2 Day Food Styling, Writing, and Photography Class

In this hands-on, multipart, one-and-half-day workshop, Sheryl Julian and Sally Vargas will guide participants through what it takes to style, shoot, and write about food in a compelling and successful way.

Former food editor for the Boston Globe, Julian is a cookbook author, food stylist, and writer with over thirty years of experience in food media. Vargas is a professional cook, writer, and photographer and the author of several books, including and the newly published The Cranberry Cookbook.

Day 1

In part one, the class discusses social media, blogs, books, and cameras, as well as what makes an effective and successful shot (with hands-on practice), a slide show of a dish photographed from start to finish, photo critique, and more. All photos are shot with available light, so you can reproduce at home what you learn in the workshop.

Day 2

In part two, focus turns to photographing and blogging, as students rotate between shooting a main course dish and undertaking a blog or writing critique. Students and instructors will sit together and dine on the photo food with a discussion during lunch. All levels are welcome, whether you use your phone to shoot for social media or have invested in a camera to produce photos for a blog.

Details

The class will meet at the BU College of Fine Arts Photography Studio from noon – 5 PM on April 20th and 10 AM – 5 PM on April 21st. The cost of the class is $650. You can register for the class here.

Course Spotlights: Food & Art, Gender & Food

Read on for a sneak peek into some of the Gastronomy classes we will be offering this Spring. Registration information can be found here.

Food and Art

Laura Ziman will teach Food and Art during the Spring 2018 semester and has prepared this Course Spotlight.

Looking at the earliest images, tableware and sculpture of food from the Ancient World to the contemporary, we will see the historic changes in objects and artwork that refer to cuisine.  Discoveries will be made in the purposes and meaning of imagery and three-dimensional objects through time from a variety of cultures.

Artists’ lives will be explored through their work, the time they worked in and their country of origin leading to greater understanding of the art they created.

Posters, cookbooks, advertisements, films and models of food all contribute to the visual cornucopia we will explore.

This course includes trips to The Museum of Fine Arts, which contains food art from Mesopotamia to the 21^st century. Ancient Greek oil pitchers, an American dining table from 19^th Century Dorchester to 20^th Century table settings will be visited.

We will visit a food market and view the artistry in food arrangement and packaging. Food artists will be visiting the class to share the inspiration and discussion of techniques used in making their art.

Gender and Food

Dr. Megan J. Elias will teach Gender and Food during the Spring 2018 semester and has prepared this Course Spotlight.

Can a woman eat a Manwich? Can Dad produce Mom’s home cooking? And how is the movement away from gender binaries reflected in foodways? In Food and Gender we will explore ways in which language and behaviors around food both reinforce and challenge gender hierarchies and restrictive norms.  Using frameworks developed in gender studies we will interrogate our contemporary foodscape through close readings of many media, including food blogs, magazines, TV shows and advertisements. We will also include our own cooking histories and habits in our research and discussion, taking note of when and how cultural assumptions about gender restrict our choices in the kitchen.

The course will include reading, research, field work, discussion, and cooking to help us understand why and how food has been gendered and how the process differs across place, time, and culture.

Students will be responsible for developing a group project together as well as working on individual investigations of gender and food.

Course Spotlight: Local to Global Food Values: Policy, Practice and Performance

Local to Global Food Values: Policy Practice and Performance will be offered through Boston University’s Summer Term 2. This class will meet on Monday and Wednesday evenings, beginning on July 6 with a final class on August 10. To register, please visit http://www.bu.edu/summer/courses/gastronomy/ .

What are “good” foods and trustworthy standards and measurements of value? Who regulates or labels claims such as  “local,” “natural,” “sustainable,” or “(non)GMO” and why should consumers care? These are the basic policy (government), practice (food-industry), and performance (case study) issues course participants systematically probe and debate during this six-week Summer Term II BU Gastronomy seminar. Each week clarifies and compares distinct environmental, economic, cultural, political, and nutritional frameworks of value.  Readings, discussions, and hands-on exercises aim to develop professional and personal knowledge and skills for those working in food research, production, marketing, or advocacy, or more generally interested in understanding the science and technology, language and cultural politics, guiding U.S. and global food systems.  The course is open to master’s level or advanced undergraduates.

Professor Ellen Messer is a Food and Nutrition Anthropologist heading BU Gastronomy’s Food Policy track.

 

Summer Course Spotlight: The Science of Food and Cooking

Food science meets culinary arts in the MLA in Gastronomy program’s Science of Food and Cooking course. In this Summer I course, basic food science is explored in the context of traditional and modern cooking techniques. Students will discover the science behind cooking everyday foods, explore molecular gastronomy, and learn how to use sensory evaluation techniques to analyze food products.

Students will conduct in-class experiments and have the opportunity to work in BU’s professional kitchen for a comprehensive look at the basic science that makes recipes work and how altering ingredients results in differing sensory properties. Join us for a combination of academic discussion and hands-on exploration of the science of food. This course is designed for food studies and other non-natural science majors and does not require prerequisites.

Instructor Valerie Ryan is a food scientist and food studies scholar. She holds a Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy and is certified in Culinary Arts; her Bachelor of Science is in Food and Nutrition, with a concentration in Food Chemistry. As a food scientist, she has worked for both government and industry in the areas of research and development; ingredient applications; chemical, nutritional, and sensory analysis; and product innovation. Ryan has focused her food studies research on the impact of taste preference on human evolution.

Limited seats are still available in this class, which will meet on Monday and Wednesday evenings, beginning May 18 and runs through June 25. Please register online at http://www.bu.edu/summer/registration/ by May 10 or contact gastrmla@bu.edu for more information

After Graduation: Starting a Wine Business

by Kim Simone

Alumna Kim Simone (May ’14) shares her post-degree career path and founding her company, Vinitas Wineworks.

One of the questions I heard frequently from people while I was attending the Gastronomy program was “What are you going to do with your degree?” It’s not exactly a traditional program with built-in job training (with the exception of the culinary program.) We do it because it’s a part of who we are and what we love. I bet that most of us use the degree to forge our own way in the world of food, creating a place for ourselves in one of the many industries that pertain to our chosen field of study, be it cooking, writing, education, hospitality, and so on. I chose wine.

At the same time that I started the Gastronomy program I also jumped into the wine world, working first in a large retail store and then for a medium-sized Massachusetts wine distributor. And although I was climbing up the industry ladder, I got an idea pretty early on that a job in sales wasn’t the place for me. My real love has always been educating the public and “geeking out” over the finer points of whatever is in my wineglass. Which is why, after years of thought and planning, I founded an independent wine education and consulting company after finishing my degree last May.

I specialize in wine education classes and hosting wine events for the general public. These can be either private events (e.g. tastings in people’s homes, private parties, etc.) or something bigger like a fundraiser for a nonprofit. I also provide training for those in the hospitality trades that either need some guidance within their own store or restaurant, or who need someone to train their staff to be better servers or wine consultants. My education through the Gastronomy program and the Elizabeth Bishop Wine School has really prepared me for this new role. Both the hands-on tasting classes led by Sandy Block and Bill Nesto, as well as the History of Wine class, really opened up this fabulous world to me. The most important thing I feel that I can pass on to my clients is that wine doesn’t have to be scary. It is complex, yes, but there truly is something out there for every palate. Once you learn what you like the possibilities are endless. Through my events and blog I provide the place to ask those questions that you might think are a little bit dumb and get that knowledge flowing.

Kim Simone can be reached at kim@vinitaswineworks.com or www.VinitasWineWorks.com.