Seeing the big picture - week four of teaching
Tonight, my class and I spent some time in the Middle Ages. I handed out groups of books and clusters of students examined topics such as etiquette, finding evidence in literary sources and comparing cuisines. Then we took a break and ate the delicious late medieval stew one student had made and some fruit cake from Mrs Beeton. We also taste ume tea (thanks to a student, who thought we would be interested – which we were!) and a few rarer spices.
I’ve taught Medieval food so many times before (and some of these students were the recipients of my teaching) that I decided to spend the second half of the session trying a new approach. I talked about some of the underlying factors that make regions what they are. Why butter and not olive oil, why pigs and not cattle. We also talked about seasons and where people got their food and access to traded products.
If all this sounds unexciting, that’s because I’m wilting with fatigue now and can’t communicate the entire fun of the class. It’s a great class to teach because students get so involved in it. They’re a bright group, with a bunch of specialist interests that really fit what we’re doing. What’s curious though, is that I find we look at the big picture a lot. Some classes want the prices of spices or the amount of this or that – these students look happiest and ask the most joyous questions when they can sort out basic principles.
The next class will challenge that a bit. We have a week’s break and then we look at how cuisines get forgotten, intentionally or otherwise. It will be difficult emotionally, I suspect, but we’ll cover some important principles and some fabulous cuisines: it won’t all be tragedy and forgotten souls. It will counterbalance today, which was all about the larger patterns underpinning European cooking and how they helped create the food we eat today.
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