Food and Culture

We had our first day of Food and Culture class and Food and Media. These classes are taught by the same professor and seem very interesting. The Food and Culture class is about Italian food and culture. The course focuses on food and nutrition from historical, political, economic, cultural, and culinary perspectives. We examine Italian food and wine with regards to traditions then talk about the Mediterranean diet success, food production, distribution, and consumption. We get to go to a winery, a farm to make cheese and pizza, and a three day excursion to a town in southern Italy. We also get to cook various rice, pasta, meat, fish, pastry, and dessert dishes with one of the most known Italian chef's in Rome! This class seems so interesting and relates to my major exactly. I am interested to learn about how Italians use nutrition information when they cook their dishes. They use a lot of olive oil, but that's good for you!

In Italian, we went over some more basic phrases/words. I am going to love this class! The language is so pretty and exciting to learn. We got some homework, but it took us about 10 minutes to complete!

Our Food and Media class was this afternoon. This course focuses on the relationship with food to media. Today we learned that Italians do not use build boards to advertise restaurants. I thought that was interesting because it would be hard to choose which restaurant to dine in. I guess they are all amazing delicious restaurants! We were put into groups, and through out the semester we will be doing different projects related to media/advertising. We make a short video about any topic related to how media portrays food in Italy. This should be interesting!

I am sorry for this boring post, but I thought some of you may want to hear about the types of classes I am taking. I have been to each class and they seem very different from the classes I take at school, but so much more fun! Tomorrow we are going to the Tiber River and having a discussion about the history behind it! It is supposed to rain tomorrow, but I am hoping it doesn't so we can have class outside!

Ciao
-Marisa