For this project, you'll identify two recipes you’ve never cooked before.
One should be a family recipe. One should be a historical recipe, not from your family. Both should be relatively "healthy." We'll talk about in class what that means (and how the meaning of that word changes depending on context), and we'll decide on parameters together.
Once you've identified two recipes, you'll cook them.
How do you find your historical recipe? For the purposes of this assignment, we will define a "historical recipe" as one that was written down or published before 1960. You're welcome to use a recipe that's much older -- as long as you get it from the original historical source itself (either in person or digitally) and not from a transcription. To find your historical recipe, there are a wealth of archival and digitized culinary resources out there. I highly recommend starting in person, on campus, in MSU's Special Collections, which has one of the best historical cookbook collections in the world. Special Collections is located on the first floor of the main library. You can also search digitally, starting with What America Ate, Feeding America, or HathiTrust. But, again, you must make sure you are working with an actual source from the past, not with a transcription. You'll be sending a photograph or screen shot of the original, historical recipe to me as part of the project (more on this below).
The cooking part might be quite easy. Or it might be really challenging, depending on your own experience, knowledge, resources, financial wealth, time wealth, kitchen access, and many other factors (including, of course, your enthusiasm). Reflect on this, and on the many different resources, skill sets, and mindsets that go into making daily cooking seem possible or impossible, pleasurable or tedious, in our culture.
You will write 750-1000 words reflecting on the whole experience: finding the recipes, shopping and preparing the ingredients, and cooking and eating the final dish, as well as our cultural attitudes towards cooking and time and the many limitations, real and perceived, to cooking regularly for ourselves.
Reminder: Make sure to refer to at least two class readings, films, or other sources in your essay.
In addition to handing in the written project in hard copy in class, you will also send me a few things by email:
1) Three casual, low-res photographs: You'll send one photograph or screen shot of your historical source and then two photographs of yourself cooking (one shot cooking each recipe) with a copy of our course pack or one of our class books in the photos. Note: These photographs are just a way of showing me that you used an original historical recipe and that you did all the cooking this semester.
2) Text and high-quality image for one of the recipes: You'll send the text (you must send the text itself, not a link) of your favorite of the two recipes, along with a high-resolution photo relevant to the recipe, which I will use in constructing our class recipe blog. The high-res photo doesn't have to be a photo of the finished recipe (that might not exist!). Instead, if your favorite recipe was stuffed peppers, you could send me a nice, high-res photo of a raw bell pepper you found on the internet.
3) Tell me in your email whether the recipe you're sending in is a Family Recipe or a Historical Recipe. If it's a historical recipe, let me know where and when (what year) it's from.
Note: For the rest of the semester, everyone can get one point of extra credit on their final average by cooking one of the recipes contributed by someone else to our Class Recipe Blog. See "Cooking Extra Credit" on our syllabus for details.