Ethnographic Insights: Food Prep and Storage: September 2021

One of the things that unites every human being, maybe every living being on this planet, is that fact that every single living thing on this planet needs to eat. Food is a central part of every culture, from its selection, to its gathering, to preparation, to how we consume it. Every culture has their own special way of preparing food. I myself am from a northern Appalachian family in which food is a thing that brings people together. We cook massive amounts of food, demand that newcomers get seconds, and send people home with heaping plates so that no one walks away hungry.

To get to the bottom of how a culture handles eating I feel like its best to start at the stage of how that food gets prepared (food preparation (251)) I want to explore how each culture mixes various foodstuffs, decides what parts they want to eat, who does the cooking, whats of each dish go to who. I feel that how we prepare our food is an interesting reflection on who we are as people.

Its also important to examine how a culture plans for future food instability. I want to look into how each culture stores foods for future use, what they keep and what they don't, how does their food source change how they store food. (food storage (252)) I feel there's a big link between a culture's dedication to food storage and how long its view is.

In the interest of diversifying my sources, I've chosen to focus on three different cultures from three different methods of food acquisition. I'm interested to see how big of a role the acquisition of food plays in how important preparation and storage are to that culture.

The Cultures I have chosen to explore are:

The San: The San are are a Hunter-Gatherer culture living largely in Southern Africa.