Food Writing 101 - Day 1 (August 8, 2015)

Last Saturday, August 8, was the first day of the workshop I recently signed up for, Food Writing 101. It's facilitated by one of Philippines' prominent Food Writers, Ms. Ginny Mata. 

Our main agenda for the first meeting was to learn about food writing through the Taste-Memory method and practice it with a very interesting exercise. Ms. Ginny brought around thirteen herbs, spices, and fruits. Some of it were vanilla bean, kaffir lime, lemon, orange, curry leaves, cinnamon, sweet basil, Italian oregano, and lemongrass. She asked us to smell each of the thirteen and write two things: (1) at least three words/phrases that came to our minds upon smelling and (2) an invented/imagined or true memory related to the herb, spice, and fruit. Below is what I wrote for vanilla bean, as an example:

Vanilla Bean - cookies, cheesecake, desserts in general - baking oreo cheesecake with my mama

Being able to smell the different fragrances of the herbs, spices, and fruits was a very refreshing experience. It also taught me appreciation and made me realize that subconsciously or not, we take for granted even the smallest things like the smell of a staple ingredient that we keep in our pantry and use for our meals. So next time, it wouldn't hurt to take a few seconds to smell that one herb, spice, or fruit.