Le Petit Mangeur

OUTLINE: of my project: Frish and Frosh Experiment Here is the outline of my experiment: Research: the vowels and sounds used in words that mean "big, small" etc. in *Sri Lankan, spanish, and french. 1. Following the procedure of the Frish vs. Frosh experiment, I will see if their conclusion holds true with international students. 2. I will have one or two native speakers of english as a control. I will then use one native speaker of sri lankan, spanish, and perhaps french. *note: the languages are tentative. 3. I will take the experiment one step further: I will give the participants two bowls of icecream: one named frish and the other frosh. I will tell them that they are the different icecreams they read about. 4. But there is a catch: actually they are eating the same ice cream. 5. Will what they have read about the icecreams affect how they feel the icecream tastes? Will one icecream taste better than the other? 6. Powerpoint presentation, perhaps. I found it quite diffi

Milano cookies are part of a series of cookies made by Pepperidge Farm (which also make a series of grain breads) made for those who have a "discriminating taste". The taste terms I chose for today's post are "distinctive cookies" and the line "Picture if you will, its subtle contours, its perect balance". Makes me think that what I am eating is not just some cookie but a work of art. That is, I think, the feeling Pepperidge Famr is trying to convey. Just take a look at the side panel of the package the cookies came in: "The Art of the Cookie...Begin with a baker;s soul. Seek the finest ingredients...Open... Taste...Delight. By taking a bite of one sweet, crunchy Milano cookie, you are going to "entertain inspirations" and "embrace decadent cravings". A Milano cookie is not some calorie-ridden dessert that follows a meal...it is an experience unto itself. These cookies are definitely not made for the same type of consumer as N

Taken from the Oxford Dictionary (online): 1797 Lond. Art Cookery 149 Serve this ragoo under two ducks, cut into quarters, and brazed in a well seasoned braze. 1846 French Domest. Cookery 41 Braise : to stew meat tender with fat bacon. When I think of the verbs braise, bake, roast, I think of meat in an oven. But intrinsically I know there must be some subtle difference, otherwise why would there be three different words for the same thing? You can roast vegetable, but you can also bake them. For some reason, when I think of savory foods that are baked I immediately find them less appealing than if you used the verb "roast". Both words are under the lexical category of "cook", and if you made a features matrix for any of the three words in question, they would all have [+oven] in it. So why would I be less likely to eat a baked chicken than roasted chicken? I suppose it has to do with the personal bias and connotations I have concerning bake

Today I am going to talk about Cheesecakes! I found this great site where one can find lots of information about the History of Cheesecake, including this old recipe from England in the mid-16th century. http://whatscookingamerica.net/History/Cakes/Cheesecake.htmv For those of you who are cheesecake virgins, this creamy delight is made with few, simple ingredients (traditionally). It has eggs, milk, sugar, cream cheese, and if you want a crumbly bottom, a graham cracker crust. I compared two recipes of cheesecakes. One was from the cookbook called " A Proper newe Booke of Cokerye, declarynge what maner of meates be beste in season, for al times in the yere, and how they ought to be dressed, and serued at the table, bothe for fleshe dayes, and fyshe days ", and one from the Food Network. Mid-16th Century Recipe for Cheese Cake: To make a tarte of Chese Take harde Chese and cutte it in slyces,and pare it, than laye it in fayre water, or in swete mylke, the space of three

Greek Goddess of Fertility. Ain't she a stunner? I love pomegranates. I first heard of pomegranates in fourth grade when we learned Greek Mythology. The stories were full of pomegranates; it was practically a literary device for change. It was the pomegranate seed that changed the fate of poor Persephone, subjecting her to eternal life in the underworld. I was reminded of the story of Persephone when I asked myself the question “are pomegranates fruits or berries?” I thought there was a difference, when really, fruit is more like the umbrella term and berries go under it. According to E.N. Anderson’s “Everybody Eats” a fruit as seen by botanists is a ripened ovary produced by a flowering plant. Basically anything that grows on a stem and has seeds in it. This differs considerably to what us normal folks call fruit, but for all intents and purposes I am going to stick with the scientific term. (Apparently, eggplant is a fruit??) So then we have different categories of fruits. Ther

Did you know that the inner core of an apple—more specifically the seeds of said fruit— contains tiny bits of arsenic? For those of you who‘ve forgotten tenth grade chemistry, arsenic used to be the poison of choice for your average criminal, and long ago, by your average Persian king.  I found this out from my roommate. She told me so, casually one day, as she munched on an apple. First she started like anyone would: bit into it, ate the fleshy part surrounding the seeds. Then she paused at the core. At this point I returned to procrastinating on the web. The next thing I knew, all there was left was the stem of the apple. What! She ate the seeds? Yup. Arsenic or no arsenic, my conscientious roommate refuses to let any part of the apple go to waste. She would probably eat the stem too, but it had been removed by the kindly dining hall staff. As much as I admire her...”waste not want not” attitude, I don’t think I could ever follow the same route. Is it my American-ess coming to the fo

“Classified ads, catalog entries, and menu entries are all advertising, whereas headlines and instructions are not.” – Zwicky, Ann and Arnold Zwicky pg 86 Yesterday in class we considered several brands of potato chips with varying prices. The chips that were more expensive sometimes had nicer packages and were less flashy than their cheaper counterparts. The one thing that remained constant was the amount of words on the back of the packages. The cheaper versions contained little information, sticking to simple and clear statements, while the more expensive brands used sentences or even whole paragraphs to describe their products. Do we need more convincing to buy something more expensive? Is that why there were so many words on the back of my Terra Chips? To me, too many words meant a product was not worth buying. If something is worth buying I don’t need to read a paragraph on the nutritional benefits of, oh, I don’t know, Sun Chips, to figure that out. Fo

So this blog is off and running! The title of this blog is only temporary, I know it seems a bit dull. So today was the first day of my introsem "The Linguistics of Food" and I made everyone jealous telling them of how fun this class already seems. We did a little experiment with a variety of chips: about half were from expensive brands and the other half were of cheaper brands. One thing I noticed as I walked back to my dorm was that on all the cheaper brands, the companies stressed either simplicity or wholesomeness, "The Original", or "Classic". Their appeal is one of nostalgia I think. Sometimes people don't want to try something new, they want food that's familiar and makes them think (perhaps) their childhood. I myself preferred a thick cut Ruffle chip to a Hawaiian chip. Sometimes less is more.