THE COMMUNAL MEALSTEPHANIE PORZIO

FALL 2012THESIS — PIRONE

Food should be valued less for caloric content and

more for what it expresses about relationships

—GARY PAUL NABHAN

TOPIC OF STUDY

FOOD & THE COMMUNAL MEAL.

This is the topic I began with this semester. I love food

and it was a central part of my life growing up. De-

spite my family’s busy schedules, we always sat down

for dinner together. The dinner table was the place

where we talked, laughed, argued— it is where we

communicated. Because of this, I grew up with a sub-

conscious feeling that food brings people together.

For my thesis project, it is my mission to study food

and the communal meal as it relates to relationships,

culture, authenticity, and identity. For me, this topic

is vital and I can honestly say nothing matters more to

me than finding a way to use food to bring people

together, encourage community, and enrich relationships.

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ACADEMIC RESEARCHRhetoric of Food. Joshua Frye and Michael S. Bruner

Changing Families, Changing Food. Peter Jackson

Food as Communication/Communication as Food. Janet M. Cramer

Slow Food Revolution. Carlo Petrini

Food in History. Reay Tannahill

We Are What We Eat, Ethnic Food and the Making of the Americas.

Donna R. Gabaccia

Food and Cultural Studies. Bob Ashley, Joanne Hollows, Steve Jones,

and Ben Taylor

Edible Ideologies: Representing Food and Meaning. Kathleen Lebesco

An Edible History of Humanity. Tom Standage

WHEN I BEGAN MY LIBRARY RESEARCH,

I was shocked to find so much information on my topic.

It turns out that my subconscious feeling about food

bringing people together is more than just a feeling—

it is an actual scholarly idea that has been studied and

researched. This opened my eyes to so much valuable

information.

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I WAS VERY AFFECTED BY A QUOTE I READ IN ONE OF MY ACADEMIC

research books: “The contemporary moment, as scholars of post-modernity

insist, is characterized by anxiety and dislocation. Subjects find themselves

increasingly fragmented, and thus struggle to find themselves at all.”

This prompted me on a new path of research related to identity, culture, and

food traditions. I am deeply interested in how these things can work to give

the modern person a better sense of stabillity, authenticity in their lives.

Post-Modern world

globalization

“myth of eternal return”

Post-Nationalism

Transnationalism

culture and modernity

Zigmunt Bauman (fastness)

Multiculturalism

Authenticity?

Heidegger and “Das Man”

Michel DeCerteau and “everydayness”

Naomi Klein and “narrative myths”

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EXPERIMENTS

MY 5X5 PROCESS AND EXPERIMENTS ARE CASUAL AND ORGANIC

as a way to complement my heavy academic findings on the topic on

the communal meal. From collecting oral histories in my own family

to hosting a dinner party with my neighbors— all of my 8 experiments

deal in some way with food, the meal, or the recipe.

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1. DINNER PARTY

Ask a question:

What will happen if I invite my new neighbors, Deniz

and Sherry over and have a dinner party in my apart-

ment?

Hypothesis:

I think if I invite Deniz and Sherry over for dinner, they

will accept, we will have a nice meal/get to know each

other better/become closer friends/relax and be com-

fortable.

Experiment:

Invited neighbors over on Wednesday, planned to host

a small dinner in my apartment.

Conclusion:

Despite 1. the small space of my SoHo apartment, 2.

the busy schedules of my neighbors and roommate

that I don’t know so well, 3. the fact that we only have

1 real chair, 4 soup bowls, and a desk for a dinner

table, word of the dinner party became contagious

(neighbors invited their friend, roommate invited her

boyfriend) and dinner party attendance increased by

50%!! PEOPLE REALLY DO ENJOY TOGETHERNESS!

2. UNEXPECTED BRUNCH

USUALLY WHEN YOU MEET SOMEONE IN NYC,

the first thing you do is exchange contact information. I

had knocked on my neighbor’s door to invite them for my

dinner party though, so even though we felt like dear

friends by dinner party’s end, Sherry didn’t have my cell

number when she wanted to text me and thank me the

next day so instead she left a handwritten note. So per-

sonal and sweet! On Saturday morning, when I knocked on

their door to return some bowls, they were having brunch

(which they had cooked themselves) and invited me in—

of course I joined!

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1:38 — Sherry talks about TV show FRIENDS and how she feels like we have our own FRIENDS situation now, with our ‘open door’ policy started by the dinner party6:18 — discussion between 4 of us about how food should bring people to-gether7:19 — I ask: How often do you (Sherry & Deniz, neighbors) cook? They tell me about Shakshuka (Turkish dish we are eating) and Saturday brunch tradi-tions9:20 — Talking about dinner out (date night)14:00 — TV shows, the Sopranos, mafia, loyalty, family structure in different cultures.17:16 — Religion and food18:00 — Islamic tradition of circumcision. (becomes a very funny 12 minute conversation about the experiences of Deniz and Tolga as children going through this process)31:15 — “This was delicious!”34:00 — Dishwashers and older women using it for storage instead of wash-ing!35:32 — Piping Madeleines (cookies) at Dominique Ansel (our neighborhood bakery)36:08 — Marcel Proust and involuntary memory. Where a memory goes when forgotten. How we remember languages.44:10 — Involuntary memomy. Smell/sound inciting a memory43:42 — Memory like a sensory snapshot, not just visual but with elements from all the senses.

I VOICE RECORDED OUR WHOLE MEAL AND REALIZED

after playing back the recording, that food is the great

“leveler”. We were a relatively diverse group— different

cultures, political beliefs, religions, ages, social status—

but we were able to talk about anything over this casual

meal. Listening back to the conversation we talked about

politics, then socials issues, then it was “pass the bread

please” then religion, then we laughed a lot, then “what is

for dessert”. Eating together gives common ground.

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3. INVOLUNTARY MEMORY & APPLE TART

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I CURRENTLY INTERN AT A WELL KNOWN

food magazine, which I thought would be a

beacon of good food habits but is really a

place where people eat lunch out of plastic

containers in their cubicles. SO UNCOOL.

As an experiment, I warmed up some apple

tart in the microwave at work to enhance

the smells. The girl in the cubicle next door

noticed the delicious smell, and I gave her

half of my tart. We had a lovely five minutes

of chatting and I got to know about her and

her heritage a bit better.

Eating is a physical experience. It affects all

of the senses. Smells can call up memories

of past experiences. This is a powerful thing.

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I WALKED AROUND MY SOHO NEIGHBORHOOD ON A SATURDAY

morning, seeking out some old family-owned food businesses in the

area. As I shopped fort delicious hand-made pastas, cheeses, and cuts

of meat, I made friends with at least one person in EVERY one of the

3 business I observed. Sara from Raffetto’s, Robin and Vincenzo from

Joe’s Dairy, and Sal and Pino from Pino’s. A different environment from

the standard “grocery store”

4. NEIGHBORHOOD FAMILY-OWNED BUSINESS OBSERVATIONS

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5. JARRING FOODS FOR WINTER

MY FAMILY PRACTICES THESE

traditions of preparing garden

grown food to last through the

cold winters. These traditions have

always been a part of my life.. but

In recently began to think more

and more about these “old” tradi-

tions and what will happen to them

when them when the people who

practice them are gone. Will the

recipes/processes live on? How

can I preserve these beautiful tra-

ditions along with the memory of

the people who practice them?

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6. ORAL HISTORIES

AS I CONVERSED WITH MY FAMILY MEMBERS ABOUT FOOD, COOKING, AND

the communal meal I was interested to learn two things: 1. The art of cooking is a

shared experience, passed down from parents to children and 2. People always

prefer their mothers/fathers cooking.

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7. PASSED DOWN FAMILY RECIPES

I AM CURIOUS ABOUT THE IDEA OF “PASSED DOWN FAMILY RECIPES”

and how this relates to identity, community, and authenticity. I looked through

some of my mom’s and grandmother’s written recipes thought about these

delicate and beautiful, but somewhat useless method of storing heritage.

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8. QUESTIONNAIRE

GENDER BREAKDOWN: 33 women, 15 men, 2 n/a

AVG AGE: 21.5 years old

24 out of 50 people were born in US.

Of those 24 American born people,

9 consider themselves “American” (37%)

88% have childhood memories of family meals

AVG TIMES/WEEK THE PERSON COOKS: 3 times

68% have recipes handed down to them by family

members

Of that 68%, only 29.5% have the recipes in written

form, the remainder is verbal.

27 different nationalities

IT IS IMPORTANT FOR ME TO KNOW HOW OTHERS MY AGE

feel about food, memory, identity, and most importantly the

communal meal. The results of the questionnaire opened my

eyes to many things, including the idea that the cooking and

the communal meal drawn on strong and comforting memories.

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STATEMENT

I am studying the communal meal because I want to expose

food’s ability to create human interaction in order to

revitalize cultural traditions, encourage community, and

reclaim identity.

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