Reflection
If it’s a Pinterest recipe and not a recipe book is it wrong? If I bought a used book or downloaded it, is it wrong? No. Did I still get the same results from the process I used?
The answer is yes. Much like literacy, the cooking experience/eating experience is individualized. Depending on the time, access you have to supplies, family relationship, life experiences, and exposure you have had to cooking affects how you view the act and yourself in relation to how well you can perform said act.
And much like literacy, it sucks when someone says you don’t cook well or “that’s not cooking”, the same way it sucks when someone expresses that the novel you are reading is subpar or for example, “blogging isn’t real writing”. Literacy much like cooking is based off of traditions, dates back to human communication and cultural. Although both definitions have changed overtime through the lense of society, the concepts have remained true and universal.
Throughout the process of creating food as a metaphor to literacy, we as a group wanted to select items that were not only cool and exciting for us to create but also give the eating experience through relevant and accurate situations such as attending a restaurant. The foods chosen each coordinated with literacy experiences and concepts developed and observed in the classroom. For example, lasagna was, much a story told as a child that one could recite from memory, a recipe that did not come with a recipe but related orally. This recipe therefore was not followed through a series of relayed steps that were on paper or a step by step video. Instead it was given by a relative, filled with memories of co-cooking, and hacked based on said memory and convenience, much like a story would be told. Personally this food creation was felt the most relevant to all my experiences with cooking. Rarely do I ever follow a recipe. In fact sometimes all I have to go on for a recipe is a partially listed ingredients list and some steps of what it should look like. This is because I grew up practicing a “cook to taste” philosophy - probably the ultimate hacking practice in cooking, but also the most creative, exciting, and self- satisfying way to cook. To make something and feel proud/accomplished of it is how we should all feel about literacy.
The choice to create Peanut Butter and Jelly developed as another interactive opportunity to engage students visiting and ask” Which is PB&J?”. This was done to show in an alternative way to express that literacy does not take one form, the same way rolling PB&J to look like sushi, or using tortillas as an alternative to bread, does not stop it from being PB&J.
Finally we created cupcakes because everyone loves cupcakes but also because this was a recipe Kasey originally took as a copycatted a Bundt cake from “Nothing Bundt Cakes” that she then hacked herself. I wonder how the literacy of cooking- in the sense of taking other people's recipes/ copying them/ hacking them and then claiming them as your own- would relate to the process of plagiarism or special access to documents. I also found that my own lack of supplies and frankly lack of desire to follow a recipe differs greatly from Kasey’s recipe experience. For instance, I don’t sift. I don’t have a sifter nor do I care to sift and according to Kasey there is a purpose for sifting if the recipe does call for it, and while I'm sure the cupcakes taste better because of it, I still manage to get pretty good cupcakes my way. Does that mean I am not as literate in cupcaking making because I don’t sift? No. Also, if we are honest, I box most my cupcakes and that's okay- maybe that's the equivalent of reading “trashy” novels.
Overall the process was fun and gave me a different view of literacy in comparison to another common daily practice of mine that depending on who you ask is controversial because professional chefs that spent years perfecting their culinary repertoire, might not see me using box cake as baking, but to me box cake is part of my literacy.
