Cooking with Class

I am two-thirds finished teaching my summer school classes this year. It always fly by. Those six week condensed sessions make even the three hour sessions seem a little too quick.

My students in my ethics and eating class have started talking to me about the paper and presentation topics. There are sure to be some interesting things covered. From composting to bottled water to freeganism.

And we are getting to the part of the term where things are getting a little more hands on, too.

Thursday we took a trip to the Main Market Co-op and had a great tour of the place by Jeannette Hamilton the store manager. As an occasional volunteer there I had been on the tour already, but I learned some new things myself. And I was even surprised by how many obvious connections there were between what is going on at the co-op and class discussions. We talked about local farmers, dairy and egg production, the vast bounty that is available to us from our local region, relationship coffee as a step even beyond fair trade, and humane meat production. I am surely going to borrow the line from Jeannette when she said that the meat carried by the co-op was raised humanely -- the animals just had "one really bad day."

Tuesday is the day we cook as a class. We are going to make vegan pizza and some fruit crisp. I did some of the shopping for class today at the farmers market and the co-op. I intentionally decided when teaching this class for the first time that cooking together would be an important thing to do and making a vegan meal was also. Too many people think you can't eat a "normal" meal as a vegan. And the only "mock" food we'll use is some vegan "cheese" for the pizza. The food is pretty much ethically sourced from local markets and stores and will be cooked by all the students in the class, me, and a special guest--one of the Main Market Board of Directors, Kyle West. This is a lot of students' favorite class session.

As we cook, chop, slice, bake and wait for the pizza dough to rise, we are going to talk about food miles, canning, eating local, and getting back to the communal aspects of food. Ethical food is good food and when shared is even better. I look forward to this class session, too.

I have been told I am brave to give sharp kitchen knives to undergraduates and to eat what they helped cook. That might be so. But it is a brave new world we are looking into, one where even the average undergraduate thinks carefully about his or her food, chooses wisely and ethically, and is ready to share with others in the community.