Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Ethnography Ideas

For my ethnography I really want to set it up at my work. I work at an assisted living, in Middletown, and I work in the kitchen and dining room as waitstaff. It wouldn't be a problem going there, since I work there four nights out of the week. I can talk about not only the kitchen, but about the dining room. I can mention how the waitstaff works with not only each other, but with the chef and the dishwasher, and the residents. How we set up every night, about pre-meals with the chef, how service goes, and how we clean up at night. There really is so much to write about, the hardest part would be editing it so that it all flows and isn't too much in the essay.

Reading Journal 4

Strange Fruit: The Rise and Fall of Açaí

Ryan and Jeremy Black, two brothers from California, made açaí the new "superfruit", considering 10 years ago it was almost unknown to everyone outside of Brazil.  Açaí is suppose to have amazing health claims, but is that all a fraud? Oprah and Dr. Oz have taken their names off of the fruits marketing and you can no longer buy it online because of scams.
I don't think that this article gives enough details as to why it is falling. It tells you all about how it came to America and how Americans have embraced it, etc., but it says is falling and is a fraud, but gives very little details backing that theory up. I wish this writer had added greater details and information.

Reading Journal 3

Burgers à la Thomas Jefferson
This article is about Tod Murphy. He lives in Vermont and owns Farmers Diner. This diner is all local food, with reasonable prices for this economy. He loves how he has made a community and that they care for each other. He would like to set up multiple diners around the United States, but he doesn't want it to be like a chair restaurant, he wants it to be how his diner is now, just more of them.
I didn't really like how the article was written, with the whole question and answer style. It wasn't my favorite style of reading that I have read, and I think next time I come across it I will probably skip that article. I feel like  I wasn't reading an article it felt very boring and bland and the only information I got was from what people exactly said and that was it, which is fine, but I felt like the writer could have added additional information into the article if they hadn't written it so Q&A.

Reading Journal 2

Ordering the vegetarian meal? There's more animal blood on your hands

This article really caught my eye. I always thought being a vegetarian was a good thing. I am not one myself, but I do know many people that are.
This article said that being a vegetarian means that you would be killing more animals because you are taking environment and their food, etc. It also says that you would be killing your environment to make vegetarian meals.
Ploughing kills the snakes, lizards, and mice. Did you know that mice "sing" to eat other! Cute, right? but mice are being poisoned too, and dying a slow and painful death.
This article is set in Australia, and it advises us to eat Kangaroo. I think this is just a lose-lose situation. We're doing damage if were eating meat, and doing damage if we aren't. You will never see me, ever, eating a Kangaroo either!
This article was interesting but didn't really convince me that being a vegetarian is bad, and I think that was its main point to do so.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Memoir Rough Draft


Fried chicken, with its golden brown batter, I can see myself biting into it and the hot juices flowing and the powerful flavor on my tongue. The undeniable feeling of comfort food, the food I could eat every day of my life, made by my mother, and still never get sick of, but as I stared at the green plate, with the steaming food on it, I felt nothing but the hot, black tears, stained from mascara, on my cold, stunned face. The fried chicken and the most amazing mashed potatoes you could eat, steaming with butter. The broccoli, my absolute favorite, piled high on the plate, like a mountain I would usually conquer, with my outrageous ability to out-eat any grown man, even my father.
It’s funny how death affects people. A nineteen year old girl, with the appetite of a tiger, usually eats and enjoys her food, but tonight, even the greatest comfort food could not have made me feel any better.
The phone call came at night, around eight thirty. I can still feel my cold hands on my car keys and me about to jump out of my car and into my warm house, until realizing, while driving home from work I missed a call from a friend. Thinking nothing of it, I press 1 to hear the voice mail, “Danielle, call me back, it’s… it’s an emergency.” A million things pop into my head: one, normal teenage problems, a fight with a friend, a breakup with a boyfriend; two, a joke or a prank, but her voice sounded shaky, and scared, not like the usually bubbly, happy personality that I usually received from her. I immediately call her back, not knowing what to expect, not knowing what is wrong, and not knowing if she’ll answer. “Danielle, there was an accident…” her voice trails off, another friend, a beautiful, and funny, friend is in the hospital, with major head trauma.
If you knew Cayla, you would have first thought, wow, this girl is beautiful. Your second thought, if you sat down to talk would be, wow, not only is she beautiful, she is funny, and is a very caring person. She constantly had a smile on her face. She had a wonderful taste in fashion, and always had fun. She loved horses, and Juicy, and life. She would make me sing to her all the time, usually Adele or Taylor Swift.
Things weren’t making sense. I hang up the phone, letting my friend know to keep me updated. I get out of the car, not realizing how the cold stings my wet cheeks. I run up the stairs into the house, sobbing so loud, I scare my parents. My parents jump up to see what is wrong, I run into my mother’s arms and cry, loud, body-moving sobs come out. I explain. They don’t know what to say, and even if they said anything, nothing would fix how I was feeling.
I sit with that comfort food in front of my face. It looks disgusting, it smells disgusting, and I take a bite and it taste disgusting. I am so sick my stomach turns. My face falls into a crumpled frown, my eyes burn. More tears follow, angry tears, not only for what has happened, but I cannot eat. It sounds stupid, you are going through something tragic and it’s ok not to eat, but if you knew me, you know that is the last thing I would ever do, is to stop eating. I’ve always have had a pretty big appetite, and I am not too big of a picky eater either, especially when it comes to my mother’s home made dinners, every night, except for Fridays. She always expects me to eat and enjoy and that night, I just couldn’t do it. I cry and tell her that I am not hungry. Usually if I do this, I’m usually under the weather and she scolds and tells me to eat it, no matter how sick I feel, but tonight she sits there, and says,
“It’s OK”. This upsets me more, she isn’t one to do this, and she puts a lot into her meals and expects me and my father to eat them. If you can’t eat all on the plate, she insists that you ate too much for lunch or too big of a snack. Comfort food, isn’t it supposed to make you feel better? At a time as bad as this, you would think I’d be able to eat several helpings of it! I throw out the food that I attacked with my fork and knife, poor chicken, such a waste. Its fried batter was all over the plate, and chicken was pulled from the bones, nothing eaten, just picked and pushed around. I cannot eat; I think I am having a panic attack. I don’t sleep that night, because later, I find out that Cayla did not make it. She is gone and I feel just as bad as that chicken I demolished at dinner time.
                Days go by, if I eat, it isn’t much of anything, half a protein bar, half an apple, even my favorite chocolate ice cream cannot save me this time. I always have three main meals a day, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and for days; I am eating hardly anything, if anything. I cannot sleep, and this behavior is so unlike me. My eyes are puffy and red, my usual put together look is now sweatpants and a messy bun, my usual bed time is changed to two in the morning, and I am not eating. I am not ok.
                My friend Alyssa, who was best friends with Cayla sits with me at my kitchen table. With a bag of chocolate donuts and frozen dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets, we eat. We are ravenous. First we eat the donuts, wait for the chicken to be cooked, and then eat the chicken with yummy fire red ketchup. After all this time, with so many of my mother’s comfort foods set in front of me, you wouldn’t think that donuts and tiny chicken t-rexes would be the fix. Empty white paper plates and messy napkins full of crumbs are all that’s left. After days of not eating we finally feel a sense of maybe things aren’t ok right now, but they are getting better. We are not only eating but we are living, and life isn’t stopping, even though it feels that way.
                The candle light vigil has passed, the wake has passed, and still I cry, not only for what has happened with Cayla, but for all of the people that have loved her so much, including me, but at the end of the day I sit back and look at my bare dinner plate that I just emptied and realize that life is so full of bigger and better things, we just have to live life to the fullest like Cayla did, and maybe make our stomachs just as full and happy as our lives.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Reading Journal 1

The Pleasures of Food and Drink

This article is peoples opinions about food and drinks. This is why I really liked reading it. Different people commented on what makes both food and drinks so great. Alan Richman points out that there is no food, like his mother's home made meals, and I completely agree with him. There is nothing better than some home made comfort food. Rick Bragg also mentioned his mother's mashed potatoes and I can agree 100%! This article was a quick read and short and transitioned with paragraphs. If you like anything that they mentioned you could  click on the links that they give you, or scroll to the bottom and read them there. This article led me to The Guiltless Pleasure, because I really liked the short summary about his mother's mashed potatoes, I figured I might as well read the entire thing! I thought it was very funny and I liked it a lot. If there is more by Rick Bragg, I would love to read more of his things. The article was easy to read and very enjoyable. :)

Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Rhetorical Analysis


This advertisement is for DiGiorno Pizza, and this ad wants to show you that it isn’t worth it to get pizza delivered because of the high prices of delivery pizza and the very low prices of the DiGiorno pizza. This ad is also trying to make the DiGiorno Pizza look more appetizing and more appealing than the delivery pizza. The colors of the toppings are brighter, the toppings also look bigger, and the crust isn’t as burnt looking, this pizza just pops at you and it makes it look like the one you would rather want. On the other hand, the delivery one looks burnt, the toppings look shriveled and not as fresh looking, and the colors are much darker, this pizza looks very dull. This ad is very plain, and really wants you to focus on the pizzas and the prices, that is probably why the background is just white, with a gray/black fade, and even the information is in a smaller print, I think the people who made it wanted to get their points across about the pizzas. They didn’t want to fancy the ad up. This ad is probably meant for families or young adults, so that they know which one they can save on. I think this ad was a screen shot from a commercial, but it could be in a magazine, like a Woman’s World magazine, because I think it’s trying to target families so that instead of getting their pizza delivered, they can just buy one and make it, when convenient, in their own homes. I like this ad because it is like those car insurance commercials that show you how much you save, but in this case it is not only showing you the difference in price, but also what each pizza looks like. I think this ad is taking the car insurance commercials idea, but putting a fun and interesting twist on it. It’s semi creative, and shows you that these pizzas are obvious competitors. This ad also tells you that this is the price that the three leading national delivery pizzas charge in the ten leading markets. This is in a smaller print, because it is just a supporting fact, but they wanted to just get the message across. The pizza’s toppings are identical, but in my opinion I think they are trying to make DiGiorno look more appetizing. The problem with DiGiorno, is that no matter how appetizing it looks, or how much the price is cut, if you don’t want to make your dinner or lunch, you are not going to buy it and will most likely get your pizza delivered. If you think about it, you also are most likely not going to make DiGiorno pizzas for a birthday party or if you are having a lot of people over, you are probably going to order the pizza and get it delivered because it is more convenient. I also think that pizza made in a pizza place taste better, but that is my opinion, maybe I am just not buying the right frozen pizzas! If you want to save on money though, and still want to eat a pizza, it is a good alternative from delivery pizza, and this advertisement really does make you want to buy the Digiorno pizza.

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Themes


I think the theme I would like to do the most would be food. I mean it’s around you every day and everyone needs it to survive. I’m a terrible cook, but in my last year of high school I took culinary class. I even won an award for that class, but I must say I am no chef. My mother, on the other hand, is the best at making everything and anything, from dinners, to chocolate birthday cakes. She has so many recipe boxes and books with all my favorite foods in them. The doctors told me to be aware of what I’m eating though; I am pre-diabetic and must be careful what I eat. I still love to eat and enjoy food! Right now I am a waitress at an assisted living home. Either in the dining room or in the kitchen, there is food there the entire time. I am around food all the time there, the only thing I hate is when they have split pea soup, since it smells terrible, even after I get out of work and into my car! I’m really interested in eating disorders, not only under eating but over eating, since I think at one time I had an over eating problem. Every time you turn the television on you always see food ads, and they wonder why obesity is such a big deal in America. I know people don’t have to eat the food, or eat as much, but it’s hard when they flash it around so much, it becomes such a temptation. I would like to read and write about this topic because it is such a big deal in everyone lives.
I think another theme I would like to do is education. When I was 4 years old I didn’t speak correctly, I had to have teachers come to my house and try to help me speak. I even went to preschool with the prices cut to help me. It’s funny now, because not only do I speak, I love to talk, read, and write. I can’t imagine struggling my whole life with my speech. After learning how to speak I immediately loved my reading and writing classes. I use to practice my letters for hours. Math though, has never been my favorite. I’m terrible at it! My sister is actually a middle school math and science teacher. She loves math and loves her students. She is such a good teacher. It makes me realize how different she and I really are! High school was the best time in my life, so far I think. I wouldn’t want to go back there, but it was a place that held so many good memories. I ended up at BCC because it’s close to home and I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to be. Right now I’m in Office Administration, but I want to become a paralegal and eventually a lawyer. In high school my class’s own dropout rate was really high. If you look at my middle school yearbook and then at the high school one, it’s a wonder where all those kids are these days. I also was in chorus class and they were never funded very well. The risers were falling apart, and you had to be careful where you stand because you could easily loose you balance because they were no longer level. It’s crazy how the school couldn’t seem to fund something that could have hurt students. Education is a great thing, and because I plan on being a lawyer I have lots of school years to look forward too!
The last theme I am interested in is crime and justice. This ties into the fact that I want to eventually be a lawyer. I have never been in trouble with the law, but I do know people who have. I know many people, who have been in jail, but some of them are out now, and some of them are still there. I’ve always been interested in crime and justice and watch many programs about them. I’ve been following the West Memphis Three. I really believe that they are all innocent and should have not been in jail for so long, one of them was on death row for awhile too! It’s crazy how the justice system can mess up so badly. Death row to me is a touchy subject. I don’t think anyone deserves to die, but the people that are put on it are usually monsters, but they have loved ones too. Some of them are innocent also and still lose their lives. I think the insanity plea is used too much, so that people don’t take responsibility for what they have done. Crime and justice is a very, very interesting topic, and many people have very different opinions and ideas on how it is run and how it all pans out.