I get more excited with each passing day! The posts have been wonderful and it makes me want to share in a meal with everyone! Today we need to share our updated/new autoehtnographies with each other. I would also like to invite everyone to continue posting to the first and second day posts.
Keep up the great work everyone!!!!!
How to share? As a post? As an email to the list?
ReplyDeletePlease advise.
Kathy Stein
Greetings All: I am still traveling in Chicago and returning back to Boston tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about each of you heading to the famous Gibson's Steak House, North Rush Street, last night and how our American behavior and food expectations remain super-sized. With my whole staff entourage(18 in number)assembled the server presented himself at the table with the customary water,bread, and giagantic plated cuts of raw beef, pork and lobster for inspection and ultimate selection. The feature for the evening was the 48 oz porterhouse steak priced at $52.00, or the surf and turf,a two pound lobster and 14 oz filet mignon, price $92.00. Need I say more! Various healthy and unhealthy a la carte sides complemented the main course. As I said at the outset, thinking about all of you, I passed on the 22 oz sirloin and orderd the 10 oz sirloin instead with a tomato salad.
My food auto-ethnography is still influenced by business travel and constant meetings, always involving the food experience. More recently I have tried to temper my behavior by taking the time to examine the healthy choices available even though I must confess that my lifestyle brings me from one feeding to another.
The Union Miami Seminar FFF provided me with an awareness and deeper insight into the meaning of food in culture and special population groups. I now observe more closely the behavior of those in my family and especially how aware both my daughters-in law are of the food choices for my now 4 grandchildren. They both provide excellent models and new age examples of teaching the children early about balanced nutition and using the food experience to enforce healthy lifestyles.
Thumbs-up continues to be the symbol my grandaughter uses to scold me regularly with a thumbs down when obvious violations of best food practices are made by me and others. Although cute and humorous the metaphor has stuck and permeated throughout my family, friends, and my health center colleagues.
As an aside I am engaged in encouraging public markets in Boston to provide more reasonably priced vegtables for Bostonians who may be just above the poverty line and have to make financial decisions about going the high priced organic route vs. the easier and cheaper processed supermarket choices. Pricing is so high on some items friends have suggested that Whole Foods be required to change its name to Whole Paycheck. Some progress may come on this project in 2009, but it will be a long process to educate the consumer, buyers and growers. Another interesting development is the recognition that diabetics from ethic cultures are very interested in applying cooking techniques that lead to healthier lifestyles and improved health status. One center has opened a food preparation kitchen with provides lessons to a predominantly hispanic population in Holyoke Mass. These types of demonstrations report huge success in both health outcomes and consumer satisfaction when participants make small changes (olive oil v. butter/lard)in their lives.
Best to all, it's time for lunch!
Jim
I have been pondering whether or not we should email or post since last night and decided to leave it up to everyone. If you want to email me I will make sure everyone gets a copy of each other's updated/new autoethnograhy. The choice is open.
ReplyDeleteSorry I didn't to respond earlier, I got stuck in a training that went extra, extra long!
Jim, I cannot believe the portion sizes offered to people. That absolutely amazes me, but I must confess that there was a time I would have wanted to order the lobster and filet if not for the price. I would have eaten every bite too.
ReplyDeleteMy life with food has changed drastically over the last year. At seminar, most of you knew that I was having some gall bladder issues which were limiting my choices. Four months after our seminar wrapped it was discovered that I had eaten my way to Non-Alcohol Related Liver Disease. Not very pleasant, but with a lifestyle change reversible.
My doctor suggested I go for a gastric bypass but told me that with my history of dieting it would most likely be a failed intervention. I called the insurance company and found out it would be two years before
I even went in for surgery. I could have been dead in two years - in pointing this out to the insurance company - their response was to laugh.
I knew then that I needed to do something immediately with long term effects. So, I changed. This last year has been one of the hardest, but most liberating. I have had to share, in words, my emotions because I can no longer suppress them with food. I literally grieved food for months. My brother caught me crying over not being able to eat a filet.... it was in the beginning.
A 110 pounds lighter I am unrecognizable to some. My husband's family, which is African American, is unsatisfied with the weight change thinking I am wasting away (not even close!). My family is loving it. I am treated very differently by many people. I am taken more seriously at work and people are more willing to interact with me. I have been told that I am an inspiration, a compliment I do not take lightly and which motivates me even more. I even treat myself better as well. Most importantly, I am a better mom. I say liver disease saved not only my life, but the lives of my children as well. Noah is a healthy eater who loves his veggies and fruits and will choose these over chips and cookies every time. He is not being brought up on Chinese, does not know what McDonald's is, and is not a screamer in the grocery store.
I carried that 110 extra pounds when I had my son. Now that I am pregnant again, I am having such a different pregnancy. I feel amazing and am enjoying the ride the second time around.
*Some might be wondering if I work out... the answer is yes. I started walking during the winter and then running. I could run for 30 seconds when I started and now I run 4.5 miles. Due to the impact of running, while I am pregnant, I am not running on the treadmill or outside, but have opted to "run" on the elliptical machine.
I wanted to also comment on reasonably priced produce..... Rochester Roots was started as a community garden that is worked by volunteers who live in the city of Rochester. Volunteers are treated to large bags of harvested veggies. Most of the harvest is shared to feed many. A small portion is sold at market for low prices to help financially support the garden.
ReplyDeleteAs my updated food ethnography was too long to post, I am sending via email.
ReplyDeleteBest,
Kathy Stein
I think I sent to all except Alyssa, who was not on the email distribution list.
ReplyDeleteKathy Stein
Kathy, I will send it to Alyssa and thanks! I am also going to send, via email, an updated autoethnography before the close of seminar.
ReplyDeleteI was just contemplating a trip down the stairs to the refrigerator when I thought about what Jim and Abby posted. Like many, food has been comfort for me. It has also been the one unifying element for my family in what has been incredibly turbulent times for all of us. (There's not time or need to go into it. But the past year has been incredibly stressful.) But no matter what the day's headlines brought (and sometimes they were really ugly) we always had dinner together and some of us met at the refrigerator for a late-night snack. That has changed in the last few months. There has been a great deal of upheaval in our lives and our food patterns have changed as well.
ReplyDeleteAs I read your posts and the selections for the peer day, I thought about food in a way that I never have before and realized its incredible power in my life.
My two teenage children were away much of the summer and I went with my parents to their home in secluded Northern Michigan to write my dissertation. When I was away from my children, I had to remind myself to eat. I was lonely for them and eating made me miss them. Eating is what we do together. Each fruit, each vegetable, each piece of bread reminded me of one of them. I didn't want to eat without them. It felt wrong to me. What if they were hungry? What if they had nothing that they liked?
My daughter suffers from Crohn's Disease and, I believe, is greatly impacted by what she eats. She is 14 now and has had the diagnosis for two years. In those two years, our family eating habits have changed dramatically. No fried food - ever. Little or no food that is processed. Limited raw vegetables. No spicy food. I am the food police for everyone. It's my way of trying to control this uncontrollable disease. her doctors say that I am crazy and that there is no relationship between what she eats and the pain that she suffers and the progression of the disease. I don't believe it.
I am convinced that food directly impacts her health.
So, I take food so seriously now and am mindful of what we bring into our house. I also realize that I have adopted some of the same types of relationships with food as some of our literary characters. Food is control for me. Food is love. Food is order.
Food is dangerous.
I have never been terribly thin or terribly fat but have spent most of my adult life convinced that I was overweight. So, I have tried countless diets - Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, the Cabbage Soup Diet, etc. Those fad diets were all part of my former relationship with food. That former relationship with food was defined by a self-centered goal of looking good. My current relationship with food stems from my desire to protect and nurture my children and my dread of the fact that they are growing up quickly and soon will not need me in the same ways that they need me now. If I could, I would still be pureeing and straining their food and feeding it to them. I am absolutely amazed at how much I realized in the last few days thinking about my life, my past and my possible future - all through the prism of food.