What is Cooking with Garce?
“Tell me what kind of food you eat, and I will tell you what kind of person you are.”
While ‘Cooking with Garce’ may have been the name I had to choose for this website under very high pressure with very little time, think of it as my case study.
Food itself is a “biological product that is culturally appropriated, and can offer a microcosm of how cultures operate.” (Bower, 2007). While this has always been relevant, it is quite noticeable today because our food practices have become visualized and narativized more than ever before because they are mediated by technology. Through social media, the promotion of different cuisines has influenced many people to consume food and drinks in a variety of ways that they may not have otherwise (think ‘Tasty’ videos, instafood, SpoonU…). Food representations via social media, especially in the form of photos and videos, have created broader awareness of the diverse chain of global food production. Thus, this growing interest in food and cooking has great potential to bring to the surface information about cultures we may not normally expose ourselves to. This is one of the many reasons why I am creating Cooking with Garce.
This is part of my larger summer research project that explores food culture by way of the Digital Humanities, a field of scholarship that I have decided to simply define as using the digital tools from the world we live in today to ask new questions and find, organize, and (even creatively) display new information. See my mission to learn more.
Anne Bower, Robert L. Hall, William Whit, Psyche Williams-Forson, Doris Witt, Anne Yentsch, and Rafia Zafar. African American Foodways: Exploration of History and Culture, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Eating Yourself: We Consume Identity Through Food?” Culture Decanted. October 19th, 2014. https://culturedecanted.com/2014/10/19/eating-yourself-we-consume-identity-through-food/
Ikma Citra Ranteallo, Imanuella Andilo, “Food Representation and Media: Experiencing Culinary Tourism Through Foodgasm and Foodporn,” from Balancing Development and Sustainablility in Tourism Destinations, 2016. Abstract.
Cooking with Garce 