I've been struggling a bit, trying to decide on the best way to organize and choose recipes to include in my thesis.
Originally, I chose recipes that I could see each of the "guest personas" preparing, that would explore a different aspect of the meaning of "local," and that could be organized by time required for preparation (and thus the time in the day when one would have to start making each dish). Since my first pass at a motif, I have decided to write about only personal experiences creating "local" dishes, and thus eliminate the need for creating characters/caricatures out of my own cooking styles and moods. This change has made my former time-based organization rather inappropriate. Instead, I have sketched out an alternative, month-based mode of organization. Though I may not speak directly about the month in which each recipe is set, I hope it would be implicate and would allow me to talk about a variety of products and influences.
The only problem I foresee, is that I may, similar to when I was using chapters, feel obliged to write equal amounts on each month, and focus less on times during the year (eg. harvest) that perhaps deserve more attention. I've attached the Matrix above.
Maybe instead of assigning a recipe to a month, assemble the types of meals we're more likely to eat with the season. What I mean is: Squash soup screams fall, a hearty soup and bread is my winter staple, nectarines tell me that summer isn't too far away and bbq'd anything is my summer must. Btw, your recipes look delicious.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the feedback!
ReplyDeletehmmm... I do like the "seasonal" approach, and I think I was leaning that direction (by NOT actually declaring the month associated with each recipe) but I think I could take it a bit further and just look at a sampling of dishes for each season. I'm hesitant about going to much into complex MEALS, as I think that would complicate my structure (where the narrative portions are actually the recipe directions). Many recipes, however, do have RECOMMENDATIONS for what to serve the dish with, and I could certainly include suggested sides/main/drink pairings as part of my narrative.