Usually when one thinks about the American food way, hot dogs, hamburgers, and fries are the first thing to come to mind (this idea is well represented in my PSA and SSI, which reveals fast food as a contributing factor to America's political, social, and economic culture). But enough about fast food. While I do believe fast food is a large part of our food way, I also believe a lot of other foods relating to our culture are overlooked. As this post clearly states, one cannot forget the importance of pie.Not only has pie been a large part of American desert-making traditions for years, but it's something very relevant to me, and my own personal food way.
For me, there is a specific pie that corresponds to very specific memories, seasons, and events. This may be one of the reasons why I often can't choose a favorite pie: it changes throughout the course of a year, along with all the events that take place within that year. For instance, around thanksgiving, pumpkin is my favorite flavor of pie. Whenever I get together with family in the winter, I can't get my mind off black raspberry pie. The taste alone reminds me of being in the kitchen with my mom and helped her stow away as much leftover pieces as possible for the car-ride home, and having those pieces disappear within a week. At the moment, I'd have to say I'm partial to key lime pie. It has me thinking about sea food dinners on the beaches of florida (where I happen to be traveling to this August), and all the positive associations with spring and summertime.
So really, pie represents all of the different flavors of my experiences as they change throughout the course of everyday life. Nothing is set in stone for me, especially the events, people, and places that I do and will encounter in my lifetime.
If you were wondering, these aren't simply pictures that I pulled from google images, but rather images that I pulled from my memory of Venice, Italy. You may be asking: Why these photos? I don't see you represented in any of them. There's a reason for this of course, and that's to explain the idea that pictures aren't exactly perfect representations of a vivd experience in the past. During my trip I tried to take as many photographs as possible, but not of me and my family standing in front of monuments and historical structures (though I do have a good number of those). Really the purpose of these pictures was to try and show the people close to me every part of Venice that I thought was magical; vivid, as if they were seeing things from my own perspective. Though many of these pictures represent how beautiful it was there: the color of the water, the shadows casted on some buildings as light was reflected off of others, the incredible colors of the buildings, the glorious plazas and canals,they also illustrate the art of the food created their. This also supports the idea that food, for many cultures, is an artistic representation of that culture as a whole. I am trying, like many photographers do, to take you away to these places as if you are experiencing them yourself. Think about it, when you flip through a travel magazine and see a delicious presentation of food, how do you associate that food with that culture? Does it bring back perhaps a vivid memory of a culture you have visited before? Now you tell me, what do these pictures do for you? What are you taking away from these photographs?
