These are the questions that you brainstormed in class about cookbooks. As you work on your posts, try to engage the content that you select with one or two of them when you post and keep remember that the publishing angle about cookbooks is our focus here.
- What can we see in our own culture through our own cooking/ “cookbooks” (e.g. Rachael Ray, Food Channel, blogs, etc.) ?
- How has the frame changed?
- How does content change with the culture?
- How does advertising affect the recipes?
- How does world events change the recipes?
- How does it define labels of food (e.g. Italian)?
- How does it focus on specific groups?
- Publishing Problem Question:
- How do we make the most money by targeting the right audience?
- What caused the shift from recipies being passed down to cookbooks becoming scientific and published?
- How can a cookbook still be a cookbook while being autobiographical?
- How do you move a cookbook through the changing social events?
- How has the internet changed the cookbook and how one finds/stores/puts out a recipe?
- Why does one choose to make a cookbook? Of all things why? To put a collection of recipes? Most are just redone of a recipe that was out before.
- Established around the same time we began to have a middle class, how did this play a role?
- Culturally cookbooks are very different, like some international students we know, they rarely use a recipe. What are the differences in some cultures?
- What characteristics make up the ideal female cook as cooking moved from the private to the public sphere over time?
- How is group identity developed through taste and cooking?
- How did the establishment of the middle class and new technologies impact home life?
- Who was really the target audience of the cookbooks? slaves or homeowners?
- “What might be considered “soul food” has indeed changed from its inception.” If this is true, what do traditional southern restaurants serve? It’s not soul food?
- *Why do you think advertisers are involved in cookbooks?
- Do advertisements have anything to do with making women feel like they were an essential part in shaping the market economy?
- How are men portrayed in cookbooks?
- Are cookbooks meant to serve as an artistic outlet for women?
- In the 1950s, why was it so important for women to know how to cook? Does the ability to know how to cook define your worth/status in society?
- What was the social shift/change when supermarkets started selling TV dinners and canned foods? Was this the start of freeing women from the kitchen? Was this the start of the women’s rights movement?
- What does it mean to be a “Foodie” today?
- How has the Food Network changed the way people think about cooking? Cooking competitions, cooking shows, celebrities…
- How has social networks like Pinterest changed the way people think about cooking? Sharing recipes, taking photos, the community aspect…
- What do cookbooks tells us about history?