Graduate School Stole My Life

I feel like a fog has been lifted.

For the last two years, I've been in a graduate program at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, and I'm realizing that I have a family and friends and hobbies that don't involve researching and writing long papers.  I graduated June 7th with a M.A. in International Development and a concentration in Sustainable Agriculture and Food Security.  My time at Korbel was valuable, and I recommend the program to anyone interested in pursuing a career in international development.

Most importantly, I immersed myself in issues I care about and found other people who care as deeply about  finding solutions to absolute poverty, food insecurity, inequality of access to public goods like health care or education, and the list goes on.  I primarily focused my studies on international agricultural trade, U.S. agricultural policy, agricultural development in Africa, WTO agricultural trade policies, and agricultural policy at the national-level in several sub-Saharan African countries.  I also had the distinct pleasure to intern with an organization called The World Food Prize, an experience which further cemented my resolve to combat hunger at home and abroad.

My goal is to use this space as a place to talk about food issues, both in the United States and abroad, so be on the lookout for posts in the near future.

Dinner Cooperatives

It's amazing how quickly things can change over the span of only a few months. I intended to get this blog thing up and running this summer, but life kept me from exploring and writing as much as I wanted to. Throughout the summer, I was preparing for a new director at the archive where I used to work. In August, I moved in to a new apartment with great people, but when I wasn't working we were playing. Then, after months of hedging my bets at my former job, I decided to move from Knoxville, TN to Ames, IA to be with my boyfriend. After moving in November, I'm finally more or less settled in. I have a part-time job at the local food cooperative, and I'm hoping to spend my free time leisurely. Come next fall, I fear that graduate school will keep me from having much leisure time!

Thankfully, I've had time to catch up on some interesting journal articles and newspaper clippings that have been accumulating over the past months. I've been sitting on Laurie Woolever's New York Times article "Saving Time and Stress with Cooking Co-ops" since June, and I'm excited to talk about it. "A cooking co-op, or dinner swap, is simply an agreement by two or more individuals or households to provide prepared meals for each other, according to a schedule. The goal is to reduce the time spent in the kitchen while increasing the quality and variety of the food eaten." Woolever explains that you can share meals to be frozen, or freshly cooked, and that the cooperative can work in my different iterations-- small households/large households, people with or without children, etc. The important thing is to set ground rules for how you'll share, and to group with like food-minded people.

The efficiency of making one big meal and dividing it up, thus dirtying the kitchen only once or twice a week is so appealing to me. For those of us without a dishwasher, washing pot after dish after cup becomes onerous. Plus, I hate making a recipe that could feed 8 and, with every good intention of finishing it over the week, seeing it go to waste. I suppose you could freeze your own meals, but that takes away the true benefit of activities like the dinner cooperative-- fostering community. For people in a big city who may not know their neighbors well, or for someone trying to find a social niche in a new town, a dinner cooperative seems like a relatively pain-free way to get to know people. Whether your group sets up a small party with drinks and snacks each month to trade dinners, or you walk frozen dinners to the next-door neighbor, you're cultivating a sense of community. Even more than the idea of pinching pennies and trying new food, the community-building quality of activities like dinner cooperatives seems to be missing in many American cities, at least on a micro-level scale. You talk to people face to face, and their food can speak to you as well.

I realize that the idea of building social capital in only face-to-face interaction is very Robert Putnam of me, and that a community of dinner sharing may still perpetuate undesirable or irresponsible trends in food production and consumption. However, a dinner cooperative could help build the same kind of community I have experienced in shopping at the local farmers' market. Maybe your dinner cooperative could go to the market together, or you could have themed meals which must include a seasonal, local ingredient.

I'm not sure I'm ready to start my own dinner cooperative, but after some time settling in at my new job, I'll likely start a lunch cooperative with my co-workers. Until next time, be adventurous and eat well.

Oh, Hello There

My name is Morgan, and I'd like to talk to you about food.

Let me start over. I'm a 20-something, recently graduated B.A. from a Big State School. I studied Political Science and French, and was (and still am!) way too involved with Model United Nations clubs and nonprofits. The short-term is uncertain, a little boring, but overall promising. I'm passionate about many things, but personally and professionally I care most about food, the politics of food, and trying to find solutions to food insecurity in the developing world, specifically in Africa.

I've been known as somewhat of a big mouth for most of my life. I'm loud, I'm opinionated, and can be somewhat unpleasant in voicing my opinion. I hope to use this space as means to flesh out my opinions on food insecurity and the like, to try and hone in some ideas as I prepare myself for graduate school. You can also expect some posts about home cooking, and probably a personal anecdote here and there. I'm not sure how the topics will mesh together, but I'll tweak the format as I go. At the very least, I'll try to be diplomatic and open-minded in my musings, but there are no guarantees when you're dealing with a big mouth.

Here's to my silly internet experiment!