Week 6 + 7: Reviewed and Rolling

Faculty Reviews

I didn’t write my review of my review last week so here’s a quick one. It was 10 minutes of positivity, with no real changes to report. I had Sean, Yoshiko, and Tony (although he was out during my review) and I essentially got a thumbs up from the two I presented to. They liked the visual direction and really liked the photography of the spreads I showed which I was very happy to hear. While I enjoyed getting positive reactions to my work, I didn’t get any real critical feedback which was something I was hoping to hear. I will say I look back on the review and while there’s nothing in terms of feedback I had to work with, I did walk away feeling reaffirmed and with a lot more motivation to keep making. For that reason they couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

Week 7

In a sentence: I cooked a lot of food, took a lot of pictures, made a lot of spreads and I’m feeling good.

I think this was the first week where my enjoyment of my capstone project over took the feeling of stress I usually have when working on capstone.

Key Moment

This past week wasn’t the first time I made these recipes on my own but it was the first time cooking these recipes made me feel like I owned my Ehtiopianness. Let me explain. I always saw the Ethiopian part of me as this thing rooted in my family or my home, so essentially it was always something outside of myself. The further I moved away from these central points where I considered my culture to reside in, the less I claimed it as my own. I never really felt like I was Ethiopian unless I was surrounded by constant external reminders that told me exactly where I come from. Slowly I saw less and less of these reminders and it got easier to forget. Last time I was home I couldn’t remember the Amharic word for “borrow” so I just said it in English, nestling the term neatly in a sentence I otherwise spoke in Amharic. I wouldn’t have thought twice about the slip if my dad hadn’t laughed through his response while gently correcting me. It wasn’t getting easier for him to watch me forget.

But after hours on my feet without glancing at a recipe and arm aching from ensuring spiced onions didn’t stick to hot metal, I felt Ethiopian. It was the moment I saw how I carried this place with me. Like when I went to taste my wots for salt levels. Instinctively, I dipped my wooden spoon into the pot of boiling liquid then took it out to slap it against my open palm and quickly lick away the transferred droplets. The strategy is one that I’ve watched my mom, aunts, and all the other people who’ve cooked Ethiopian food in front of me use when they cook. Is it a strategy that works? Sure. Does it hurt? Yes, it always hurts. It doesn’t ever not hurt. Are there better strategies for testing salt levels out there? Yes, of course there are. Did I use any of those other strategies? No, I did not. Instead I kept using the one that hurt, because it was the one that came naturally to me, the one I just knew.

All of this to say that while cooking Ethiopian food I actually did exactly what I was aiming to do with this project, I reconnected with my culture but more than that I started to see how it’s a piece I’m unable to fully be severed from. It’s a comfort to know that regardless of the distance or time that separates me from my home or family, I couldn’t forget it all.