Blog #6 - Hermans, M

I was fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate enough to have a perfect food event to examine and write about this week. I live with my boyfriend, and his brother and now, sister in law live nearby and we are able to have dinner with them, or game nights pretty much every weekend. This sister in law (Kristen*) also has a mother that lives nearby, in uptown, and last weekend we were all invited over to her Kristen's mom’s house in uptown. Now as random as this might seem, my boyfriend and I had already met Kristen’s mother at the wedding and had an open invitation for dinner, so we were expecting this event to happen eventually, and last weekend just happened to be the one. So at around 6:30, we were picked up by my boyfriends brother and his wife and we all headed over to uptown. As we drove through uptown we started to head into a very expensive neighborhood that had absolutely beautiful houses, and little did we know, but one of those beautiful homes was where we were headed. Kristen’s mom graciously welcomed us into her (I assume) multi million dollar home with a grand piano, harp, fireplace, luxury furniture, and art. We walk in and have appetizers of fresh shrimp while we wait on the cornish game hen and root vegetables, and we talk about the story of her purchasing this home. We learned that while she had air conditioning installed in her home they had found a huge secret stash of prohibition alcohol, which she has subsequently donated as well as kept for her guests and personal use. So while we were feasting on shrimp, we also had a gin and tonic with wildly expensive gin that was from the prohibition era. This is so massively different from anything I have ever experienced and was also pretty uncomfortable. We then dined and talked about current popular culture and news and the experience exuded the ideal, rich, dinner party. One that one could only hope to host someday when they are rich and successful. The night ended with a dessert trifle and without one slip up and we went back home to our basement apartment and immediately downgraded to our comfy clothes and threw a frozen pizza in the oven to eat while watching Netflix. This to me was an interesting sort of eating event. The uncomfortable 'ideal' vs the comfortable grubbiness. While the dinner party exudes sophistication and class and is what I suspect to be the ideal dinner party in the mind of a prospective host, while the night at home with a cheap pizza is what most people would want if given the choice. I think this can be taken farther and applied to the idea of class and diet across America. Robin is right when he says food brings comfort, and with the institutionalized pricing and marketing of food across America it seems clear that unhealthy “tasty” foods are what is cheap, and healthy foods are what is not. This is also like comfortable, and uncomfortable in terms of this dinner party and the culture around healthy and unhealthy foods. The comfortable atmosphere at Lou’s diner compared to the uncomfortable steakhouse dinner in the Wire. It shows how all these factors of food and class are intertwined, and how we can see them in our lives everyday.