Melanie Chambers doesn’t shy away from a culinary indulgence.
A trip to the Covent Garden Market in London gives Melanie Chambers, a limited duties professor in the Writing, Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program, food for thought. She is teaching a course on Food Writing this semester and students are learning writing about food takes more than a delicate palate.
In fact, both her palate and her pen welcome it.
Sinking her teeth into a buffet of foods is more than just feeding a craving; it is research for her next restaurant review or travel guide.
“I love eating. I look forward to lunch every day,” says Chambers. “Eating is so simple, but it is the thing I look forward to the most.”
Chambers is a limited duties professor in the Writing, Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities. She is teaching a course this semester on Food Writing.
Her love of creative cuisine began while travelling in Italy. Surrounded by a rich cultural history, it was what she found at the end of her fork that gave her an epiphany.
“As a travel writer, food is everything. Food is the reason why I travel and I also cycle so I can eat more,” she jokes.
One of her first travel writing assignments was an article about the variety of perogies she consumed while touring Poland.
Chambers’ work has been published in Homemakers Magazine, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star and Mountain Life Magazine (Collingwood).
While researching for a Frommer’s Travel Guide for the Niagara region – research meaning eating local produce and dining at restaurants that changed the menu with the seasons – she started looking at food in a different way.
“I felt that I was connecting to food on a taste level that I hadn’t in a long time,” she says.
Fuelling her desire to learn more about food preparation and ingredients, she was inspired by Thomas Pawlick’s book, The End of Food, which discusses how items such as tomatoes have evolved through the years and how nutritional values have changed as a result of trying to create the ‘perfect’ vegetable.
The course brings together the origins and history of food with what Chambers refers to as “the pleasure principle” of eating. This refers to not only the tastes, but the cultural and community aspects of a meal.
“The course is a taste of food writing in many different genres. Next to cookbooks, food memoirs are the most popular selling books.”
In one assignment, students are asked to write about a meal they ate as a child, recreating the emotional experience of the feast.
“A love of food doesn’t mean you’re a qualified restaurant writer. Part of food writing is educating yourself … You have to know about your ingredients.”
Everything from reporting on food studies and writing profiles of small, non-industrial farmers to creating recipes and restaurant reviews help cultivate an epicurean knowledge and vocabulary to become a food writer.
Food writing doesn’t have to be elitist, she notes. It is important to make the descriptions “a good read” and educational.
Food has always brought people together, but more recently it has moved from the kitchen into the living room.
Popular culture has turned cooking into a spectator sport, says Chambers. Television shows, such as Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, and the Food Network have created a shift in the way people look at food preparation and ingredients.
But, one of the downsides of this is many viewers are not motivated to apply the skills they learn in recipes at home, she says.
The course also explores the political side of food, including discussing genetically modified organisms and ‘super foods,’ organic and fair trade fare, and the slow food movement. It also explores the shift towards a “scientific” discussion about food, such as the rise in consciousness about fat content and nutritional values on food labels, rather than a focus on the ingredients and where they come from.
“Food shouldn’t be complicated,” she says.
Learning to write about food begins with the taste buds.
To tempt students to explore new ways to describe food, Chambers brings in samples for them to try. Guest speakers drop by to discuss how to refine their palates and understand the differences between foods. One of the assignments was participating in a chocolate-tasting session.
“They learn to connect with food again on a basic level again – a pleasurable level,” she says. “It goes back to writing food as more than just nourishment; it emotionally fills us up and feeds us.”
For more information on the Writing, Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program, visit www.uwo.ca/writing.