Great, a DVD was popped into the computer, Im already dreading this class today. Its raining, Im sleepy and there is a huge puddle right on the door of the classroom so my shoes got wet. I dont like it when people resort on DVDs to teach. Maybe im wrong…

The DVD is about Marcus Sammuelson, he believes food is symbolic and complex. “Food reaffirms not only our humanity but the joy to be alive.” Today we are taking a look at food and life.

In every culture eating is a formal ritual. Now we are on the subject of “Last Meals”
WE are in Texas death row in Huntsville interviewing a man that learned how to cook during his 11 and a half years in prison. he was the last meal chef at the prison. Most of the last meals if possible were all made to order. He treated each inmate as if he were his brother making that last meal extra special being that he was brought up as a Christian. “Giving food speak a powerful language.” In our society. USA, where we sanction capital punishment we make this last singular exception for those inmate that the state is going to kill and we try to provide them with the food they want to eat. During the time you are in jail you never get to pick your own food and that is a huge loss of freedom. The last meal is a statement of humanity towards another human being even though they are about to get killed and are given a kind of control for a moment.

Im  going back to school getting a masters in Liberal Studies, Since I’ve been kinda lagging in the whole blog thing I’ve decided to make my tumblr my note taking for class and in turn help me study. I hope you enjoy our first class Food & Culture. This class is learning and anthropological approach to food. 

-There are 4000 varieties of rice 
-Orange was not the original color of carrots 
-Kopi Luwak is the most expensive coffee at 120-600 lb because it has been passed through the digestive track of a mammal
-The FDA allows 20-30 fragments of bugs in peanut butter 
-Popular English sauce Worcestershire is made of vinegar anchovies 
-Whales an beavers were classified of fish in medieval time to be eaten on Friday and Sunday because beef wasn’t allowed 
-Vitamins get their name from the order they were discovered 
-Chillies are called chili peppers because Columbus decided to call them that 
-The fat around beef is not trans-fat
-When you concentrate you burn 19 kcal extra an hour
-Umami is the Japanese word for the taste of savory or meatiness
-1lb of US potatoe chips cost 200 times more than 1lb of potatoes
-Vanilla comes from the fermented dried orchid seeds and pod
-In Sweden tomatoes were called love apples and considered poisonous

For my 2011 challenge I have decided to embark on the adventure of finishing a Master’s degree in Behavioral Psychology. But like all things we should start at the beginning, the admissions process. Yay! Since I’m going to attempt to go into psychology i need to have a relevant degree, now my previous degree is Theatre. Challenge number one. My argument to the fact is that in FIU, the university I graduated from and am attempting to get my masters from, both Theatre and Psychology are in the Arts and Science College. So I’m going to argue my way into that one….not quite sure how yet. Challenge number two I need to pass the GRE, a test needed to get into the Masters program. Well that last one should be interesting. I really enjoy school, learning and studying so whether or not I end up working in psychology I would have learned a lot, and gotten into a masters program. Thats exciting. Wish me luck!

A challenge has presented itself. The challenge is self control. There are a lot of things in my life i have little or no control over, one of them, and the most important one of them is myself. 

I try to create routines to better myself, but it doesn’t seam to work out at all. Perhaps is because I try to do it all at the same time instead of working on every problem individually. I’m trying to make small, yet consecutive changes. Such as, well…I hate doing dishes!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time i cooked I’m just so turned off by the action of cleaning the dishes. I would just leave them there soaking for days. Nasty I know, but its my thing. But i am proud to say that for the past week there has not been one dirty dish in my sink. Why?, well my little change was forcing myself to clean the dishes after using them. I know it sounds logical and simple, but whenever i was cooking and had to wait for something to finish coking I would get bored. The minute that would happen I would go watch tv or go on the computer to kill time. Well I don’t do that anymore. I actually force myself to clean dishes with the thought in my head being “stop being such a pig!” What can I say, it works, for now at least. 

Another small change is actually one that’s going to be huge in the end. I have a challenging project in my hands right now. I am in charge of sewing the costumes for an upcoming theatre production. the challenge is that the show had to be pushed back a month. This means I currently have four weeks to build a twenty character play all by myself. Did i mention is in the Italian Renaissance and I’m doing it from scratch? Im very lazy when it comes to building building costumes because I know its a long, and tedious process. But I am happy to say that I’ve scared my self to so much with the possibility of no finishing in time that im three days into the building process and have actually finished three costumes. I would rather have no life for a month than let people down. This is how I’ve been able to get over this bad habit. This is not about just me, there are a lot of other people involved here, and we all depend on each other. This about the collective, not the individual. It actually works.

Im on my way to better myself in order to be proud of myself and happy. My only dream in life is just that happiness. So far so good.

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I was at Barnes & Noble today looking for a copy of “Eat, pray, love” when i bumped into a small fifty something page book. On the cover it read “The curious case of Benjamin Button” a short story. Since i never saw the movie I took it home. I just finished it and it took me about an hour, I’m assuming about two hours less than the movie. 

Fitzgerald creats a world that is fantastical and dream like, yet realistic with his use of tone and style. A man of seventy six going to preschool, and a man of fifty a freshman in Harvard. This is reality of Button. He was wrapped in a blanket and shoved into a baby’s basin looking seventy six because it what you’re supposed to do with newborns. His life has humorous situations like this. Also there is the longing for the past he had when he was in his prime, to this many can relate to today. 

Though the story was written about  a century ago, it reflects modern day’s society’s view on age and aging. The reality of your age has nothing to do with what age you appear. When Button was five he was forced to play with toy trains when all he wanted was to smoke a Cuban cigar and read the Encyclopedia. Nowadays we have men and women dying their hair, getting liposuction, face lifts, neck lifts, brow lifts and all kinds of lifts lifts. All this in order to appear a younger age than they are. Why?, because of the same reason Button was forced to dye his hair at five, society’s opinion. He was a decorated ARMY veteran that was scoffed at and turned away after returning for duty because he appeared fourteen. Now we see a forty year old with high levels in a video game and he is praised in come parts of the world. Our age shouldn’t carry that much weight, it should be our knowledge and experience that count. The people in this story were scared of the unknown. There was something different about this man’s life and that was that he didn’t care about his age, all he wanted was to be happy. Society never faced him, he always did what he wanted, sure there was talking and pointing, but at one point or another he accomplished what he set himself out to do.

Although stigmas are still present I think i can say that we have all come a very long way from a century ago. People are still scared of what they don’t know or can’t explain. They avoid it, reject it, and even ridicule it.  All because they don’t understand it. More and more this changes and it makes me really happy that I can see it happening. Never the less prejudice still exists and is not going anywhere any time soon. If more of us opened our minds to the foreign, and what appears strange we could learn so much. I assure you that if someone had sat down with Button a lot of his problems could have been avoided. 

Go learn something strange.

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PS

I actually had written this already, but smart me hit the refresh button so it all got erased. Doubt is a good as before.