Oreo Cookies

Sam Blinderman

Professor Leake

WRIT 1133

4-24-12

Oreo Cookies

When is the last time you sat down and had dinner? I’m not talking about eating in college where food is inhaled rather than eaten, I'm talking about having a set time for dinner, sitting down with friends or family and eating. During this meal you should talk with them, see how their day went, if anything is bothering them, at least pretend to be interested for the duration of the meal. Dinner, and furthermore meals in general are becoming shorter and shorter as time goes on. We are turning into unhealthy eaters by shoving food in our face whenever we have a second free. The lack of time that we have today is transforming how we eat into something it never should’ve become. This change doesn’t take place until college though. Bear with me for a second and imagine your life is an Oreo cookie. Each part of the cookie represents a stage of life. It’s no coincidence that two of the layers, the outside cookies, are the same because in these stages your relationship with food is similar. The outside cookies represent a relationship with food in which you organize your meals around others. For example, when you're really young, you're mom screams up the stairs that it’s time for dinner, and when you have a family of your own you scream up the stairs to your kids that it’s time to come down for dinner. During this time you are focused on eating with your family rather than when you can. This brings us to the cream filling of the cookie or independence stage, which represents the middle years of life where you are busy with college, work, and everything else. In these years you don’t have time to sit down and eat dinner because your schedule is based around yourself rather than a family. During this stage you are not focused on sitting down and having dinner at the end of the day, but rather how much work you can finish before the hunger overtakes your brain and says, “go eat something quickly.” Eighteen year olds everywhere are realizing there are no more family dinners at college, and they’re shifting the way they eat to become more convenient eaters. They’re disregarding the set meal times they used to know, and starting to eat when they are free. This is a problem because they are messing with the cream filling of their Oreo or independence stage of life by creating bad eating habits that will stick with until they move on to the final cookie stage of life. College students are impacted by this change because they have little time during the week to sit down and take an hour for dinner.

In an article titled “What Causes the Freshman 15,” which lists causes of the weight gain usually experienced by first year students I chose to focus on the relationship that incoming freshman have with food rather than the outcome of weight gain. Many of the causes have “Eating” in the title so I focused mainly on those to see if I could understand where the different eating schedule comes from. Under “New Eating Habits” I found:

When you’re living with parents and going to high school, many of the details of what, when and how much you eat are already planned out for you. Getting to college and having unlimited choices (and limited cooking experience) can make a diet of fast food, chips, soft drinks and pizza at 3 a.m. commonplace. (Scott)

This is the essentially the first mistake someone in the independence stage makes. Rather than trying to maintain a healthy eating schedule many students end up altering their schedule because they don’t know what to do with all the freedom they’ve just been given. In college you are free from parents and the lure to go out and party on a Monday because it’s Karaoke Night at the bar has never been so high. Of course after you're done singing your heart out you might want to eat late at night and then go to bed. This is another way students are changing the way they eat because they are demonstrating something Taco Bell calls fourth meal. Eating four meals a day throws off your eating schedule entirely because you may not wake up hungry in the morning from all the stored fat from the night before.

In another article titled “More Students Eating on the Run; Dorm Food No Longer the Norm” that was written in 1996 the author focused on how college students have very little time to eat and that when they do its usually on the run. This goes to show that even though this article was written just over fifteen years ago, college students still have the same problem today. Mari Lee was a student who was interviewed for this article and explained her various eating habits. She says, “In between, I basically graze, I might have a muffin in the afternoon and some fruit later. . . . It depends how busy I am" (Grad). College students everywhere are feeling what Lee feels as well. I personally know what she’s saying. When I'm busy it’s hard to find time to eat, and other times it’s usually just my laziness that prohibits me from eating.

Take my Tuesday and Thursday mornings as an example. My first class starts at ten in the morning so I set an alarm for 8:40 with the hopes to wake up not feeling tired so I can spring out of bed to get breakfast before Nelson closes at 9:30. I have to leave a lot of extra time because I have a habit of pressing the snooze button a few too many times. What happens more than 50% of the time is that my alarm goes off and I hit snooze until I can roll out of bed and walk two minutes to my hospitality class. By skipping breakfast I’m throwing my body out of its normal schedule. I get back from class and have an hour where I usually shower before statistics. By the time I finish stats at 2 p.m., and haven’t eaten all day, I'm pretty hungry so I have to wolf down a late lunch. Depending on the size lunch I eat I may not be hungry again until 8 p.m. after the dining hall has already closed. Being too lazy to wake and eat or too busy causes students to eat when they can as opposed to when they want to. Katie Johansen, a nutritionist at UC Irvine’s Student Health Center states, “A primary concern of students is time. When they get stressed, their priority is not on eating. They tend to grab what is convenient” (Grad). This is exactly what students everywhere are feeling. When finals roll around, I don’t think about when I'm going to eat lunch I'm thinking about when I'm going to study and if I can eat that’s great.

The lack of time that all college students have leads them to change their eating habits dramatically and shift to eating when they can. John Urry is a British sociologist and describes this habit as the “de-synchronization of time-space paths” (Horwitz 42). At first this sounds like something that Doc Brown would say in “Back to the Future,” but looking back at the article, Urry precedes his statement by saying: “The increased significance of grazing, not eating at fixed meal times in the same place in the company of one’s family or workmates” is what leads to this de-synchronization (Horwitz 42). This is exactly what college students are going through. By having no set eating habits they continue to mess up the cream filling of their metaphorical Oreo.

Due to the lack of time college students have, their eating habits are changing. Rather than eating when they want to, they eat whenever they can, and it usually doesn’t matter what it is it’s still viewed as substance. A bag of chips on the way to class can take the place of lunch sometimes and this will then result in an early dinner and most likely a late night snack before bed. The irregularity of eating habits is changing the way people eat to the point where they may start to become the norm. Getting back to the idea that our lives are modeled after an Oreo it’s clear that if you mess up the cream filling too much you wont have much of an Oreo left. I would urge college students everywhere to stop eating on the go because all you get after shoving your face full of dorm food is a stomachache that lasts a few hours. If we change the way we manage our time to accommodate the extra time we need for meals everyday we can take a big step towards the second of our two outside Oreo cookies. College students are at the perfect age to start creating good eating habits for when they become adults, and I for one am going to make sure that I start eating on more of a daily routine rather than out of convenience because I don’t want my adulthood cookie to crumble everywhere.

Works Cited

Grad, Shelby. "More Students Eating on the Run; Dorm Food No Longer the Norm." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 17 Sept. 1996. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. <http://articles.latimes.com/1996-09-17/local/me-44600_1_food-court>

Horwitz, Jamie. "Eating at the Edge." Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture 9.3 (2009): 42-47. Print.

Scott, Elizabeth. "What Causes the Freshman 15?" About.com Stress Management. 21 Feb. 2012. Web. 23 Apr. 2012. <http://stress.about.com/od/studentstress/a/freshman15cause.htm>

Family Dinners

Horwitz uses a series of arguments to create her theory of eating on the edge and how Americans are changing the ways we eat. She uses examples from social media as well as the government to show that American's aren’t really eating together anymore and it has really start from TV Dinners back in 1954. Luce Girard tells us, “The table is ‘social machinery’ where settings inscribe the order of a meal and seating arrangements mirror social power” (Horwitz 44). This is the way it was in my family growing up. We sat down most every night and ate dinner. It wasn’t written down that we all had “spots” at the table, but nobody sat in each other’s spot. My dinner table growing up was an oblong oval. My brother and I sat across from each other where the table was shortest and my parents across from each other where the table was longest. The only minor disruptions to our seating arrangements was when we had guests, in that case the guest sat in the chair awkwardly placed around the bend so we didn’t have to change our seats.

The thing about our seats was that they really only were our seats during meal times. During other times of the day I wouldn’t be so careful as to only sit in my seat because there were other options. I would sit in my brother’s seat if I were going to watch TV or dads if I wanted to look outside. My options were not so limited when I was eating meals at home alone, but once the group dynamic of my family was together it was take your and only your seat please. As my family separated through divorce, I noticed we all starting doing our own thing for meals. As I got older and tried to sit down and have meals with family members, it just didn’t work out. We all started developing our own meal habits although on occasion would schedule to eat together.

This all relates to Horwitz because I am one of the people who have been through his eating on the edge theory. I have seen the group dynamic of my family change and go form a very ritualized family dinner time, to an individualistic time where we all plan to eat in our spare time. I think that for the world to slow down a little we have to shift back to the ritualized family dinners, or at least I'm going to.

Sunday Funday, Except for Nagel

Sundays are a great days. It is the day of rest for Jews because God created the world in six days and then took it easy on Sunday. Depending on the time of year, they are usually reserved for football, good food, friends, family, and often a good time. This past Sunday though, I was sitting in Nagel, from 6-7, taking copious field notes on my surroundings and judging anyone that walked in the door. What more could I ask for?

I was surprised when I walked in and saw a line at Salsa Rico. I mean really how many people would go to Nagel on Sunday? I’d been there many times before because I like to mix it up between Nelson and Nagel, and by mix it up I mean when there’s nothing to eat at Nelson for dinner my friends and I collectively decided it’s a Nagel night. After waiting in the short line of eight people in front of Salsa Rico and getting my food I walked back to a table that would allow me to see the majority of Nagel. I began to look around and observe the people around me. I didn’t want to stare at any group or individual for too long or else it would be awkward so I kept my head on a swivel observing things like what they were eating, how they were eating it, who they were eating it with. Here’s what I saw.

The less than booming scene of Nagel on Sunday night consisted of roughly a 50-50 ratio between people who were there to eat, and people who were there to study. The studiers filled up the booths that lined the walls and the rest of the eaters were spread out in their respected groups at open tables. Groups of five and three were eating dinner, a few of them had quesadillas, some had a meal swipe, and some I couldn’t see without being too nosey. The meal swipe combo consists of one scoop of rice and beans each, and one soft shell taco. For anyone that is hungry, it’s not enough food. This is why I’ve developed a workaround to the traditional meal swipe combo. It comes in the square-cardboard-to-go-oyster type box, so the trick is to order something larger more substantial than a taco, rice, and beans, and to make sure that it comes in the same square container. Anyways, the groups eating dinner seemed to be purely social. Just as my friends and I are when we are there. They also probably didn’t feel like eating Nelson that night so they walked the distance to Nagel. I couldn’t peg down the exact genre of music that was playing because it was more a combination of things than anything, but it didn’t matter to me I tuned it out and kept to my notes. I didn’t want to go as far as to eavesdrop into other peoples conversations, but I may have heard a few things as I walked by about some annoying residents.

Salsa Rico isn’t the only place in the Nagel Café, although it is the only feature open late and everyday. Along with Salsa Rico there are places where you can get pizza, chicken, and coffee from Starbucks. Usually I opt for the chicken and double mac and cheese for a meal swipe because it’s a lot more food for the same meal swipe combo, but they weren’t open. The staff at Salsa Rico was wearing their usual white Sodexo chef coats and the cashier was wearing his usual blue Sodexo shirt. The cashier looked especially unhappy to be working that night. I could tell from his lack of interest and body language, but I don’t blame him I’d probably hate my job at that point too. While I was eating I noticed something that seems to happen in every eating location on campus. Among the people eating, there are always some that are studying. Whether it be at the Pub or even Nelson, I always see a computer open.

Within the specific community of DU, eating areas serve a double purpose. The first and most obvious is to eat, but the second and maybe the one that goes more unnoticed is that once the eating areas are cleaned up, they are a great place to study. They are quiet, clean, and there’s a lot of room to spread out depending on the table you pick. We are lucky to be somewhere where our cafeterias serve a double purpose. In 2006, Princeton, yes Princeton, decided to redesign their cafeterias to make them more student friendly. The article states, “The project is part of the University's plan to enhance the residential college system to better serve students as well as to provide them with more options” (Stevens). This is what DU has already accomplished by providing us with areas that we can eat and study at the same time because they recognize sometimes we are short on time and need to multi-task.

Works Cited

Stevens, Ruth. "Princeton University - Designers Chosen to Give Dining Halls Distinctive Look." Princeton University. 31 Mar. 2006. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. <http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S14/38/16G08/index.xml?section=topstories>

Source for SE #3

http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S14/38/16G08/index.xml?section=topstories&path=/main/news/archive/S14/38/16G08/index.xml&next=1

this article describes how they are changing the dining halls at princeton to feel more comfortable for students and less like a standard cafeteria. 

Spread it on

Even the smell of food makes me hungry, reading about it in great detail makes it much worse. I don’t know how to explain it. There are days when I eat full meals and I walk past something and catch a whiff of something tasty and my stomach begins to growl. Food is a big part of my life, and I used to take it for granted, then I spent the better part of a day in jail. I’m not going to go into detail as to how I got there, but I got arrested this past summer and had to spend the morning in my town’s jail and then the better part of the afternoon in county because that’s where my bond hearing was.

After reading Cate’s article on how inmates made “spreads” out of ingredients they’d collected throughout the day I thought to myself “That probably would’ve been smart,” but I never stayed overnight so there wasn’t much time for me to fashion a spread. To the inmates who are in CJ5, making spreads is a means of expression and a social activity. They can make it in larger portions for many inmates, or for themselves when they are hungry late at night after a bland 4 o’clock dinner. I found the part of Cate’s study where she compared making spreads as a way for inmates to feel free of authority. She states, “Spread, on the other hand, reflects personal taste and individual access to resources. As such, it is an inmate’s product of choice, not under the control of any authority” (20). This was most interesting to me because people who are stuck and suffering in jail are looking for an excuse to do something they haven’t yet, in this case it may be create an elaborate spread

O’Donnell’s study covered the shifting in China’s post-Mao eating habits. Southerners eat fish because it is the most readily available item and northerners stick to more beef because cattle graze in the northern part of the country. O’Donnell explains, “In fact, eating is central to the Chinese understanding of what it means to be human” (32). This basically means that food plays a vital role in Chinese society. Food also plays a large role in American society, and I see many similarities in the ways food plays into both our societies. What I found most interesting was that O’Donnell noticed that shared meals “Deepened friendships, greased business deals, and reaffirmed hometown identities” just like it does in American (34).

Advertising Without Words

http://847cuisine.blogspot.com/2012/04/advertisements.html

Well this was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. Maybe I'm just lucky but the first thing I looked at on the first essay I chose was "Wildfire does not have to advertise, their food and reputation does that for them." The same goes for Blentec with the exception that they do advertise, but they don't say anything and let their product speak for itself. This is the same concept Nick was illustrating because neither of the companies need to say anything and people will still buy their products.

Sierra Mist and Blenders

Blendtec and Sierra Mist are the two companies whose advertisement I chose to analyze. It’s clear that Sprite is a staple beverage in our country, and everyone knows who they are, so I chose to see how an opponent of their, Sprite, advertised. Blendtec is a company that makes blenders among other kitchen appliances. The blender they make is one of the most sophisticated in the world, and it has something like three horsepower. You're probably thinking three? Are you kidding? But I’m going to flip the question on you and say THREE HORSEPOWER?! It’s a blender not a horse drawn carriage what in the world would you use three horsepower for in a blender. For the rest of this short essay I will give a breakdown of both ads and then a conclusion on what it means to us.

Sierra Mist ad: playful music, attacks the opponent, perfect looking can of soda, shine on the ice cubs, and perfect images of carbonation. These are the basic components that make up this ad. The ad starts with a fairy dull can of Sprite and then states that Sprite uses artificial preservatives. Then out of nowhere, a can of Sierra Mist drops down as if it was just pulled out of the cooler on a hot sunny day condensation and all and gives such a strong gust of wind from how it landed that the sprite can falls over and turns out to be a cardboard standup. The catch phrase “Get real” is stated by a friendly sounding woman and then the can is poured over some very shiny ice cubes and all the words on the screen says is real sugar and nothing artificial referring to how it was sweetened. The main strategy of this ad is attacking something we all know, mainly sprite. This is clear form the very opening of the ad, and if sierra mist was confident enough in their own product they might not have to attack sprite from the very beginning. Their appeal is to try to make their product seem real, and made from all natural ingredients. Why anyone would believe them I'm not really sure because all soda’s are made pretty much the same way in a factory. I feel that the ad could be targeting parents who don’t want their kids to be drinking artificially made drinks or kids who should try a different drink. Either way, I can see that from the approach they make towards this ad strategy that they are trying to promote a natural or real drink to the public because everyone seems to be fixed on what is naturally or even locally made these days.

Blendtec ad: no spoken words, pump up music, artistic camera angles, artfully engineered, and slow motion clips. I felt like I was watching an episode of How It’s Made on the discovery channel for this ad. I felt the ad was pretty effective because I sat on the edge of my seat waiting for some big punch line and all I came out with was a silent commercial and the words artfully engineered, which is exactly what Blendtec tried to portray in this commercial. In my opinion they did a pretty good job because they built up the blender to be much more than it is. I mean seriously, after watching that commercial, if the super slow motion strawberry clips were taken out you wouldn’t believe that this was a promo for a blender. It looked like it could be a commercial for GE everything was so sophisticated looking. I took a look at some of the prices for those things and it gave me a clue as to which target audience they are going after. Rich people. These blenders range from 300 to 1000 dollars, for a blender that can supposedly destroy a cell phone. Based on all the high-class preference put on this ad, I think its just shows a more negative side of our country. It shows that people do engineer a blender instead of a playground or something much more useful. The worst is that they turn around and then sell these things for hundreds of dollars and people love to buy them. The ad appeals to the rich because only they can afford something so ridiculous.

Food cultures and values have changed a lot in recent years. Food used to be something that was always local. There were times when towns would supply food for the people that lived there and if there was a food that wasn’t there you didn’t eat it. That’s just how it was. Now everything has been enlarged and people eat whatever they want. It is only now starting to be cool to use local, natural ingredients so ad campaigns are designed after that. Take Sierra Mist for example, their ad is based upon the fact that they aren’t using anything fake. They are trying to let everyone know this so that they form a different opinion on them. If Americans stopped being so foolish when it came to food then they’d realize that being natural is the only way we are going to survive so it’s much of an advertising campaign if we all need to be doing it in the next 10 years.

Blendtec Ad:
http://www.blendtec.com/?gclid=CMryp8LSpq8CFUZgTAodLhJSYg 

Sierra Mist: In the upper left hand corner of the page click "see the ad"
http://www.sierramist.com/ 

Wish my family had a secret recipe

It was clear from reading these articles that both these authors bring much more to the table than just food. They are both bringing cultural and personal significance to the table with them. I’m not going to specifically quote what they says but I’ll explain it so you could understand if you took the time to read the article. Nicholson writes about the personal significance his mother had to white food and how she liked having everything be pure on the plate if possible. The cultural aspects he used was when he described her English cooking style of meat and potatoes. The author had the way his mother used to cook implanted into his brain so that he also was pleased by white foods.

Ahn was much easier to figure out from the get go because he stated that he was connected to his mother through her Korean culture and cuisine, although she never formally taught him anything. The way he grew up having two fridges help personal significance for him because it made him realize that there was a distinct different culture in his garage.

Both authors use memory to convey their significance of food. Luckily for me, I already wrote the short essay that is supposed to come after this entry so I too used memory to associate different people to different foods. Instead of answering the last portion of this entry in paragraph for I'm just going to say yes. Yes, reading these pieces reminded me of my own connection to food and it’s listed just below in the short essay titled “You Remember What You Eat.”

What a Surprise

Today, I had the best sandwich I've ever made from Nelson Dining Hall. I can’t say it’s the best thing I've ever eaten from there because omelets on the weekends and some occasional dinners can outrank this sandwich, but not by much, except for the omelets those are way better. This sandwich most likely tasted better because I was a bit hungry after only eating a croissant for breakfast around 10 o’clock and it was almost 3 PM. I decided to get bread from the bread drawers rather than from the bags that lay near the sandwich station and rather than attempt a Panini I went with toasted bread approach.

Something on the toaster must have been broken because I had to put my bread through 3 times to get a decent toast and it was on the darkest setting. In my frustration of the toaster not working I decided to pile up the makings of my sandwich on my plate. I grabbed some turkey, salami, provolone cheese, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Why no lettuce you ask? Well just as I walked in to check out what was still there for me to eat I saw the old sandwich guy digging his hand around in the lettuce bin, without a glove, so I skewed away from the lettuce today.

Finally my bread had finished its transformation into toast. I went back towards the sandwich area and grabbed the mayo and spicy mustard. A little bit of those on each piece of bread and the construction began. To make a long story short I made a damn good sandwich. I know this because when I sat down to a virtually empty Nelson dining hall, the only other person who was in their and on her way out stopped and said, “That looks like a good sandwich” and then proceeded to ask me what I put on it.

Once she was done asking me questions, I was finally able sit down and enjoy all the work I had just put in between those two slices of whole wheat bread. As I sat at the very first large table in Nelson, alone, I thought to myself this is kind of nice. Sure company would be great but I was tired and didn’t feel like talking. All I wanted to do was eat the sandwich I just labored over because I was hungry. When I walked to put my empty plate on the dishes conveyor I glanced at the desert table. Yellow Jell-O with whipped cream, no thanks. On my way out I grabbed my usual red hard candy from the bowl near the front door and was on my way to JMAC. 

Potato, Potato

Well this is a little awkward, the last blog post I wrote was titled “Final Blog Post,” I guess I can chalk this one up to the fact that I was already registered for a different writing class and only recently switched into this one. I think I’ll live and according to Sullivan, once I’m really through with this blog no one is really going to read it again. Either way I’m back to blogging, and am pretty excited about it. The previous topics I wrote about were the news, and not to say the news doesn’t excite me all that much, but the news doesn’t excite me all that much. There are topics that are interesting but I find that food unlike the news is something you can talk to anyone about because there is little to no prior knowledge needed.

This relates to the article we just read about how different advertisers use different levels of language to attract different social classes to buy their chips. When I made the statement that anyone can talk about food I wasn’t challenging the hypothesis we just read about, but rather stating the obvious that everyone can really talk about food because everyone has undoubtedly had a potato chip in their life. It would be funny to see a politician trying to talk to a bum about a bag of Terra’s Yukon Gold chips and see the bum have no idea what he was talking about because he only knows lays because it has fewer words on the bag.

In this article they connect the language levels on the bags to different levels of society being able to read them. And then because they can read them, they are more appealing whereas if they cared about saving money they might go with the chip that costs them roughly 20 cents less per ounce. I found the health aspect they explored most interesting because all of the chips they did research on contained no trans fat. But when they looked at the bags only two of the inexpensive brands of chips advertised there was no trans fat compared to all of the expensive chips advertising that there was none.

I’d expect to see the same kinds of advertising with fast food chains. It already shows with their burger ads that have been going on for the last few years mainly between McDonalds, Burger King, and Wendy’s. Whether the ad is saying “I’m lovin’ it” to pretend as if anyone actually enjoys a Big Mac or saying “Fresh Never Frozen Beef” to try to make you believe that burger isn’t heated up in the back of the place you're ordering it from the ads are all trying to appeal to different people. The only major difference from the burger and chip ads are that the burger ads mainly use TV and images instead of text, but in the end you're still getting the same crappy burger, there’s actually a difference in between potato chips.

You Remember What You Eat

After reading the articles by Ahn and Nicholson I gained a new take on what significance food has in our lives. Before the articles, I viewed food as something everyone needed to sustain their lives with. It was used as a means of energy, which would put it high on the scale of significance because it’s something that is daily necessity. After reading the two articles I not only kept this view but was also realized that food has a large part in your memories. Whether it’s the food that your English or Korean parents always ate or just something you can associate with a member of your family, food links different people, places, and events. Certain foods can hold more significance because you can associate them with someone or something that you value. The remained of this short essay will explain the foods I find significant and what memory I associate them with.

I have to start with a personal favorite, and a favorite that everyone on my mom’s side of the family seems to love. My grandpa was born in Georgia and since I was little he's raised us eating Brunswick stew. Around the time I was nine years old I had my first bowl, and at first it was too spicy for my taste. I only struggled through small amounts because I didn’t want my cousins to notice I wasn’t having any. As I aged and began to enjoy the heat that came along with the stew I began to associate the stew with my grandpa. When he died, we had Brunswick stew and Gazpacho at his Shiva because those were two of his favorite foods. Every time I'm at a family occasion on my mom’s side, there is usually a container of Brunswick stew that has been thawed out and made with dinner.

There are two places for every event that was help there, I would say 95% of the time we had the same two meals at each of the houses. I can associate a big tray of deli meat along with usually two types of salad one being either pasta or potato and the other being lettuce and a bowl of potato chips to my Uncle Bruce and Aunt Joy’s house. Technically Bruce is my mom’s cousin, but we all just call him and his wife aunt and uncle. And two large casserole pans with a regular and barbeque brisket along with a bowl of fruit and usually some sort of cake for desert at my Grandma Barbara’s. No matter what the occasion was, the meals consisted of that. On birthdays, Hanukkah, and after Passover ended there was the same meal at each of my respected relatives houses. Eventually we all got sick of the same meal, but no one said anything, it was the time we were spending with each other that everyone cared about so the meal of cold cuts and chips became bearable for all of us. That is why I hold a tray of mediocre cold cuts and brisket, cooked the Jewish way in the oven, significant in my memory, because of all the fun family events that took place at each of those dinners.

A few other foods that hold value because of my memory are pancakes, corn beef sandwiches, and this one sandwich called the bacon Loretta from a local high school favorite joint. There was a family favorite restaurant in the neighboring town that I grew up in, Highland Park, called Walker Brother’s Pancake House. My family of four, my cousins family of four, my two grandparents, and usually my uncle would all go on a Saturday or Sunday and enjoy a big breakfast. We all ordered the same thing, and rarely needed to look at a menu before ordering. To this day I still get a kids menu to do the word search and since I’ve completed the same puzzle year after year I can complete it in a matter of minutes. Another restaurant that I hold a special place in my memory for is called Manny’s Delicatessen. It offers one of the biggest most delicious corned beef and pastrami sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. Once again I grew up eating at this place because it was on the way to the airport when we flew out of Midway airport to go to Florida each winter to go visit my grandparents. When I was young I could barely muscle down half of the sandwich and then be too full to continue, nowadays I finish the entire thing without a problem except that I feel as if I have a small food baby after finishing. A final place that is specific to the suburbs surrounding Chicago where I’m from is called Sarkis Café. From the outside, the place looks like a run-down, dumpy place where some illegal drug could have probably been produced at some point. On the inside it’s not that much different; the place is small but legendary. You order at the counter and within ten minutes your food is in front of you. Orders vary on the type of Loretta you get. Whether it is from bacon to turkey, I’m sure they’d all be good if only I tried something other than the bacon Loretta with an egg and cheesy hash. This meal is made up of a sandwich made on French break with bacon, egg, mayo, cheese, and a mix of diced tomatoes, onions, and green peppers. A big pile of hash browns to the left or right with more provolone cheese melted on top and you’ve got my order ready to eat. The place only takes cash and sometimes it is so busy you have to order to go and eat in the car. It’s infamous for being the breakfast place for many high schoolers to go if there is every a day off or delayed start. It’s incredibly bad for you, but that never seems to stop anyone from going there.

Food can cause you to go back to a certain time in your life just from the smell. It holds a physical and mental value that I feel is one of the most important things in our lives. Not only does it sustain our lives, but it enriches it with new experiences. It can spark conversations if multiple people have ever been to or had the same thing as you and become a tradition if you make it into one. Now I have to go do something I’ve been waiting to do since I started writing this, eat.