Yale ‘Foodie’ Community Invited To Contribute to Classroom’s Blog

Members of the Yale community are invited to serve up a healthy share of their opinions about all things culinary at a blog sponsored by the Yale College course “Writing About Food.”

The spring semester course is taught by Barbara Stuart, lecturer in English. As part of the class, students are asked to write about topics exploring the economic, political, cultural, emotional and nutritional aspects that go into what we eat.

Last fall, Stuart asked members of the Yale community to contribute to a blog she had launched in conjunction with her English class examining electoral issues — an experiment she describes as “a success.”

“Even those students who struggled with assigned essays wrote far better on the blog than they did on paper,” says Stuart. “A public forum seems to bring out the best in every writer. Where that semester’s blog opened up a lively debate on opinions students might have been too timid to voice in class, this one opens up the world of food. The results this term have been spectacular.”

To date, students have mused on variations on dining hall foods, birthday cakes, ice cream, “you name it,” says Stuart.

The site includes photos submitted by students. “Anyone with a gmail account can also Google Map favorite restaurants and speciality food locales,” notes Stuart, adding, “I think this is just the blog for the Yale foodie community.”

Those interested in adding their culinary two-cents can log on at http://wordpress.commons.yale.edu/engl116-stuart.

In the final weeks of the semester, the class will be blogging on their research and class trips, which will include visits to local farms (including Yale’s), cheese and bread makers, a dairy and a goat farm.

“The semester concludes with a meal we prepare using ingredients from the very providers we have visited,” says Stuart. “This seems an appropriate end to a semester spent writing and reading about family foodways, the politics and sociology of food.”