South Coast Senior College

A TASTE OF WHERE YOUR FOOD ACTUALLY COMES FROM

 This class solves the mystery of Who Done It? Who actually is responsible for you having all that food to eat?

CLASS ONE: LEBENSRAUM (LIVING SPACE)

All empires were created to secure a steady food supply for the home country: Rome, Greece, Ottoman, Russian, German, Dutch, British, Japan, American (hint: banana republics) The quest by competing European countries to have sugar led to all those different languages now spoken on the various Caribbean islands. Food rich countries never went to war.

CLASS TWO: WAR AND PEAS

Somebody has had to feed all those armies on the march throughout history and this military necessity has put a lot of army inventions in our kitchen including pasta, canned food and Cheetos.

CLASS THREE: HOW COOKING FROM THE CENTER OF THE WORLD SPREAD OUT

A look at the food supply and recipes from what we call the Middle East where wheat and grapes were domesticated into bread and wine, many of our favorite herbs originate, and how the cooking went into Asia (Punjabi, Indian) and Europe (Greek and Spanish).

CLASS FOUR: EATING ON THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT

A look at the vastly different ingredients and recipes and where they originated and spread: India is three distinct culinary countries. Persian cooking very much influenced northern Indian and Pakistani meals while Tibetan and Nepali food rule in the Himalayan states.

CLASS FIVE: IMMIGRATION OF THE FOOD SUPPLY

How your stomach goes global while you stay put because immigrants always bring their food with them. That’s how we got the enormous variety in the American diet from spaghetti to dumplings, grapes, chocolate ice cream and burritos.

CLASS SIX: THE ART OF SCIENCE—FROM CROSS POLLINATION TO GENETIC ENGINEERING

How foods we eat came to be. Chicken, lettuce, corn. And what does GMO, Organic, All natural really mean?    

Your Instructor:  Sandy Garson is a former caterer and cookbook writer who became a food historian 36 years ago and has published many articles, given numerous talks and still teaches her very popular first ever course: Food: the Secret Sauce of History. She lives and cooks in Bath. Tech genie Star Pelsue will handle the visuals and ZOOM invites.