Charlas culinarias (culinary chats): A methodology and pedagogy expanding a food consciousness

Abstract

ABSTRACTCharlas culinarias as methodology and pedagogy, simply put, is about democratizing knowledge to impact the formation of a food consciousness. It is through the development of a food consciousness that allows students to take their familial culinary knowledge and practices and reflect how they form part of larger complex, complicated, and contradictory food systems. Over the years, I’ve learned that for students to think critically about Belasco’s claim that “food matters” and that “it has weight” and “it weighs us down,” they must develop a food consciousness (2008, 2). This consciousness increases their ability to understand the impact that “food voice” has in shaping their cultural views and social opinions. They recognize that their food choices are never neutral, but governed by social, political, economic, and cultural ideologies that continuously re-shape their individual, familial, and cultural sense of self. While food has the power to define us, with the development of a food consciousness, students also understand how people can and do (re)write the importance of such power by how they express what food means within the construction of their own food narratives.KEYWORDS: Food storiesfood consciousnessculinary subjectivitycharlas culinarias Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1. To illustrate to students how to map out their own family culinary practices, I introduce Lidia Marte’s food maps methodology (Marte Citation2007).2. I follow narrative theorist Didier Coste’s definition of what a narrative means: “An act of communication in narrative [form] wherever and only when imparting a transitive view of the world is the effect of the message produced” (Coste Citation1989, 4).3. See my article, “Charlas Culinarias: Mexican Women Speak from Their Public Kitchens,” (Citation2007) where I argue that it is our palate’s loyalty to the flavors a woman’s sazón gives to her food that keeps customers returning to eat at a particular food establishment. In his study of Puerto Rican food, sociologist Cruz Miguel Cuadra Ortíz (2006) introduces the concept of palate memory which further underscores why it is in our palates where loyalties lie for certain flavors.