, my mother passed away from stage 4 breast cancer. One thing you should know about my mom was she was no quitter. This had been her second round with cancer, not including the 7 years she had been fighting it continuously before being diagnosed a second time. The first time she was diagnosed I was around the age of 10, so I still had the blanket of naivety over my eyes. My child mentality couldn’t understand the seriousness of the issue because my brain wasn’t developed enough to actually process it in its entirety. All I knew was mom was sick and she couldn’t do a lot of the things she used to do with us and we would have to stay away from her for long periods of time so she wouldn’t get sick. I was forced to grow up as the weeks turned to months of treatment and the adult in my life decided it was time to understand. Maybe it was a good thing for me to finally have the curtains drawn back to let in the light; maybe it was the worse mistake that could have been made, I honestly don’t know at this point almost 10 years later. Time skip forward roughly 7 years and mom has been diagnosed yet another time. We called the infamous family meeting, both my parents looked at each other and broke the news to us.
Afterward, I found myself searching up numerous articles and I began to ball when I saw the statistics. The average survival rate for Stage 4 was roughly 22% in a five-year survival rate, and even then the lives of those diagnosed were filled to the brim with constant doctor visits that racked up expensive medical bills. There was no “cure”, no alternative medication or shot to be taken. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. I told myself that my mom would be the exception in that 22% and held on tightly to that one sting of hope. Even as I laid in bed on those restless nights I repeated that mantra over and over to help my soul ache a little less. But the harsh reality only grew as my mother began to deteriorate as she did when I was 8, only faster and even worse. Her hair fell out again after the radiation treatments, her body became thin and skeleton-like. Nothing could help her at this point in time, and my family was losing everything again.
When it became evident that she wouldn’t be able to cook anymore, my brain kicked itself into gear. After many long days and harsh nights I felt myself longing for those comfort foods. Hearty navy bean soup, homemade ramen noodles with vegetable and egg, but most importantly I couldn’t remember what her lasagna tasted like. I mention the power that a pasta can hold as without fail I still tear up at the thought that I never get to taste it again.
I wish these moments of heartache would happen when I was in a secluded place, but life is so kindly giving me the middle finger. Many a time in class the mere mention of the sickness makes my chest heave terribly, like my heart is about to drop into my diaphragm. It wasn’t just school either, going home and smelling anything cook on the stove would set me off, it didn’t even need to be pasta because mom was the cook. She still is the best cook I have ever known. I constantly think to myself “Is all of that precious knowledge lost? All the measurements that were never wrote down because it was instinctively added without a second thought? Will I forget everything she made for me?”
She would still help out as much as she could with the cooking, but with her inability to stand for long periods of time her help dwindled out of existence. During this time my oldest brother had received his mission call to Calgary, Alberta Canada for the LDS church. When he found out, he pleaded with my mother to help teach him how to recreate the famous dish of lasagna so he could have a little bit of home with him. Of course my mother accepted being the kind woman she was. It made me laugh to see my 6’ 4’’ brother towering over my 5’ 4” mother as she carefully placed her hands over his to help with chopping up the meat. I remember teasing him as he spilled tomato sauce all over his apron and watched as my mom reached up to wipe some away where it landed on his cheek. When the dish came out of the oven, the noodles were more al dente then we would have liked but regardless, my mom named it a success and the dish was shared around our table with a smile.
The reason for my families love of lasagna come from when my mom and dad were first dating. My dad so often recalls that this was the make or break in their relationship, determining if they would keep dating by testing if she could cook and if he would like it. So being the overachiever she was, my mom prepared a full course meal consisting of lasagna, green beans, fresh garlic bread and an apple pie paired with a tall glass of milk for dessert. All of this was made from scratch and she spent the good majority of that Saturday cooking this meal. My Dad remembers walking into his apartment and everything smelling like heaven. Unfortunately, so did his 7 roommates which all of a sudden had their dinner plans “canceled”. This meant instead of a romantic evening between my mom and dad it was now a communal dinner with 7 very hungry college aged guys, a very flustered younger Dad and an ever-smiling younger Mom all seated around a large oak table. “I remember [my roommates] looking at me with a stuffed mouth and saying “Dude, if you don’t keep her I will.” and then your mother would laugh every time they said that. Of course she would just smile and say she was happy to cook, because your mother was always kind like that.” Together we laugh over how funny the whole scenario turned out to be. Lasagna had always been my dad’s favorite dish and it seems that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree as all of us kids agree that her lasagna is the bomb. Nothing store bought could compare to the homemade masterpiece constructed by our ever caring mother.
Looking back, many of our relatives have always been interested in cooking pasta based meals. A large majority of our family comes from Central Europe, with the exception of 1 or 2 members residing from Russia or England. My great grandma Ethel Anna Fry was about 3 when her family came over from Germany to America during 1913 right before WWI was going to begin and they brought many a recipe with them, including many variations of the lasagna dish we love today. I no longer have this recipe due to our basement flooding and damaging several of our family’s old cook books, but I still remember pulling out the old tattered book that held an almost infinite knowledge on how to make food during tough times and what to scrape up when the income just wasn't enough. My mom’s seemingly infinite resourcefulness resulted in many frankensteined recipes that had a 20/80 chance of being pure bliss or a hot mess. Lasagna is only one of the dishes that she combined and tweaked that was better than the original recipes. I remember for my great Grandma Ethel’s funeral, my mom had cooked that very recipe for lasagna and all of Ethel’s her still living siblings complimented my mother on how similar it was to their sister’s. The humble dish brought back many memories and made the event a bit more personal, even for those who didn’t have the opportunity to know Ethel personally.
Within these past 6 months of having my mom passed away, her legacy still flourishes in not only me but every aspect of my life. Of course, I will get emotional like the crybaby I am and this will most likely happen for many years to come, but I will accept that. I know that anytime my family recreates any of our favorite dishes, she will live on through us and the food created. When we prepare any lasagna dish, I know full well that that meal time will be remembered and fond memories will be shared once again. I’m glad for those times my family has to slow down and think about the past, remembering it so it will never leave us. Though a lot of the memories are sad and bittersweet, at least we still have them to ground us in our busy lives. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Sources-“Metastatic Breast Cancer: Life Expectancy and Prognosis.” Healthline, Healthline Media, www.healthline.com/health/breast-cancer/metastatic-prognosis#survival-rates.
-Mapes, Diane, and Fred Hutch News Service. “Living with Stage 4: The Breast Cancer No One Understands.” Fred Hutch, 13 Oct. 2016, www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/10/stage-4-metastatic-misunderstood-breast-cancer.html.
-“Get Cultured: Lasagna.” Culture: the Word on Cheese, 19 Aug. 2016, culturecheesemag.com/blog/get-cultured-lasagna.
-“The Single Most Important Day of the Year – National Lasagna Day!” Notes From The Tenement, tenement.org/blog/the-single-most-important-day-of-the-year-national-lasagna-day/.
Warning: This text contains the mention of death; nothing major, but if the topic makes you uncomfortable, then I suggest you leave now before any feelings get hurt.
Lasagna has the power to make me cry. I get emotional over a dish of pasta because the feeling of nostalgia that crashes down like a tidal wave beating on a shore. It isn’t merely the taste of melted cheese paired with juicy meat that cause my eyes to water, nor is it the memories of scraped knees and grass stained jeans. In that moment of vulnerability, my mind is is torn open and my precious memories flood back to me.
The wave of nostalgia leads me through my small part of town that I have imprinted in the back of my mind. I walk down the aisle at our local Smith’s and see elementary age children pleading with their mother about wanting Spaghettio's instead of the meal they have cooking at home. It makes smile and I bite back the urge to speak out and say “Believe me kid, when you grow older you’ll want the home cooked stuff more than anything you could get at the store.” Every time I enter the kitchen, I begin to reminiscence while looking over the granite counter tops. Browsing through the cabinets for the umpteenth time searching for a snack that I know isn’t there fills me with content. Even though so much has happened to this small kitchen, it still has that charm that it has always had since early childhood.
Sitting down at out old worn table, I am suddenly back in my kitchen staring at a loving cooked meal surrounded by a younger version of my family. My chest tightens with a bittersweet feeling of remembrance as I put two-and-two together. See, in my family anytime someone would celebrate a birthday my mother would cook her famous lasagna. With layers of melted cheese and long lasagna sheets, a perfect meal was served with sides of sweet corn and scalloped potatoes. As I watch I see my small family passing around pans and bowls; the only sound present is forks scraping against plates, our mouths are too full for conversation. I relive all the jokes and conversations shared between my brothers and myself ranging from the quality of the meal to pointless nonsense that only we as siblings would understand. Who would have thought a simple meal would have the power to unite those 3 children who not a minute earlier were at each other throats with Nerf guns in a full-fledged war?
Coming back to reality, I risk a glance to the recliner in our front room right next to the window. Bad idea as I begin to sob, putting my head in my arms as I lean against the worn table. Almost perfectly, I can see my mother sitting there and looking outside at the roses blooming before our front window. She’s laughing and smiling at us running around with muddy feet from the backyard and dirty faces covered in who knows what. She would beckon me to her side, slowly, so I wouldn’t disturb the hummingbird hovering over the bush ever so delicately. I turn and see her in front of the stove, letting my brother and I taste the spoon as she expertly prepares 3 different sides at once all whilst holding my infant sister. It takes all I have to stand up from that table and continue with the rest of my day. The tsunami of tears I’m holding back finally break loose as I leave my seat.
On my 17th birthday, my mother passed away from stage 4 breast cancer. One thing you should know about my mom was she was no quitter. This had been her second round with cancer, not including the 7 years she had been fighting it continuously before being diagnosed a second time. The first time she was diagnosed I was around the age of 10, so I still had the blanket of naivety over my eyes. My child mentality couldn’t understand the seriousness of the issue because my brain wasn’t developed enough to actually process it in its entirety. All I knew was mom was sick and she couldn’t do a lot of the things she used to do with us and we would have to stay away from her for long periods of time so she wouldn’t get sick. I was forced to grow up as the weeks turned to months of treatment and the adult in my life decided it was time to understand. Maybe it was a good thing for me to finally have the curtains drawn back to let in the light; maybe it was the worse mistake that could have been made, I honestly don’t know at this point almost 10 years later. Time skip forward roughly 7 years and mom has been diagnosed yet another time. We called the infamous family meeting, both my parents looked at each other and broke the news to us.
Afterward, I found myself searching up numerous articles and I began to ball when I saw the statistics. The average survival rate for Stage 4 was roughly 22% in a five-year survival rate, and even then the lives of those diagnosed were filled to the brim with constant doctor visits that racked up expensive medical bills. There was no “cure”, no alternative medication or shot to be taken. Nothing. Zilch. Nada. I told myself that my mom would be the exception in that 22% and held on tightly to that one sting of hope. Even as I laid in bed on those restless nights I repeated that mantra over and over to help my soul ache a little less. But the harsh reality only grew as my mother began to deteriorate as she did when I was 8, only faster and even worse. Her hair fell out again after the radiation treatments, her body became thin and skeleton-like. Nothing could help her at this point in time, and my family was losing everything again.
When it became evident that she wouldn’t be able to cook anymore, my brain kicked itself into gear. After many long days and harsh nights I felt myself longing for those comfort foods. Hearty navy bean soup, homemade ramen noodles with vegetable and egg, but most importantly I couldn’t remember what her lasagna tasted like. I mention the power that a pasta can hold as without fail I still tear up at the thought that I never get to taste it again.
I wish these moments of heartache would happen when I was in a secluded place, but life is so kindly giving me the middle finger. Many a time in class the mere mention of the sickness makes my chest heave terribly, like my heart is about to drop into my diaphragm. It wasn’t just school either, going home and smelling anything cook on the stove would set me off, it didn’t even need to be pasta because mom was the cook. She still is the best cook I have ever known. I constantly think to myself “Is all of that precious knowledge lost? All the measurements that were never wrote down because it was instinctively added without a second thought? Will I forget everything she made for me?”
She would still help out as much as she could with the cooking, but with her inability to stand for long periods of time her help dwindled out of existence. During this time my oldest brother had received his mission call to Calgary, Alberta Canada for the LDS church. When he found out, he pleaded with my mother to help teach him how to recreate the famous dish of lasagna so he could have a little bit of home with him. Of course my mother accepted being the kind woman she was. It made me laugh to see my 6’ 4’’ brother towering over my 5’ 4” mother as she carefully placed her hands over his to help with chopping up the meat. I remember teasing him as he spilled tomato sauce all over his apron and watched as my mom reached up to wipe some away where it landed on his cheek. When the dish came out of the oven, the noodles were more al dente then we would have liked but regardless, my mom named it a success and the dish was shared around our table with a smile.
The reason for my families love of lasagna come from when my mom and dad were first dating. My dad so often recalls that this was the make or break in their relationship, determining if they would keep dating by testing if she could cook and if he would like it. So being the overachiever she was, my mom prepared a full course meal consisting of lasagna, green beans, fresh garlic bread and an apple pie paired with a tall glass of milk for dessert. All of this was made from scratch and she spent the good majority of that Saturday cooking this meal. My Dad remembers walking into his apartment and everything smelling like heaven. Unfortunately, so did his 7 roommates which all of a sudden had their dinner plans “canceled”. This meant instead of a romantic evening between my mom and dad it was now a communal dinner with 7 very hungry college aged guys, a very flustered younger Dad and an ever-smiling younger Mom all seated around a large oak table. “I remember [my roommates] looking at me with a stuffed mouth and saying “Dude, if you don’t keep her I will.” and then your mother would laugh every time they said that. Of course she would just smile and say she was happy to cook, because your mother was always kind like that.” Together we laugh over how funny the whole scenario turned out to be. Lasagna had always been my dad’s favorite dish and it seems that the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree as all of us kids agree that her lasagna is the bomb. Nothing store bought could compare to the homemade masterpiece constructed by our ever caring mother.
Looking back, many of our relatives have always been interested in cooking pasta based meals. A large majority of our family comes from Central Europe, with the exception of 1 or 2 members residing from Russia or England. My great grandma Ethel Anna Fry was about 3 when her family came over from Germany to America during 1913 right before WWI was going to begin and they brought many a recipe with them, including many variations of the lasagna dish we love today. I no longer have this recipe due to our basement flooding and damaging several of our family’s old cook books, but I still remember pulling out the old tattered book that held an almost infinite knowledge on how to make food during tough times and what to scrape up when the income just wasn't enough. My mom’s seemingly infinite resourcefulness resulted in many frankensteined recipes that had a 20/80 chance of being pure bliss or a hot mess. Lasagna is only one of the dishes that she combined and tweaked that was better than the original recipes. I remember for my great Grandma Ethel’s funeral, my mom had cooked that very recipe for lasagna and all of Ethel’s her still living siblings complimented my mother on how similar it was to their sister’s. The humble dish brought back many memories and made the event a bit more personal, even for those who didn’t have the opportunity to know Ethel personally.
Within these past 6 months of having my mom passed away, her legacy still flourishes in not only me but every aspect of my life. Of course, I will get emotional like the crybaby I am and this will most likely happen for many years to come, but I will accept that. I know that anytime my family recreates any of our favorite dishes, she will live on through us and the food created. When we prepare any lasagna dish, I know full well that that meal time will be remembered and fond memories will be shared once again. I’m glad for those times my family has to slow down and think about the past, remembering it so it will never leave us. Though a lot of the memories are sad and bittersweet, at least we still have them to ground us in our busy lives. We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.
Sources-“Metastatic Breast Cancer: Life Expectancy and Prognosis.” Healthline, Healthline Media, www.healthline.com/health/breast-cancer/metastatic-prognosis#survival-rates.
-Mapes, Diane, and Fred Hutch News Service. “Living with Stage 4: The Breast Cancer No One Understands.” Fred Hutch, 13 Oct. 2016, www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2014/10/stage-4-metastatic-misunderstood-breast-cancer.html.
-“Get Cultured: Lasagna.” Culture: the Word on Cheese, 19 Aug. 2016, culturecheesemag.com/blog/get-cultured-lasagna.
-“The Single Most Important Day of the Year – National Lasagna Day!” Notes From The Tenement, tenement.org/blog/the-single-most-important-day-of-the-year-national-lasagna-day/.
Rhetorical Analysis - "The Food Guilt Redemption Project
"Here is a link to the podcast. I strongly recommend watching it.
Most everyone is familiar with the issue of food waste. Many a time it is thrust in our faces at school, the workplace, and in passing. “Up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten, but at the same time, one in eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table” (NRDC). With these type of statistics, one has to ask themselves, “What can be done about food waste?”
Dan Pashman’s takes this issue and addresses it in his podcast “The Food Guilt Redemption Project”. Pashman is very effective in persuading his listeners during his podcast by showing his audience through various examples that food waste is an easily solved issue, especially for the common man. Throughout the podcast Pashman expresses pathos, logos and ethos in assorted ways, some of which he uses his guest speakers to express when he himself cannot. He connects with the listeners through sharing his past attempts and failures at ridding himself of a common “guilt” he has from wasting, but not before establishing facts to back up the research he has uncovered to credit his further actions. In most basic terms, Pashman relays to the listeners that food waste is an easily solved problem through composting, eating leftovers, and understanding labels.
“The Food Guilt Redemption Project” was published on October 15, 2018 on The Sporkful. Pashman first starts out the podcast by introducing himself and explaining his efforts in trying to eliminate food waste. He admits that he feels guilty about the amount of food he was wasting; from here he goes on to state how many others feel the same way about their habit of throwing away food. Within the podcast, Pashman asks some of his peers what they are doing to aid in the stop of waste. His neighbor John, for example, has a compost bin to help in the food recycling efforts. But, to Pashman’s dismay, John wasn’t able to use it for the past few months because it wasn’t deteriorating the scraps fast enough to add more in. The two banter back and forth about this tragedy, throwing in a backstory about John’s dad and his past experience with composting, which goes about as well as John’s efforts had. But, when Pashman asks if he should give composting a try, John simply states that ”Nothing bad will happen” (06:34). Skeptically, Pashman looks at the alternative ways to compost and comes to the conclusion that he isn’t made for the busy, composting life.
Pashman then switches his focus to leftovers and what he can do with them. He asks cookbook author Julia Turshen about her book, Now and Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers, and what he can do with the knowledge she shares. One of Turshen’s main points she address to Pahman is “...to think of leftovers as ingredients to be used in other dishes” (19:50). Pashman brightens up when Turshen shares how she thinks it is interesting whether or not you tell someone what they’re eating. After their talk, he decides to follow her advice by taking some old brisket, chopping it up then adding chickpeas, diced pickles, mustard, and sliced tomatoes to the mixture. He finally wraps it in a tortilla to create a simple dish that fully utilized items within his own home. This impresses his next interviewee, Professor Emily Broad Leib who founded the food and law policy clinic at Harvard University. The pair begin to talk on the credibility of food labels and the true purpose behind them. Through their discussion, Pashman finds out that some of the labels don’t even matter and are just warnings from the companies about how long the flavor will last in certain foods, it has nothing to do with how safe it would be to consume. Pashman finishes his podcast by saying that his “food guilt” has almost completely dissipated, and the only way to get rid of it is to use the energy spent towards doing nothing and reuse it towards your current actions in creating less food waste.
Pashman appeals strongly to pathos throughout his entire essay as he describes his experience with preventing food waste and his journey toward learning even more upon the topic. This is meaningful to any listener that shares beliefs similar to Pashman. It gives a sort of comfort to know that even if they are struggling to uphold these food-saving habits that they are not alone in the endeavor. He first expresses this in the very beginning of the podcast, stating how he feels guilty. Anyone listening who hears this line can instantly relate because guilt is a common emotion felt by every member of the human species. Guilt, while a great tool for dampening motivation, can also be honed into a tool to aid in success. Pashman does this by offering a way for himself and the audience to grab onto this guilt and use that energy elsewhere. Further along into the podcast, he addresses the audience again saying ”If John, a guys who builds boats in his spare time and John’s dad, a metallurgical chemist struggle with composting, what chance do I have? I don’t even own a shovel!” (05:56) Following along with this pessimistic attitude, listeners can relate to Pashman because the reaction from most people in a difficult situation is to undermine their own abilities. It is common to compare oneself to one presumed more ‘qualified’ and say “I can’t do it.” because that is easier than making an attempt to do something out of your comfort zone. Pashman continues to use this opinion on food waste after he speaks with Prof. Leib on how “...focusing on that can make you feel guilty.” As a follow up, Pashman then says “...Julia gave me some great advice about how to deal with that. ‘If you’re gonna waste energy feeling guilty about something you’re not doing, that energy could be applied to something you are doing’” (27:25). With that, the listener feels relief that there is still hope to be more Eco-friendly.
Now let’s move onto ethos and logos. With the help of Prof. Leib, he uncovers the conspiracy about food labels and their influence on the consumers who buy them. She says, “Right now, no matter what people see on the food, many people throw food away when it passes [the expiration] date because they’re just afraid. They think that it’s contaminated after that date and they think that if they don’t throw it away they’re gonna get sick or get their kids or their family sick” (22:28). From the shoppers perspective Prof. Leib is talking from, most shoppers logic about food is built up from a trust that the companies are expressing good ethos to their shoppers. The date must serve some kind of purpose, so the unsuspecting consumers hold onto what companies tell them because it seems like the logical thing to do. Common consumers don’t really know the ethics behind their food, they only know what they see and that so happens to be the labels on food. After a while, a conversation between the two went like this. ”There is no official agreed upon meaning for any of these different terms. So they could mean anything, or nothing. There is no actual science behind how a company decides what date to make the expiration date?” Pashman asks, to which Prof. Leib replies, “That’s right, to get that date some companies, I would say, the best science they use is some of them will do taste tests with consumers. And they ask how it tastes and then compare to how many days after it has been manufactured, and find it tastes just as good. But again, it’s really just about flavor and quality and not about safety” (21:10). Here logos is touched upon more greatly because Prof. Leib is addressing the companies logical values on their food. While the agenda of the company may be to sell products and have them consumed at the “best” time, there is no refraining of not adding an actual date of expiration. This is where the creation of labels falls into the moral and logical debate of the companies, which is almost entirely out of the public persons’ hands. Listeners may be surprised to hear how this information, while not completely false or true, has been given out freely for such a long time. Pashman ends the conversation with “When in doubt, trust your eyes, and your nose and your tongue. If you see signs of rot, if it smells or tastes funny, chuck it” (22:48).
Pashman does a great job at leading the listener through many emotions, but he does so with a purpose. While it may seem he is only talking about his feeling for 40 minutes, he follows up by using a mix of humor and seriousness to address this serious matter. This allows the listeners to create their own opinion on the matter of food waste because Pashman gave both sides of the food waste argument. By leaving that final question “What can be done about food waste?” open ended, it is then up to the listeners to decide whether or not they agree and this is what creates a good podcast. Personally, I appreciate the stories that are used to give the listener a more personal attachment to the podcast. Many times the speaker is stiff and feels like they are just reading from a script, but this was not the case with Pashman. Another highlight from the podcast was the smooth transitions between the actual content and the ads. While this may not seem like a big deal, when a podcast is littered with ads it takes away from the intended message. Not to mention, with Pashman's podcast the ads actually related to the topic which is a rarity I've seen among more modern podcasts. All-in-all, I found "The Food Guilt Redemption Project" informative, open minded, and proved entertaining and enjoyable while staying on topic.
Sources
-Pashman, Dan. “The Food Guilt Remediation Project.” Camanda Sermons, RNIB's Insight Radio, 15 Oct. 2018, player.fm/series/the-sporkful-1411161/the-food-guilt-remediation-project.
-Adams, John. “Food Waste.” NRDC, 6 Feb. 2018, www.nrdc.org/issues/food-waste.
"Here is a link to the podcast. I strongly recommend watching it.
Most everyone is familiar with the issue of food waste. Many a time it is thrust in our faces at school, the workplace, and in passing. “Up to 40 percent of the food in the United States is never eaten, but at the same time, one in eight Americans struggles to put enough food on the table” (NRDC). With these type of statistics, one has to ask themselves, “What can be done about food waste?”
Dan Pashman’s takes this issue and addresses it in his podcast “The Food Guilt Redemption Project”. Pashman is very effective in persuading his listeners during his podcast by showing his audience through various examples that food waste is an easily solved issue, especially for the common man. Throughout the podcast Pashman expresses pathos, logos and ethos in assorted ways, some of which he uses his guest speakers to express when he himself cannot. He connects with the listeners through sharing his past attempts and failures at ridding himself of a common “guilt” he has from wasting, but not before establishing facts to back up the research he has uncovered to credit his further actions. In most basic terms, Pashman relays to the listeners that food waste is an easily solved problem through composting, eating leftovers, and understanding labels.
“The Food Guilt Redemption Project” was published on October 15, 2018 on The Sporkful. Pashman first starts out the podcast by introducing himself and explaining his efforts in trying to eliminate food waste. He admits that he feels guilty about the amount of food he was wasting; from here he goes on to state how many others feel the same way about their habit of throwing away food. Within the podcast, Pashman asks some of his peers what they are doing to aid in the stop of waste. His neighbor John, for example, has a compost bin to help in the food recycling efforts. But, to Pashman’s dismay, John wasn’t able to use it for the past few months because it wasn’t deteriorating the scraps fast enough to add more in. The two banter back and forth about this tragedy, throwing in a backstory about John’s dad and his past experience with composting, which goes about as well as John’s efforts had. But, when Pashman asks if he should give composting a try, John simply states that ”Nothing bad will happen” (06:34). Skeptically, Pashman looks at the alternative ways to compost and comes to the conclusion that he isn’t made for the busy, composting life.
Pashman then switches his focus to leftovers and what he can do with them. He asks cookbook author Julia Turshen about her book, Now and Again: Go-To Recipes, Inspired Menus + Endless Ideas for Reinventing Leftovers, and what he can do with the knowledge she shares. One of Turshen’s main points she address to Pahman is “...to think of leftovers as ingredients to be used in other dishes” (19:50). Pashman brightens up when Turshen shares how she thinks it is interesting whether or not you tell someone what they’re eating. After their talk, he decides to follow her advice by taking some old brisket, chopping it up then adding chickpeas, diced pickles, mustard, and sliced tomatoes to the mixture. He finally wraps it in a tortilla to create a simple dish that fully utilized items within his own home. This impresses his next interviewee, Professor Emily Broad Leib who founded the food and law policy clinic at Harvard University. The pair begin to talk on the credibility of food labels and the true purpose behind them. Through their discussion, Pashman finds out that some of the labels don’t even matter and are just warnings from the companies about how long the flavor will last in certain foods, it has nothing to do with how safe it would be to consume. Pashman finishes his podcast by saying that his “food guilt” has almost completely dissipated, and the only way to get rid of it is to use the energy spent towards doing nothing and reuse it towards your current actions in creating less food waste.
Pashman appeals strongly to pathos throughout his entire essay as he describes his experience with preventing food waste and his journey toward learning even more upon the topic. This is meaningful to any listener that shares beliefs similar to Pashman. It gives a sort of comfort to know that even if they are struggling to uphold these food-saving habits that they are not alone in the endeavor. He first expresses this in the very beginning of the podcast, stating how he feels guilty. Anyone listening who hears this line can instantly relate because guilt is a common emotion felt by every member of the human species. Guilt, while a great tool for dampening motivation, can also be honed into a tool to aid in success. Pashman does this by offering a way for himself and the audience to grab onto this guilt and use that energy elsewhere. Further along into the podcast, he addresses the audience again saying ”If John, a guys who builds boats in his spare time and John’s dad, a metallurgical chemist struggle with composting, what chance do I have? I don’t even own a shovel!” (05:56) Following along with this pessimistic attitude, listeners can relate to Pashman because the reaction from most people in a difficult situation is to undermine their own abilities. It is common to compare oneself to one presumed more ‘qualified’ and say “I can’t do it.” because that is easier than making an attempt to do something out of your comfort zone. Pashman continues to use this opinion on food waste after he speaks with Prof. Leib on how “...focusing on that can make you feel guilty.” As a follow up, Pashman then says “...Julia gave me some great advice about how to deal with that. ‘If you’re gonna waste energy feeling guilty about something you’re not doing, that energy could be applied to something you are doing’” (27:25). With that, the listener feels relief that there is still hope to be more Eco-friendly.
Now let’s move onto ethos and logos. With the help of Prof. Leib, he uncovers the conspiracy about food labels and their influence on the consumers who buy them. She says, “Right now, no matter what people see on the food, many people throw food away when it passes [the expiration] date because they’re just afraid. They think that it’s contaminated after that date and they think that if they don’t throw it away they’re gonna get sick or get their kids or their family sick” (22:28). From the shoppers perspective Prof. Leib is talking from, most shoppers logic about food is built up from a trust that the companies are expressing good ethos to their shoppers. The date must serve some kind of purpose, so the unsuspecting consumers hold onto what companies tell them because it seems like the logical thing to do. Common consumers don’t really know the ethics behind their food, they only know what they see and that so happens to be the labels on food. After a while, a conversation between the two went like this. ”There is no official agreed upon meaning for any of these different terms. So they could mean anything, or nothing. There is no actual science behind how a company decides what date to make the expiration date?” Pashman asks, to which Prof. Leib replies, “That’s right, to get that date some companies, I would say, the best science they use is some of them will do taste tests with consumers. And they ask how it tastes and then compare to how many days after it has been manufactured, and find it tastes just as good. But again, it’s really just about flavor and quality and not about safety” (21:10). Here logos is touched upon more greatly because Prof. Leib is addressing the companies logical values on their food. While the agenda of the company may be to sell products and have them consumed at the “best” time, there is no refraining of not adding an actual date of expiration. This is where the creation of labels falls into the moral and logical debate of the companies, which is almost entirely out of the public persons’ hands. Listeners may be surprised to hear how this information, while not completely false or true, has been given out freely for such a long time. Pashman ends the conversation with “When in doubt, trust your eyes, and your nose and your tongue. If you see signs of rot, if it smells or tastes funny, chuck it” (22:48).
Pashman does a great job at leading the listener through many emotions, but he does so with a purpose. While it may seem he is only talking about his feeling for 40 minutes, he follows up by using a mix of humor and seriousness to address this serious matter. This allows the listeners to create their own opinion on the matter of food waste because Pashman gave both sides of the food waste argument. By leaving that final question “What can be done about food waste?” open ended, it is then up to the listeners to decide whether or not they agree and this is what creates a good podcast. Personally, I appreciate the stories that are used to give the listener a more personal attachment to the podcast. Many times the speaker is stiff and feels like they are just reading from a script, but this was not the case with Pashman. Another highlight from the podcast was the smooth transitions between the actual content and the ads. While this may not seem like a big deal, when a podcast is littered with ads it takes away from the intended message. Not to mention, with Pashman's podcast the ads actually related to the topic which is a rarity I've seen among more modern podcasts. All-in-all, I found "The Food Guilt Redemption Project" informative, open minded, and proved entertaining and enjoyable while staying on topic.
Sources
-Pashman, Dan. “The Food Guilt Remediation Project.” Camanda Sermons, RNIB's Insight Radio, 15 Oct. 2018, player.fm/series/the-sporkful-1411161/the-food-guilt-remediation-project.
-Adams, John. “Food Waste.” NRDC, 6 Feb. 2018, www.nrdc.org/issues/food-waste.
Jobs? - Adaptation to Photo Essay
Art drawn by Danielle Swartz (me)
Art drawn by Danielle Swartz (me)
It starts as a giggle. Something small, something most would miss but with the embarrassment heightening his senses, Sam can feel every laugh like a sharp stab. The whispers echo in his ears, continuously getting louder and louder. It surrounds him like a blanket suffocating and warm. His face feels like it's on fire as the laughing continues to swell around him. He can't focus, he can't see anyone. They're just silhouettes with unsettling grins. All he said was his honest opinion, but that wasn't enough. Whispers sound louder than cannons in Sam's ears. "Why would you say that? Actually think before you speak, moron." "What an idiot." "Can you believe what he said?" The words hurt, but all he can do is sit there, paralyzed from the embarrassment. He feels the tears threatening to spill, but he can't move to stop them from falling. Panic settles in as the inescapable cries continue to build.