Just a Spoon Full of Home, and a Dash of Wheaton

The Power of Taste: Instant Remedies for Homesick Students

Some associate the smell of crisp autumn air, or pumpkin spice lattes with the beginning of autumn. For me, it’s sweet the aroma of concord grapes wafting onto the tennis courts from the presidents lawn. From the moment those grapes turn deep purple, the Wheaton Women’s Tennis Team lines the vines, picking vigorously and spitting seeds before and after each grueling practice. I swear to God, there are more seeds than tennis balls on the courts, and our over grips begin to turn purple by the end of the fall season.

Unfortunately, this time of year also leaves me feeling homesick because, being in season means no leaving campus for weekend trips home to Vermont. This got me thinking, how do students incorporate their cultural dining habits into their everyday lives here at Wheaton? Yes, making your nana’s famous oatmeal raisin cookies in the Everett kitchen is somewhat comforting, but is it at all possible to combined the two worlds that students bounce back and forth from using food? I have discovered through personal experience that this fusion of worlds through the art of cooking is extremely doable.

 

The Friday night before each tennis match, the team gets together for some good ol’ team bonding. Last week I suggested that we stay in and make something I knew everyone would enjoy: concord grape jam. After practice we picked as many grapes as we could carry, and brought them back to the tennis house which instantly became perfumed with a fresh, sweet aroma. Fortunately, as every true Vermonter does, I had a pint of dark amber maple syrup in my bag, so naturally we used it as our sweetener. Each culture has their own way of sweetening foods and drinks, some use sugar, some use honey, and Vermonters use maple syrup. This combination of a familiar sweetness and a flavor I associate with Wheaton and my team allowed me to fuse my two lives using the power of taste. 

This two ingredient preservative required only some of Wheaton’s finest grapes and a few cups of Vermont’s sweetest syrup to both cure my homesickness, and leave me feeling grounded on campus. The flavor of those grapes now have a new connotation, one that incorporates home and school. So yes, it is possible to fuse two separate worlds using just two simple ingredients: a few pounds of Wheaton and a cup full of home.