Food

Feb. 5th, 2021 | By Ashley Talton BR ‘23

Many of the people in the Zen Hospice end-of-life care facility, such as Mrs. M, are unable to eat. And yet, the most popular room in the house is the kitchen, where the aroma of freshly-baked cookies can be found, while people are chatting around the table. Even though the people there can’t enjoy the taste of the cookies…

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Bradley Yam SY ‘21

In an effort to restore a sense of optimism in these trying times, I offer a meditation on fruit. Yes––apples, pears, plums, bananas and berries aplenty. Fruits have not only fed, nourished, and pleased humankind with infinite color and variety since the beginning of history, but they have also offered wisdom that has largely been forgotten in the modern industrial food system.

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Ally Eidemueller BK ‘22

The painting The Angelus by Jean-François Millet depicts a man and a woman praying over their potatoes in the evening. The shaded silhouette contrasts the sun’s setting rays on the horizon. Over the man’s right shoulder, the sun engulfs the image, which draws the mind to something greater than the pitchfork and meager harvest, which represent the simple but inherently good livelihood of the pair.

Feb. 5th, 2021 | By Luke Bell PC ‘23

Farming is an expertise. Having lived on a farm in northeast Georgia, I speak from experience. Ever since I can remember, Angus cows, Massey Ferguson tractors, and southern rodeos have always been as commonplace to me as walking. Farming, however, is more than animals and machinery.

Feb 5, 2021 | By Sharla Moody BK ‘22

With the inventions of television and the internet, virtually everything can be photographed, videotaped, and uploaded for viewing and enjoyment. In some cases, this advent has ushered in important artistic innovations, like the Golden Age of Hollywood…

Feb. 5th, 2021 | By Shi Wen Yao MC ‘23

Food has a cult following. Consider the Yale College Facebook page named “Free Food at Yale.” Before COVID-19, everyday there were announcements upon announcements asking people to come to claim free food all around campus—leftover pizzas, chicken nuggets and all things of the sort…

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Hannah Turner BK ‘23+.5

24 hours. No social media. I constantly find these challenges all over social media, ironically. To forgo prominent desires of our daily lives in pursuit of something else—to fast—seems like the new trend. Has online social interaction become a necessity to our modern lives? I’d say the answer is yes—yes, and maybe even as much as food.

Feb. 5th, 2021 | By Daniel Chabeda ES ‘22

He is crying, quietly because he’s already a spectacle lying in the mulch beside the only path to the laundry room. You wish you didn’t recognize him, but you already made eye contact through his curtain of tears. Maybe it’s an orgo midterm again, you think charitably.

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Bella Gamboa JE ‘22

Longing is a familiar feeling. We miss those we love who are far away from us; we yearn for a return to normalcy and the end of this pandemic; we literally, physically hunger as every few hours our bodies require additional sustenance. In Psalm 63, King David of Israel, the psalmist according to the psalm’s title, captures in beautiful but fraught language his longing—for God.

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Raquel Sequeira TD ‘21+.5

The cover of Wired magazine’s March 2020 issue featured a scoop of fluorescent sherbet ice cream floating like a strange new planet amongst the stars. In the first month of the coronavirus pandemic, the piece zoomed out from earth: “Humans are headed for the cosmos, and we’re taking our appetites with us. What will fill the void when we leave Earth behind?”

Feb 5th, 2021 | By: Shayley Martin DC ‘22

You may know the God who led an entire people out of slavery by splitting a sea. Or who made a couple loaves of bread and some fish into a meal for more than 5,000 people. But there’s another story that you don’t hear about as often. It’s about the same God, but for me it makes the whole rest of the Bible hit different. I want you to meet the God of exploding cucumbers. 

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Jason Lee TD ‘22+1

In my mother’s house, buddae-jiggae is always served with a side of spinach. If any meal she made lacked vegetables, the spinach was how she compensated. Most stews come with seaweed or daikon or bean sprouts or long, spindly mushrooms simmering in red broth. In those cases, there is no need for spinach. Buddae-jiggae, however, does not contain anything green.

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Justin Ferrugia TD ‘23+1

As is the case for many American towns, driving around my hometown on a Sunday morning, one is guaranteed to see families dressed in their “Sunday best” walking down the street, crowded church parking lots, and groups gathering and mingling around an ornately dressed figure. To this day in America churches are the focal points of Sunday. But why?

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Se Ri Lee MC ‘23+1

My phone started beeping sporadically in the middle of my YouTube workout. Five KakaoTalk messages popped up, all sent from Umma. Dinner was going to be served in five minutes. Grumbling under my breath, I hurried over to the kitchen. “I’ll eat the leftovers later – is that okay? I had lunch like two hours ago,” I told Umma apologetically.

Feb. 5th, 2021 | By Bradley Yam SY ‘21

Acccording to a Chinese idiom 割股疗亲, there is an ancient Chinese myth that a filial son can cure his parent’s diseases by cutting off meat from his leg and feeding it to them. Over time, the idiom has come to represent filial piety. This practice might seem superstitious, medieval, even barbaric to us, but it says something about the hierarchy of value in ancient Chinese society.

Feb 5th, 2021 | By Timothy Han SM ‘22+1

In 1909, Ezra Pound published “The Ballad of the Goodly Fere,” a retelling of the Christ story in epic tone. In Pound’s proto-fascist reading, Christ becomes not a sheep led to the slaughter, but a warrior-martyr in the tradition of William Wallace, Joan of Arc, or John Brown. The Christ figure is all-powerful, “a master of men.”