We are now starting to shift our gaze in this class a little bit more toward the issues of food production and social justice as it relates to food. This week you will be reading an excerpt from a recent book called Twain's Feast by Andrew Beahrs. The author of this book broke down a menu that Mark Twain assembled in the nineteenth century and tried to reconstruct it with foods that are available in modern day America. He found that it was a lot more difficult to replicate the foods that Twain knew 130 years ago than he first thought. The chapter that you will read comes from his investigation into some foods that Twain knew from New Orleans and Beahrs's efforts to locate them today. He makes a trip to the Crescent City Farmer's Market where he spoke to Clara Gerica about seafood. You can see a film made about Pete and Clara Gerica (as well as Ben Burkett) by one of my past freshman seminar classes below.
Your job will be to visit one of the city's numerous farmer's markets and to interview either a vendor or a customer to the market. You will combine your interview material with your own observations and compose a blog entry that engage the questions of why these markets are important and what role they play in sustaining traditional culture through food. Your blog entry must contain at least two quality photographs and directly quote at least one interview subject.
Some of the markets that you might visit include:
Crescent City Farmers' Market (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday)
Hollygrove Market and Farm (Saturday)
The Freret Market (more of a monthly festival than farmer's market) Saturday, March 3.
Sankofa Farmer's Market (Saturdays)
Our School at Blair Grocery (Weekends in the Lower 9)
There are other markets in Gretna and way out in St. Charles Parish at the German Coast Farmer's Market.
One of my groups also did a film about Our School at Blair Grocery - See below:
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