09/07/08: Test Meals

So I think that as part of the "HOW" of my thesis, I'd like to perform a series of test meals - meals that provoke thoughts about different aspects food/cooking and about what I think it means to "savour" a place...

These are a few of my first ideas...

EARTH (baking, cooking, fire) - a meal cooked and served inside one of the old colonial-era kilns on the Niagara Escarpment near my parents' house

• below grade, embedded into escarpment - in tall cylindrical volume made of bricks, open to air above
• clay-cooking, need hammer to break open vessels after cooked.
• potery vessels to eat from
• root vegetables
• candle lighting

ENERGY (fuel, sunlight) - a meal cooked on the hood of a car on a hot summer day

• in parking lot by the beach
• no shade around - people to endure heat of sun (either fry themselves or put on protection)
• eggs, bacon, tea, etc.

CONSUMPTION (biting, chewing, swallowing)

• eating typical meal, but with rhythm in background - each minor beat signifying a chew (25-50 times per mouthful) and each major beat signifying a bite
• awareness of one's own chewing rhythm, one's lack of appropriate disintegration of food prior to swallowing, comparative speeds of eating

TRAVEL DISTANCE (curiosities)

• meal with dishes of food located at separate tables at distances away from dining table in accordance to relative distance of source of the ingredients.
• people have to get up from table to get food - how far will they go?
• what role does convenience take?
• what role does curiousity take?