What makes a care package so caring?

We have all had that moment of excitement when our phone lights up with a notification from the mail room- a package!!! Personally, my mind starts running. Is it the shoes I ordered? Maybe a book? Or the best possibility- a care package from my mom.  I might be a little biased, but I believe my mom sends the most amazing and heart-warming care packages ever. Even the idea of a care package from my mom makes me smile. And this led me to wonder, what is so special about care packages? Why does a simple box of trinkets and food embody so much emotion? Sure, her cute greeting cards that are most commonly covered with cats wearing sweaters are delightful, but there is something more going on. After hours, okay, maybe minutes, of contemplation I realized it wasn't the cards or the festively decorated socks that make me love care packages so much- it’s the food. The staples of my mom’s care packages include home-made chocolate chip cookies and pumpkin bread (a favorite among my roommates). These sweet and delicious desserts are the foundation that I grew up on. Every party or gathering in my childhood consisted of cookies and there definitely was not a fall season without pumpkin bread. Receiving these foods in a care package from home reminded me of all of the comforts that I had as a childhood. Something as simple as a bite of pumpkin bread floods my mind with memories of my home and my mother 2000 miles away.

 

The goodies from my mom's most recent care package.

 As I started to think more about the affective nature of care packages it led me to think about the other side. How does my mom feel when she sends a package? Does making a package carry the same emotion? To find out I asked the care package goddess herself, my mother. My mom told me that even though make a care package can actually be quite a lot of work it is always worth it. In her words, “Being so far away from you guys, sending a care package makes me feel a little bit closer- more a part of your lives. We miss you guys. And it is always a nice thing to hear that people like your cookies and want more.” As someone who was always hosting a gaggle of my friends at our house and constantly making snacks and hosting team dinners, it make sense that my mom would miss being a part of my life in this way. Even though she can’t cook a dinner for me and my friends any more, she can send cookies or bread instead and can still be a part of my life. A care package isn't just a package of goodies, it is a link between my life in Massachusetts and my mom in Colorado.

What is comfort food?

This October break, I went to my roommate’s house for the long weekend. I chose not to go home because I didn’t want to pay travel expenses and my best friend/roommate offered for me to come over. Though they are not my family, we are very close and I can consider them family. Essentially they are a home away from home.

While we were there, of the many things we did throughout our day, mealtime was our favorite. Since good food is in shortage at Wheaton College, we had to indulge and what better way than to eat out at a restaurant for every meal?

On Thursday, on our way from campus to his house in Andover, Massachusetts, we stopped in for a late lunch at a Vietnamese Restaurant known for its Pho, or rice noodle soup. This soup usually contains beef or chicken as well as bean sprouts, cilantro, lime, and pepper. It is a very popular Vietnamese dish that has been globalized the rest of the world. To compare it to something, it is like a healthier version of ramen noodles. It was just my best friend and I enjoying the graces of a hot broth of vegetables, noodles, and beef. It was definitely the best meal of that break because it had meaning to me.

Pho is considered to be one of my comfort foods. I don’t regularly eat it but my mother makes it on occasion when she has the time. Being part Taiwanese allows me to try foods of my culture and those that are in ties, associating with foods like dumplings, noodles, and sticky rice, a sweet and glutinous dish with pork and mushrooms that my grandmother usually makes for the holidays. A comfort food should mean something to the eater and bring back a sensory memory or reminder of what something was like in the past. Of the many interpretations, it can bring a feeling of peacefulness, happiness, or of the feeling of being surrounded by loved ones.

The last time my mother visited me at school this year, she brought up a stockpile of food for me, including homemade sticky rice and pho. The pho was from one of my favorite restaurants. It was tasty and emulated the thought of my mother caring to buy something for me. Even though I was away from home and hadn’t been back since I left for school, the food on that Thursday delivered me back to my house eating with my family through the sensory experience when I smelled the citrus-beef broth escaping from the bowl in front of me. It reminded me of when my mother visited and calmed my homesickness down. In my own sense of the word, comfort food brings me back to a time and place where that food was present, the setting was filled with family and friends and happiness was contagious. Being at this restaurant with my roommate reminded me of this type of time and the next time I eat pho, I will remember the feeling once again of comfort food, adding the emotion of eating pho with my roommate that one great weekend to my memory.

What's Important About Dining Halls?

Clearly dining halls are an integral part of the college campus, student life, and the overall college experience. They are notoriously avoided if possible, which is not often, for their usually below-par food. So what makes dining halls so important? Besides the obvious, of course, which is that they serve us food. They are a social space: a vehicle for social interaction. During the day, it seems that a lot of people get their food to go, in those little red and white to-go boats, if they have a class to get to, some work to catch up on, or don’t want to sit alone. 

I find the dining halls most interesting at night, around dinnertime, since that’s when the majority of the student body flocks to Chase and Emerson. You see different kinds of groups sitting together; sports teams, random assortments of friends, different clubs, etc. Eating is an extremely social action, so it’s only natural that the dining halls become such a space for social interaction. For the freshmen, during the first couple of days of orientation, meals in the dining halls make for prime friend-making opportunities, and can act as an aid in bringing people together.

If it weren’t for the dining halls and the time I spend there, I most likely wouldn’t see half as many of my friends on such a regular basis. Dining halls are important because they bring people together, and can help keep people from becoming too isolated if they otherwise don’t spend that much time socializing, which I think can be very important. 

Sharing Food

Sharing food is by definition a community activity that either brings people together or at least signifies an act of generosity between people. This sense of community is increased when sharing food involves eating it together.  Last night an exec board meeting turned into an impromptu strawberry cheesecake eating session. Even on a campus with dining halls that are open until midnight the prospect of food, particularly desserts, can be very exciting.  I would argue, that more so then meals which tends to be shared among the same group of people, an impromptu sharing of food can bring together people who normally may not interact in social settings. Additionally, this type of food can often feel personal since it is often “homemade” or have a story behind it. In this case, the cheesecake was bought for a student by her boyfriend’s parents when she first met them.

Post Food.inc

Thursday morning, after finishing Food Inc, I was over come with a desire to eat better. As I was about to leave, my fellow classmate Ivy stopped me and changed my morning. First she asked if I wanted to go get some breakfast off campus (always a game changer for my morning), and then she told me about this amazing place, The Breakfast place. She described how this place specialized in locally sourced, grass-fed meat, as well as locally grown veggies and coffee(fyi, some of the best coffee I have ever had, no bitter after taste) I had been going to Wheaton for 4 years, considering myself a well informed eater in the area and I had never heard about this place. This place is a hidden gem tucked away in the corner of a small building in attleboro. Unassuming from the outside, and one of the most down to earth places on the inside. The walls are strewn with chalkboards showing amazing seasonal specials and their locally sourced Razzo's coffee. 

Outside of their ingredients, it was not much different from any other diner I had ever been in. It had the same feel, same affordable prices, and the same adorable down to earth conversation you can expect in any diner. It was refreshing to see a business catering to all manner of people, from college students like myself to individuals, for example when I was there, wearing work boots and pants, covered in many different stains I can only assume came from a hard job of physical labor. Even the people who worked there expressed to me an interest in being a hair dresser outside of working at the diner. The Breakfast place successfully brought together individuals of different classes and backgrounds over a meal they could be proud of. Especially in a time when foods such as grass-fed beef and locally sourced veggies are considered an upper middle and upper class diet by most, it was nice to see the food not commodified, but made accessible to everyone. Similar to Stoneyfield's message, the food was accessible, and made for everyone. It wasn't some fancy over blown, place with fancy items on the menu, it was the Breakfast Place, with steak and eggs, eggs benny, corned beef hash, and waffles and french toast that would blow your mind. No what I had, was special, grilled tomato, with an herb hollandaise sauce, and locally sourced uncured bacon. Especially after watching a movie like Food Inc. This place was a refreshing change from the foods I, as a college student usually have access to in neighboring areas.  

Help Me I'm Poor

You may proudly serve, but do we proudly consume?

According to a 2011 article in the American Journal of Health Education, written by Gary McIlvain, a study examined 500 college freshmen regarding caffeine intake. McIlvain found that "83% of the students reported having at least one sign/ symptom of caffeine intoxication in the past; 51% reported having at least one sign/ symptom of caffeine withdrawal. Students consumed three to five times the recommended amount of caffeine". The high correlation between caffeine consumption and college students creates an obvious market for coffee vendors surrounding college campuses. On the other hand, there is another correlation that occurs predominantly in college campuses; the correlation between college-aged people and the lack of money to spend. 

At Wheaton, the Hood Cafe in Balfour, run by a partnership between Starbucks and Aramark, and the corresponding cafe in the Science Center are the only places on campus to get a truly delicious cup of coffee on the go (sorry folks, but the Chase and Emerson coffee just doesn't do it for everyone). What is the problem you ask? Well, the problem is I -as well as my fellow students -don't want to pay close to $5.00 for a caramel flavored ice coffee every time we are itching for the highly demanded caffeine needed in our daily schedule. It is aggravating to know if it was more easily accessible, I could get the same satisfaction from a caramel flavored coffee at Dunkin' Donuts for half of the price. The Wheaton dining service provides $37.50 of Lyon's bucks on your student ID at the start of every semester, but if you are an avid coffee drinker, that money could be blown halfway through the semester, leaving you to pay that four to five dollars for a "gourmet coffee" out of pocket. This idea is a classic case of supply and demand, where a business capitalizes on the market's wants and needs. The Starbucks at the Hood Cafe is able to price its goods significantly high because it has very little competition to work with here on campus.

As we have talked about in class, caffeine is a commodity known as a "drug food", which is a type of food that can elicit cravings and create responses in your brain similar to those in addictive drugs. Other examples of drug foods are alcohol, chocolate and sugar,  Because of this natural desire to consume it, coffee has the power to drive a market and in this case, the market is in the hands of Starbucks Coffee Company here at Wheaton. If you are an active member in the coffee market such as myself, your bank account will suffer greatly from those late morning cravings when the cafe is the only means of obtaining your caffeine fix.

Food in Context: Peacock Pond

 

​Recently, my Ponds to Particles science class took it upon ourselves to conduct a relatively thorough cleanup of Peacock Pond. Our goal was to clean out waste, raise awareness, and restore the ecosystem to its natural equilibrium. Expecting to find mostly plastic and glass products, I was shocked to find that upwards of 166 pieces of food waste were recovered in less than two hours (and believe me, we could have found more). This food waste consisted primarily of fruits that appeared to have been attained by students from Chase and Emerson dining halls. My first inquiry was what was the reason students were throwing food into the pond, and what kind of effect would it have on the delicate ecosystem?

      Students clean Peacock Pond 

​While waist deep in the murky waters of Peacock Pond with fellow students and President Hanno, it was brought up that a certain team (that will remain unnamed) had a hazing ritual involving freshman throwing oranges across the pond, and when the fruit inevitably couldn't make it to the opposite bank, the freshman would have to swim across the pond. Other stories such as fruit-throwing challenges, acts of boredom, and disposal of unwanted food waste were all shared, and I came to the conclusion that people were not viewing the fruit as food, but as a means of entertainment. Surprisingly, only a small portion of people admitted to using the pond as a place to dump trash, but rather indicated that they had thrown trash in for sport. Therefore, in the context of Peacock Pond, food no longer holds value as a means of nutrition, but becomes a game.

​Unfortunately for the plants and animals living in the pond, that fruit is neither a means of nutrition, nor a means of entertainment. Little do the students of Wheaton College know, those rotting fruits create a surplus of bacteria and acidity in the water.  In the context of animal life, those fruits are detrimental to their environment. This just demonstrates a reoccurring theme in Feast or Famine and the field of anthropology, that context can change the meaning of an object. In the context of Chase or Emerson an orange is sustenance, in the context of Peacock Pond oranges are toys, and in the context of the biodiversity living in the pond oranges are poison. These acts also demonstrates to the larger community that Wheaton Students are not concerned about food conservation, the ponds ecosystem, or the aesthetics of their home. Food should remain in the context of production, distribution and consumption.