The Gastronomical Me Analysis

What makes food and memory so complex is the inability to separate the two. Because of the social norms of Fisher’s childhood, she grew up with set family roles, little say in the household, and a “speak when spoken” to mentality. Ultimately, this structure helped pave the way for her idealogical breakthrough. As Fisher describes throughout her memoir, The Gastronomical Me, what makes food memories so complicated is not the taste of the food, rather the memories and the people with whom these meals are shared with. Through these mealtime experiences, Fisher develops her own philosophies, adopting a newer generation’s ideals regarding the power a meal holds and the people that participate. Fisher’s militant grandmother, along with her generation, has set a specific call order in the preparation and consumption of food for her family. These rigid

Fisher seemingly disagrees, she is apart of a newer generation in which women are not confined by the bounds of kitchen tile and cookery, but rather use the kitchen as means to bring laughter, humor, and togetherness within a family between both genders. Once again, Fisher comments on how intense and militant the kitchen tasks were, when explain the level of exclusivity in which her Grandmother ran kitchen responsibilities; she says, “I have a feeling that my Father might have liked to help with the canings, just as I longed to. But Grandmother, with that almost joyfully stern bowing to duty typical of a religious women, made it clear that helping in the kitchen was a bitter heavy business forbidden certainly to men, and generally to children”(Fisher 3). Demonstrating Fisher’s desire to help out in the kitchen, and most likely her father’s, she explains how she is never able to help out in the way that she wants. Her Grandmother’s “religious women” description