Taste of Place Episode 6
A Taste of Home
In this episode of Taste of Place, Anna chats with:
Melissa Thompson, an award-winning food writer and cook based in London.
Jenny Lau, a community organizer, writer, and gentle food activist.
Dr. David Sutton, an anthropologist and professor of anthropology at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, IL.
Sana Javeri Kadri, founder of Diaspora Co.
Here are some highlights:
A Taste of Home
Anna recalls the time during the Covid-19 lockdown when she ran out of Sarawak pepper and had to rely on friends to supply her with a taste of her home.
Melissa shares that during the lockdown, despite being stuck at home, she was able to travel all over the world with the different foods she was eating.
Jenny shares her personal connection with Sarawak pepper and shares her family history of when her ancestors migrated from China to Malaysia.
Eating to Remember Place
David explains how food plays a role in remembering history and how it can be used as a place marker for recalling memories in a certain place or time.
David and Anna share that through their experience, countries with robust food cultures, like Greece and Malaysia, tend to talk about food more on a daily basis and how interconnected food knowledge is with their culture.
David describes the significance that food can have when one has the desire or yearning to reconnect with home but are unable to physically be there.
A Redemption Story for Pepper
Sana explains that she hated pepper growing up due to her British understanding of the spice but now loves pepper and views it as a symbol of proof of real intergenerational, beautiful caretaking and land stewardship.
Diaspora Co.
Sana describes the process that Diaspora Co. has to ensure their work in spice trade is equitable for all parties. She emphasizes the importance of being a visible middleman that takes responsibility for the stories that are being told by the spices they distribute.
Sana acknowledges that while Diaspora Co. prioritizes being transparent, the work they do is not perfect and they’re always looking for ways to grow and improve.
Diasporic Angst
Sana explains the feeling of “diasporic angst” that she and her fellow international students felt in the U.S. about being worried they were never going to feel fully part of their home anymore, while also not feeling like they belonged in their new home.
GUESTS
Melissa Thompson
Melissa Thompson is an award-winning food writer and cook.
She has penned powerful articles on the British food industry that became focal points for important discussions around identity, diversity and inclusivity. She has won the Guild of Food Writers’ Food Writing award and was named PPA’s Food Writer of the Year.
Her debut cookbook, Motherland, is due out in September 2022, published by Bloomsbury. It explores the evolution of Jamaican food, from the island’s indignous population to today.
She has appeared on Saturday Kitchen and Radio 4’s The Kitchen Cabinet, is a columnist for BBC Good Food magazine.
David Sutton
David Sutton is Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. Since the early 1990s he has been conducting research on the island of Kalymnos and has published three books on food: Remembrance of Repasts: An Anthropology of Food and Memory (Berg, 2001), and Secrets from the Greek Kitchen: Cooking, Skill and Everyday Life on an Aegean Island (California, 2014), and Bigger Fish to Fry: A Theory of Cooking as Risk, with Greek Examples. These explore food practices in relation to questions of memory, history, the senses, gender and technology.
Jenny Lau is a British-Chinese Londoner with roots in Hong Kong and Malaysia. She is a passionate community organizer, writer, and a gentle food activist. Jenny runs an Instagram account, @celestialpeach_uk, that documents her work exploring identity and diaspora through the lens of food, including her project, An A-Z Of Chinese Food.
Sana Javeri Kadri is the founder and CEO of Diaspora Co., a company that sources single-origin spices directly from partner farms in South Asia. She is a former food and culture photographer who uses her experience to tell visual stories and build commnity through food. Sana splits her time living between Mumbai, India and Oakland, CA.
