Food | MUSEUM FATIGUE

Chinese Restaurant Menu, Chengdu Spring 1990

August 17, 2016 by Museum Fatigue

This morning while cleaning my office I happened upon a menu that I collected over twenty-five years ago in the spring of 1990 while studying in Chengdu, Sichuan. I don’t remember what restaurant it is from, but the fact that the first page lists Green Leaves Beer (绿叶啤酒) and that page two lists “guo kui” (锅魁) is a dead giveaway that it was from that time. The menu is an interesting look back, not only at the kinds of foods […]

Categories: China, Food, Uncategorized • Tags: 1990, Chengdu, menu, Sichuan

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Donkey Meat BBQ（驴肉火烧）

March 6, 2015 by Museum Fatigue

While on the street in Zhengzhou looking for a quick lunch we passed a roadside shop selling chopped donkey meat in northern style Chinese bread bing. The meat looked like it was cooked in a style approximating the slow cooking of BBQ. It had a healthy amount of tasty fat and was chopped together with cilantro, raw garlic and green peppers. Served hot in the bing it was a pretty tasty treat. The raw garlic gave it quite a bite—and gave me excellent […]

Categories: Food • Tags: donkey meat, street food

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Mystery Object #21: Frosted Turkey Cake

November 27, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This Thanksgiving featured something that I just couldn’t resist adding to my online collection of mystery objects—a cake frosted to look like a roast turkey, complete with frosted lettuce and carrot garnish. (I took a photo of it next to a butter dish for effect.) Why anyone would ever want a cake-shaped meat is beyond me, but its curious existence was a source of joy for folks assembled at our Thanksgiving table. Such a unique sugary creation harkens back to […]

Categories: Food, Mystery Objects • Tags: Sidney Mintz, sugar, Thanksgiving, turkey

Good Food Class: Ramen Cookoff

November 15, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

“In fact, instant noodles may well be the most successful industrially produced food, at least in terms of world penetration: they constitute a huge social reality—and one inviting attention. Much like sugar, instant noodles are a capitalist provision that provisions capitalism…Because they feed people quickly and cheaply, they appeal to busy and economy-minded people everywhere” (Errington, Fujikura and Gewertz 2013: 6). This last week our Good Food First-Year Seminar finished reading The Noodle Narratives: The Global Rise of an Industrial Food […]

Categories: Anthropology, Assignments, Food, FYSEM: Good Food • Tags: class activity, Deborah Gewertz, food, Frederick Errington, ramen, Tatsuro Fujikura, The Noodle Narratives

Good Food Class Midterm Tasting Meal, Part Two

October 18, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This past Monday night our First Year Seminar gathered together for a food tasting meal—an event that gave us a chance to taste a wide variety of foods in dialogue with the books we have been reading and discussing so far this semester. In Part One of this post I summarized some of those books, our menu and the experience of shopping for all of the items—complete with photos. While dreaming up that menu and shopping for the foods […]

Categories: Assignments, Education, Food, FYSEM: Good Food • Tags: American food system, Colossal Cafe, Farmers Market, FYSEM, meals, organic, Pizza Luce, Sara Lee® Apple Pie, supermarket

Good Food Class Midterm Tasting Meal, Part One

October 12, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This semester I am teaching a First Year Seminar titled Good Food: Eating and Culture. For the first half of the semester we have been learning about different aspects of the American food system and its history. Beginning with Michael Pollan’s classic Omnivore’s Dilemma and James E. McWilliams Just Food: Where Locavores Get it Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, this past week we have been wading into Susan Friedberg’s excellent social history of food and technology, Fresh: A Perishable History. Along the […]

Categories: Assignments, Education, Food, FYSEM: Good Food • Tags: American food system, cheese, Farmers Market, Fruits, FYSEM, James McWilliams, meal, Meat, Michael Pollan, Rainbow Foods, supermarket, Susan Friedberg, Vegetables

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American Chinese Food

October 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This past weekend while visiting a nice Sichuan Restaurant in New York City I was surprised to note that the menu had its own category of “American Chinese Food.”

Categories: Categories, Food • Tags: American Chinese Food, General Tso's Chicken

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Good Food: First Day Food Activity

August 31, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

This semester I am teaching a first year seminar (FYSEM) called Good Food: Eating and Culture. The primary goal of the class—in addition to all of the standard introduction-to-college kinds of things required of all FYSEMs—is to consider what makes a food “good.” Humans can and do eat pretty much everything on the planet that won’t kill them, but what makes something good to eat is primarily dependent on sociocultural contexts. Eating is an intimate, personal act of taking something […]

Categories: Assignments, Food, FYSEM: Good Food • Tags: class activity, First Year Seminar, food, Good Food, Hamline University, students

Hotel Breakfast. August 10, 2014. USA.

August 10, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

Categories: Food • Tags: breakfast, hotel

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Mystery Object #20: The Goat Almighty

August 2, 2014 by Museum Fatigue

The first night of this summer’s road trip we stopped in Chicago and enjoyed a meal at The Little Goat. As I often do, I asked the waiter to suggest something on the menu that is unique to the restaurant that I would regret not trying. Our server suggested the “Goat Almighty” a huge stack with a goat burger, braised beef, bbq pork, pickled jalapeños, salsa verde, onion rings and cheddar cheese. It was really a crazy thing to […]

Categories: Consumption, Food, Mystery Objects • Tags: burger, excess, Goat Almighty, The Little Goat

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