Chapulines- Food Profile

On a family vacation to Oaxaca during the summer of 2006, I was introduced to what Francisco Toledo calls Mexico’s indigenous version of fast food in Jeffrey Pilcher’s article “Taco Bell, Maseca, and Slow Food.” Chapulines are fried grasshoppers sold from baskets and generally eaten with tortillas and guacamole. As the daughter of an entomologist, I’ve been a bit more intrepid in the decisions I make about what to eat. I’ve sampled my share of mealworms and chocolate covered crickets, but never had a grasshopper passed my palate.

While eating insects may seem like a strange novelty in American society, these creatures are a staple in the diet of many cultures throughout the world. Oaxacans consume 85 different species of insects including 15 varieties of grasshoppers in the nymph and adult stages. Chapulines are harvested from milpa, maize, and alfalfa fields during the months of August through December. Chapulines are not used as an emergency food to ward off starvation, but are included as a planned part of the diet throughout the year when seasonally available. They are harvested and prepared in the following manner:

1. The harvesting occurs early in the morning when the ground is cool and the chapulines are dormant.
2. They are caught with nets typically by men and younger boys in the fields.
3. The harvesters work for a couple of hours and put chapulines into a bag or box.
4. When it is cooler, they will clean the catch by eliminating unwanted bugs.
5. The chapulines are then left in a cool dark place for 2 to 3 days so they can clean themselves. This is done to empty whatever material may be in their digestive tract.
6. After they are clean, they are sorted by life stage, nymph or adult.
7. To prepare, water is brought to a boil and the chapulines are quickly added.
8. The chapulines are removed from the water and transferred to a comal (griddle) for toasting. They must be cooked because they may carry nematodes that can infest human hosts.
9. One of two flavors is added, limon y sal de gusano (worm salt) or garlic. [i]

Chapulines have long been a food source in Oaxaca. Farmers even plant a cheap kind of corn to attract the grasshoppers. While any American farmer would shy at the thought of pests among their crop, Mexican farmers see that it is better because they can get more money for the edible bugs than for their crops.[ii] Eating bugs in Mexico extends back over 3000 years. In Aztec times, pest control was accomplished largely by eating bugs rather than spraying them.[iii] The practice of harvesting insects results in a reduction of pesticides while creating economic opportunities for the people.

While the insects are harvested by males, it is generally women who sell chapulines by the bagful throughout Oaxaca’s markets. This is seasonal work that allows them to supplement their household income. A vendor can earn $100 in a day selling chapulines that cost about 20 pesos (less than $2) for a handful and 100 pesos for a kilogram.

Because chapulines are collected and prepared in the household, there is little or no cost associated with them. While the Oaxacan diet is typically built around tortillas, caldos (meat stews), and vegetables, chapulines can add a vital source of crude protein when added to these dishes. When broken down, a chapuline provides the following nutrition: 56-77% protein, 4-11% fat, 2-5% minerals, and 9-12% carbohydrate.[iv]

The demand for chapulines is rising outside of Mexico. They are being exported to the US, where they are packaged and sold to high-end restaurants and marketed as ethnic or traditional foods. Juan Garcia Oviedo, a Mexican biologist, hopes to produce more modern “mixed-bug” products in the future. By adding ground up grasshoppers to hot dogs, you can increase the nutritional value by five or six times.[v]

With uncertainty looming in the traditional domesticated animal market of chicken, cow, and pig, insects such as chapulines may be a legitimate source to turn to. When a cricket is fed a diet of similarly high quality to that used to rear conventional livestock to market size and condition, the food conversion efficiency of crickets is estimated to be two times that of pigs and broiler chicks, four times that of sheep, and more than five times that of beef animals. When considering the high fecundity of a cricket, 1500 offspring per female cricket compared to four animals in the beef herd for each animal marketed, the true food conversion efficiency is nearly 20 times greater for the cricket then beef.[vi] Protein production of insects for human consumption is more effective and consumes fewer resources than animal protein. This makes eating insects more ecological than vertebrate meat. Insects are also far cleaner than other creatures. Grasshoppers eat fresh, clean, green plants whereas crabs, lobsters and catfish eat any kind of foul, decomposing material as scavengers in water.[vii]

If insects became more widely accepted as a respectable food item in the industrial countries, there are several economic and health implications. One major concern with widespread use of chapulines is their lead contamination. In California, an investigation of lead poisoning among community residents indicated that chapulines from Oaxaca, Mexico contained in some instances as much as 2,300 micrograms of lead per gram of product. High levels of lead have been found in the soil of Zimatlan, a district in Oaxaca where chapulines are grown and harvested. An old silver mine near a village in Zimatlan is believed to be the source of contamination. The US Food and Drug Administration recommended that children under 6 should consume no more than 6.0 micrograms of lead each day from all food sources. Thus, a young child could ingest nearly 60 times his or her tolerable daily intake for lead by eating one of these highly contaminated chapulines. Lead contamination is also a concern for pregnant women. Toxic to young children and developing fetuses, lead can cause damage to the central nervous system, resulting in learning disabilities and behavioral disorders that could last a lifetime.[viii]

For me, chapulines taste similar to what fish food smells like. This may not make much sense because fish food has quite a pungent smell. Their texture is quite crispy and many people remark how at least one of their six legs gets lodged in a back molar. Though I could never envision popping a handful of crunchy grasshoppers in my mouth as though it were popcorn, using it as a condiment in things like omelets or as a protein source in chocolate chip cookies is a viable option in my diet.


Footnotes:
[i] “Chapulin.” The Chapulin and Anthropology. Ohio State University.
[ii] “Eating bugs: A lucrative market in Mexico.” The Associated Press. MSNBC.com 16 June 2005.
[iii] “Eating bugs: A lucrative market in Mexico.” The Associated Press. MSNBC.com 16 June 2005.
[iv] “Chapulin.” The Chapulin and Anthropology. Ohio State University.
[v] “Eating bugs: A lucrative market in Mexico.” The Associated Press. MSNBC.com 16 June 2005.
[vi] “A concise Summary of the General Nutritional Value of Insects.” Gene DeFoliart. Crop Production. 1992.
[vii] Lyon, William. “Insects as Human Food.” Ohio State University Extension Fact Sheet.
[viii] “Health Warning on Lead-Contaminated Chapulines.” California Health Department. November 13, 2003.

A Day of Gardening

Last Saturday I became the proud caretaker of five broccoli starts. I picked them up from the University Farmer’s Market at a stall for the Seattle Youth Works community garden at Marra Farm. I arrived in Vancouver, WA at my boyfriend’s parent’s house last night and planted them today. The job was not as romanticized as I imagined it to be. With the help of my boyfriend, I had to clear the garden plot of weeds, till the soil with shovels, break up clumps of dirt, and scatter some topsoil. The size of my plot was only 1 meter squared. I couldn’t imagine having to do that to acres and acres of land. When it came time to actually plant my broccoli starts, I was quite discouraged to realize the aphids had made a meal of my precious plants. There were dozens of the pests crawling all over the leaves. I discovered my calling in life is not to become a farmer. It is hard work, both physically and mentally demanding, making things grow properly. I just hope to not be confined to a windowsill herb garden in the future. I have to build up my shovel-digging arm muscles.

One Man's Table Scraps, Another's Meal

We had David Giles, a food activists with Food not Bombs, come give a presentation to our class about when food becomes waste. The three categories of why food is generally thrown away are out of convenience, health risks, and obsolescence. 

25 close friends and I celebrate a going away party for my roommate at Buca Di Beppo's yesterday. My experience at Buca di Beppos’ definitely fell in the category of convenience. Our eyes were bigger than our stomach and we were ravenous for food when we first arrived. The recommended portions listed on the menu were a large size feeds four to six people and a regular feeds two to four. We deviated from these recommendations and ordered a large alfredo for only 3 people. Of course, we filled up on the house bread and oil before our meal even arrived and thus only had a few spoonfuls of our mammoth mountain meal. When the waitress came with the doggie bags for us to take home the leftovers, we decided not to take them home. Someone mentioned how the oil and cream weirdly separate when you let the sit in the fridge. Thus, we were all sated and couldn’t imagine the thought of more food at that moment. I felt guilty for this because I was now educated by David to know that there is ways to responsibly give out my “wasted” food. But, alas, I didn’t act responsibility and ended up letting perfectly good food enter the waste stream.

Community Gardens

Today, our class visited two p-patches. The first observation I made during this field trip was how many of the plants were not focused on cultivation fruits and vegetables. When Professor Anagnost first mentioned at the beginning of the quarter that she was taking on a p-patch, I imagined this as a PEA-patch, where all that was grown was peas. I later figured out that there was a wide variety of species here on these community patches, but was shocked to realize upon exploring them that most of what was growing was actually flowers. Although the flowers were quite breathtaking, especially the field of irises (I'd never before seen a black flower), I would have thought vegetables would have been a larger priority because generated a more "meaningful" product.

During Teresa Mares' lecture on community gardens, I began to understand how vital they can be to neighborhoods. I was intrigued to hear that earlier in the century, 44% of all fresh fruit and vegetables were grown in these community garden settings- not the industrial monoculture agriculture centers we now have. In the discussion on the South Central Community Farm in Los Angeles, I felt anger that the collective space had been bulldozed over to pave the way for another Walmart Distribution center. I could only imagine the uproar this would have caused. The similar scene that popped into my mind was that at Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 where a man was attempting to stop some advancing tanks. Having invested blisters, sore backs, and countless hours of weeding/hoeing/watering, the "farmers" of the South Central farm surely depended on the area and felt a right to it.

I am hopeful that gardens such as those we visited today will become widespread throughout the United States. I wish I would have heard of the opportunity earlier in my college career. Now that I'm a junior, I don't have enough time left in Seattle to get on a 16 month waiting list and take advantage of it. Where ever I do end up, I look forward to taking part in a community garden, understanding where my food originates from, and discerning the difference between a pea plant and that of a cucumber. I was pleased to see Lori had brought her son along so that she could "plant a seed" in his mind about these things.

Also, I just found out today that my boyfriend's mother is going to help me grow broccoli (my favorite veggie) this summer!!! I am excited....

Slow Food

While in college, I have grown accustomed to picking up meals on the go and spending little to no time actually preparing them. Yesterday, I visited my boyfriend's parents house in Vancouver, WA and had a lesson in Slow Food. Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma defines the mission of slow food "to remind a generation of industrial eaters of their connection to farmers and farm, and to the plants and animals we depend on" (259).

The menu for the night was salmon burgers with corn on the cob, salad, whole potatoes, and bread, all followed by blackberry pie. Getting the meal together was a full family effort. My first duty was making the salad for the family of 5. When first assigned the task, I thought I would be pulling leaves from a polyethylene bag similar to those that Pollan discusses on page 176- precut, prewashed "summer greens." But then I was handed a bowl of gigantic leaves of lettuce and spinach still attached to each other. I had not realized how mammoth a spinach leaf was; I was indoctrinated to believe that golf-ball sized spinach leaves from the bags were standard while these extended the length of my hand (not including the stem!). The salad alone took 25 minutes for me to complete. I had to wash the leaves, remove the rotty areas, hand tear them into bite sized pieces, as well as gather all the toppings of cut up pear, sunflower seeds, cranberries, chopped walnuts, and shredded asiago cheese.

It took a considerable more amount of time to create this salad, compared to a bagged one with separate packets for the toppings and dressings that I had grown used to. It was definitely a job I'd only have time to do on a lazy weekend, not a normal hectic school day. But the act of preparing the meal in the kitchen with the other members of the family made for quite a social occasion. My boyfriend was removing the skin from the salmon fillets, while his brother was rolling out the homemade crust for the frozen blackberries that had been picked from the vines around the perimeter of their house last summer.

When I finally sat down to eat the meal, I realized that this is what Whole Food meant by "whole foods." Nothing contained more than a handful ingredients and everything had originated from somewhere relatively local- even the wine we drank it down with. It was all a fine lesson in eating slow food and "local" whole foods, but certainly something that can only happen only infrequently because of time permitting.

Chicken in a Biskit

It was questioned today while I was camping whether I had actually had a childhood. Supposedly, there was a staple food of my friend Katie's childhood that I never had the privilege to eat. "Chicken in a Biskit" is made by the same company that boxes Cheese Nips. It is a "baked snack cracker" that encompasses the taste of chicken.

This product reminds me of our experience in class last week when we investigated the taste behind chicken flavored ramen. What does chicken taste like? Similar to the ingredients of the ramen flavor package, both products contain actual cooked chicken. Number 12 of 13 ingredients in Chicken in a Biskit is dehydrated cooked chicken. There is more Sugar, Salt, MSG, and "Natural Flavor" in these chicken flavored crackers than chicken itself.

When I questioned what Katie thought was the best part about the snack was, she enjoyed that it was super salty, not the chicken flavor. She craves salt. When I brought up ramen, Katie commented that she isn't attracted to the meat flavor in the soup, but the salt factor. She prefers beef ramen over the chicken because it has a higher salt content on her palate. This attraction to salt is not surprising; salt may be the cheapest spice to stimulate taste buds.

Upon sampling a few of the crackers myself, they tasted like a buttery bouillon cube. It was similar to that of ramen, but more diluted. The visible salt flecks on the cracker were definitely detectable in my mouth, making me thirsty after I swallowed the snack.

This cracker certainly failed in encompassing chicken flavor. Shortly after eating this snack, I came across Pollan's experience of eating the Polyface chicken. He remarks that his "chicken smelled and tasted exactly like chicken.... it [was] a more chickeny chicken" (271). What is the capitalized idea of Chicken we hold in our heads but seldom taste anymore... I can assure you it undoubtedly was not contained in these chicken flavored crackers.

You are what you eat, and I am corn

After diving into Michael Pollen's novel, The Omnivore's Dilemma, I was shocked to discover how vital of a food staple corn is- more than 25% of the items in a supermarket contain corn. Pollen clarifies that "corn is in the coffee whitener and Cheez Whiz, the frozen yogurt and TV dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soups and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and gravy and frozen waffles, the syrups and hot sauces, the mayonnaise and mustard, the hot dogs and the bologna, the margarine and shortening, the salad dressings and the relishes and even the vitamins" (19).

It amazes me how distant I am from the food I eat. The closest I have ever been to a growing plant of corn was in a Corn Maze last Halloween. When I recollect on my thoughts of corn before reading this book, I never would thought of myself as a big corn eater or correctly guessed how much corn I actually consumed. I would have only considered the corn that I "directly" ate, meaning that it appeared on my plate on the cob, or among other kernals, or even as popped corn. But as Pollen states, this represents only a tiny fraction of the corn we eat. Each American is personally responsible for consuming a ton of corn every year (85).

After taking a few years of chemistry, I have gotten in the habit of looking at food labels curious to see if I could understand the name of ingredients that compose the food. But somehow it never occurred to me that the ingredients were all basically derivatives of Zea mays- corn. Upon first realizing this, I believed this to be a positive thing. After all, corn is a vegetable, vegetables are healthy, therefore whatever contains corn must be healthy and good for the body. But this line of reasoning is completely flawed, because the corn gets processed so heavily in the "wet mills" and broken down into countless simple compounds that no longer reflect the original nutrition of the cob.

Upon reading the recipes for the Mess O' Greens and Hoppin' John that we prepared in class today, I was relieved to discover that none of the ingredients contain derivates of corn. That is until I thought hard about the bacon... which came from a pig... and most certainly was fed corn. Oh well, I suppose corn is now one of those elements that mankind will never rid itself of because of the way we have come to depend on it. After all, we are corn's koala!

Practice, practice, practice...

I spent my first prolonged period on the UW farm yesterday. I arrived there before anyone else in the class and wander around to see all that was contained in the area. I became mesmerized by the bee boxes and was delighted to discover a sassafras tree in the conical garden. The bark of this tree gave off the root beer scent when "scratched-and-sniffed." It truly seems like an exotic place, and I only began to fathom how much work was put into its upkeeping.

When people started to arrive, we got to work building the fire in the cob oven for pizzas. I realized, like many of the other newbies there, that I had no idea how to build an effective fire or chop wood with an ax. The only capacity in which I helped was by crumpling the newspaper that was used as a fire starter.

Even when it came to helping work on the farm, I discovered how "green" I really was- in terms of lack of knowledge. It was my task to water some of the beds and tubs of crops with a watering hose. But I felt like I needed to be walked through every step of the process: where the hose was located, how to attach the wand, and how to "delicately" water so as to not crush the germinating seedlings with a cascade of water.

I suppose the theme behind making the fire and watering the plants is practice makes perfect. While I was doing these tasks, a riddle one of my professors taught on the first day came to mind: An old New Yorker is approached in the street by a Texan and asked, "Pardon me sir, but how do I get to Carnegie Hall?" He slowly replies, "Practice, practice, practice." Now that I've had experience in watering the plants and seeing how the fire is setup, I hopefully will be more independent on future visits to the farm. Though it will certainly take more muscle bulk in my arms before I can chop wood like Keith!

After the cob oven had burned sufficiently for an hour, it became time for pizza making. I was surprised at the crowd that had shown up. Among the people there were two students from my year long Physical Chemistry class. I'd never spoken with them until that point because it is a 100 person lecture filled with both Chemical Engineering and plain ole' Chemistry students. As a plain ole' chemistry student, we don't really interact much with the chemical engineers inside the classroom. But the cob oven had brought us together in this social gathering, and suddenly we were discussing our hopes, aspirations, and wacky chemistry professors.

Finally, I must comment on the pizzas produced by the cob oven. They were truly stellar. Using the dough and pesto that Professor Anagnost prepared, the peppers, tomatoes, and carmelized onions she dumpster-dived, basil and garlic pasta sauce I had leftover from a spaghetti dinner, and kale I simply picked from one of the farm plants, I created a pizza that put Pizza Hut to shame. In less then 3 minutes, Master Cob Pizza Cooker (aka Prof Anagnost) presented me with my dinner.

The interaction around the pizzas brought the idea of the UW Farm completely together. Keith and others began the farm partly because they wanted to share the knowledge and crops grown with the larger public. After only spending a bit actually working on the farm, I thought it was mighty righteous for Keith to invest so much time and energy in the farm, only to share the profits (food harvested) with people he will never meet. I realized I'm more of a miser in that sense, and wouldn't be so apt to share at no charge with people who hadn't lent a hand, etc. Bring this back to the pizza, I expected that whoever made the pizza would be the one to eat it. But, again, it was all focused on sharing. This is what made the experience amazing because we got to sample everyone's pizza and then discuss what made it awesome and unique. I learned that sharing of food enhances people's relationships.

Stigmatization of a Trash Digger

When the term trash digger is thrown around, the image that pops into my mind is that of a bum delving around in a huge dumpster behind a greasy Thai restaurant or pizza joint. But upon attending the Colloquium Series in Anthropology entitled "Food for Thought: Approaches to the Anthropology of Food," I myself benefitted from the term dumpster diving after sampling a delicious dish that contained "recovered items." Professor Ann Anagnost had made a fresh spinach frittata with the spinach she obtained while scrounging around the dumpster behind QFC on Roosevelt with David Giles.

David Giles' panel talk dealt with the issues of dumpster diving and when is food waste. He discussed how the food that generally ends up in the dumpsters and compost bins of QFC/ Trader Joe's/ Essential Bread/ Naked Juice isn't necessarily thrown away because it is no longer safe to eat. It may just have a minor dent or be approaching its expiration date. Because there is something newer and more enticing to the costumer waiting to take its place on the shelve, it is simply thrown away. 

Even after explaining this to people I know, they still find it ridiculous to imagine removing something from the trash can and using it. My boyfriend is persistent that anything I would take from a trash can would make me sick- even after I explain to him what David Giles' talked about. Maybe I will just have to force it on him and serve him some banana bread with dumpster dived bananas or a hamburger with dumpster dived onions. I speak with experience in reiterating what David Giles said about how he knew a tiny minority of people who had actually gotten ill from eating something dumpster dived, while he can name dozens of people who have fallen sick from eating Jack in the Box!

Not all Pesticides are Created Equally

One comment passively made in the movie The Future of Food is that "nerve gas developed during World War II was slightly modified to make insecticides. As a chemistry major, I know that a single atom can make a huge difference in whether a compound is hazardous or beneficial. For example, chlorine is a toxic gas. But when it is combined with a little bit of sodium, it makes sodium chloride, or table salt.

My dad is an entomologist- this means that he studies insects. Part of the research he does is developing the chemicals that are the same as the pheromones. Pheromones are the chemicals emitted by organisms that allow them to communicate between individuals of the same species. One function they serve is locating a potential mate. So his lab creates molecules that are chemically the same as the pheromones that bad insects (pests) emit in a agricultural field. His product doesn't actually kill any insects, it just confuses the male insects in their quest to find a female, thus preventing them from mating. But, the USDA still considers his product a insecticide. Therefore, I think it is too much of a generalization for the book to claim that insecticides are a derivative of nerve gas.

Tampopo: a quest for divine noodles

The movie Tampopo, which we recently viewed in class, is rich in themes about how food and life mingle. It was intriguing to me about how a movie can be made around this central idea of revitalizing a Japanese noodle bar. The owner of the restaurant, Tampopo, comes to the realization that her noodle bar is not meeting the expectations of its costumers when a hungry truck driver named Goro stops by and critiques her cooking skills. Through his help, she is introduced to people from all facets of Japanese society who collectively help her reach her goal for divine noodles and make her noodle joint "high class."

One aspect of the film I found to be innovative was the idea behind food and class. One scene

 in the movie depicts an "etiquette school" where a woman is teaching a class of presumably wealthy teenage ladies how to properly eat spaghetti as a Westerner would. She is explaining how Japanese will slurp up noodles, but this is taboo in many parts of the world. The teacher then instructs the women on how to use a fork and spoon to swirl the noodles into a bitable quantity. Yet, a westerner who is sitting across the restaurant over hears this lesson and decides to shake up the idea on the proper way to consume noodles. He outwardly slurps the noodles, gaining the attention of the class. The class, assuming he is the embodiment of a typical westerner, begin to mimic his eating habits, including the teacher. The theme behind this frame is that you can't generalize a whole culture.

In the same restaurant that the noodle lesson is going on, a business dinner meeting is occuring. The group of older Japanese men include on young man. He is depicted as a clumsy fool at the beginning of the scene, dropping a load of folders. When the waiter comes around to take their orders, all the older men follow suit of the first person who orders and get the only thing on the menu they recognize, along with a Heineken beer. Yet, the young man shines as an expert in food. He goes so far as to recall the name of the restaurant in France that his dish originates from. Also, he proves to be a wine connoisseur. This is a breakthrough moment where the theme that being high class and old doesn't mean your refined in food knowledge.

Bento Making 101

One of the many transitions I made when I came to college was my diet. After leaving the comfort of my Arizona kitchen and being transplanted to Seattle, I suddenly was left without an area to make my own meals. This spurred the opportunity to explore numerous different types of cuisines. One of the first local specialities I came across was the Thai food restaurant- Thaiger Room- on the Ave. Never before had I sampled Phad Thai, but it was love at first bite.

Next I became enthralled by sushi, which I assumed to be the entirity of Japanese cuisine. I started out slow with some avocado rolls from QFC. I have always been a bit apprehensive about eating seafood- especially raw seafood- because I hail from Phoenix, land of no water and thus no fresh seafood. But during a date I went on to Saito's, a Japanese Cafe and Bar in Belltown, I fully immersed myself in the idea of toro and eel, even Nigiri.

 

I prematurely thought I had eaten all that Japanese culture had to offer- like Sushi was the only thing eaten in Japan. But during the Bento Box making experience we had in class on Thursday, I realized there was much more to the Japanese cuisine, and most of it was pickled. I don't enjoy "American" foods that are pickled, so it was a challenge to appreciate the Japanese foods that were. To the left is a picture of the colorful Bento Box I prepared for Elizabeth. Most of the items are labeled to the best of my memory. The tastes were so unique on my palette- flavors I had never before experienced. I enjoyed the rice ball, though I was unsure if I was supposed to devour it in one bite. That is also my issue with pieces of sushi. I look like a slob if I try to fit the whole thing in my mouth, but it falls apart if I eat it in multiple bites. I believe I need to attend an etiquette course on how to properly eat sushi, or sit in a sushi bar and observe how it is done. 

Japanese Bento Meets the American Brown Lunch Bag

Few of my elementary school friends' mothers would have had the time to make intricate lunches similar in style to the Japanese Bento lunchbox. My lunchbox was primarily an assortment of prepackaged foods- with the exception being a peanut butter sandwich prepared by my mother and a piece of fruit. A cross-section of my generalized elementary school lunch box would reveal a frozen Capri Sun on the bottom, then my apple or pear, followed by the sandwich and a bag of cookies with Doritos on top.
During class on Tuesday, Andrea Arai introduced us to the history of food systems in Japan and the significance of bento as a child’s lunchbox. In addition, there were a handful of her Japanese students scattered around the classroom allowing us to gain first-hand knowledge of each other’s eating culture. One of the many aspects of bento that struck me as odd was the size of the container; all the individual components of my lunch made it quite mammoth relative to the size of a bento box. It seemed like the bento would have difficulties housing even just a sandwich. But the Japanese students said that it was the normal size.

While reflecting back on my elementary lunch experiences, I feel absolutely no regret that I wasn’t raised in the Japanese culture bento boxes. It would have been a hardship for my mother to spend 30 minutes to an hour each day racking her brain’s juices for a creative looking meal. I’m sure I wouldn’t have appreciated it relative to the amount of effort she put in it- especially if it was the norm. I’m glad that when I am a mother I won’t feel obligated and pressured by my child’s school district to make an aesthetically pleasing bento for my children. Plus, the whole environment of a school cafeteria would change if we didn’t have “Americanized” brown lunch sacks. I have fond memories of the swapping that goes on during elementary school lunch, which enhances the community and social aspects of eating. The sharing of food would be cease if everyone had the more individualized bento lunch.

The Seasonality of Pomegranates

Apparently, pomegranates are not available for purchase in March.

I abruptly realized this after unsuccessfully searching QFC for them at the end of Winter Quarter. I was about to embark on a very long plane ride from Seattle to Washington D.C. and had learned earlier during a similar situation in December how glorious a pomegranate can be to pass the time and keep my mind (and stomach) occupied on a long journey. During my search at QFC, I came across a binder that listed all the fruits and vegetables that QFC had ever had in their produce section. Sure enough, this book listed the season of pomegranates as September through December.

Before I came to college, variability in my fruit choices had been minimal. The fruits I generally purchased and devoured were ones available during all months- like apples, bananas, and oranges. I’m a huge fan of blueberries as well, and although they may be ridiculously priced in the months outside of July, August, and September, I was always able to find them stocked at the supermarket. Being raised in Arizona, I don’t really have a strong sense of the seasonality of growing and harvesting. The only two crops I was exposed to were cotton and citrus.

In class on Thursday, our discussion of Bill McKibben's “The Cuba Diet” lead us to wonder if it was possible for a person in Seattle to eat seasonally and locally. I am a consumer who lacks knowledge of the globalized food chain and where my food comes from. I generally glance at the stickers on my bananas that state their origin as Ecuador or read over the label on the plastic crate of strawberries that lists they were grown in California. But my thought process doesn’t go much beyond that; I don’t consider the amount of resources that were used to transport them to my shopping basket.

I do frequent the University Farmer’s Market on Saturday mornings, but usually end up walking across the street to Safeway to do my produce shopping. At this point in my life, cost is the major decision factor in what I eat. But as I learn more about the environmental impact and the health concerns of produce that is “imported” into Seattle, I will certainly be more likely to shell out the extra 30 cents for a pear in a farmers market that was locally grown.

Maybe I’ll just have to settle for pomegranate juice during their off season. But I still wish someone could genetically modify pomegranates so that they could be available all year around…

Peanut Butter Kiss Cookies

The thing that mattered almost as much to me as the presents I received on Christmas day was the massive amount of cookie baking that I did with my mother, brother, and sister during the few days prior to Christmas. My mother is a middle school teacher, so we were only allotted the 3 or 4 days before December 25th- depending on when school let out for winter break- to get “down and dirty” in the kitchen.

We’d start early in the morning. Boxes of butter would have been set out the night before, in a place safe from my curious cat, to ensure it was soft. All the recipes were located on index cards in a wooden box essentially only used for this Christmas cooking making extravaganza. The usuals that I can recall were: Russian Tea Cakes, Spritz, peanut butter kisses, oatmeal raisin, meringues, chocolate chips, gingerbread cookies, snickerdoodles, and peanut brittle. We would make and bake an exorbitant amount of cookie batches because we would give plates of them to neighbors and friends.

The peanut butter kiss cookies are still my all time favorite. There are numerous ways to screw up the other cookie recipes; the gingerbread people are troublesome to remove from their mold, the meringues are not always fluffy, the cookie press may stop working when trying to make the Spritz shapes causing us to resort to fashion our own forms out of them. But the peanut butter kiss cookies always cooperate.

It certainly was a family affair getting the peanut butter kiss cookies made. My two siblings and I were each given a task of either rolling the peanut butter balls, dipping them in sugar, or unwrapping dozens of Hershey’s kisses. My ideal chore was unwrapping the chocolate because then I got the opportunity to arrange them how I wanted them to be on the holding plate. Sometimes I’d make pyramidal structures out of them, and at others it was simple concentric circles. When the dough was all rolled out, we would bake two cookie sheets at a time. But the vital part during the baking process was timing when to add the kisses. If one added them too soon, the cookies ended up undercooked because the kisses can only stand so long at 350° F before they haplessly melt. When the sheets were removed from the oven, it was a race against time to place the kisses in the center of the dough ball. We worked like well-trained factory workers transporting the kisses from the plate to the cookies. The cookie sheets were returned to the oven for a few minutes before taken out to cool.

When it came time to eating the peanut butter kiss cookies, I generally ended up removing the Hershey kiss and simply eating the cookie. I loved how the area underneath where the kiss had been plopped was compacted doughy-ness, more so than I enjoyed eating the chocolate kiss itself.

Peanut Butter Kisses:
1 cup butter
2/3 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup granular sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla
2 2/3 cup flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
36 Hershey’s chocolate kisses

Combine butter, peanut butter, and sugars in electric mixer and blend until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla. After mixing flour, salt, and soda, add to cream mixture and stir well. Roll dough into quarter size balls. Roll each ball in a bowl of sugar. Bake dough at 350° F for 8 minutes. Take out and quickly place a chocolate kiss in the center of each cookie. Bake an additional 2 minutes.