Food For Thought with Laura Davis

Food For Thought with Laura Davis

In my 25 years as a self-employed writing teacher, helping people unearth the truth and craft their stories, I like to create unusual offerings from time to time, just for the hell of it. One of my favorites, which had a three-year run, was an all-day workshop called, “Two Things I Love Best: A Writing Retreat for Foodies.” Here’s the text I used to lure people in: “Treat yourself to a decadent, delicious day of pleasure. We will spend the afternoon writing about food with a variety of luscious, fruitful writing prompts. Then we’ll break and put the finishing touches on our food in a magnificent kitchen. After a long, enjoyable feast with a wonderful creative group of companions, we will gather to write the story of the food we brought. By the end of the evening, you’ll leave with a notebook full of stories, 14 new friends, and the memories of an unforgettable meal.”

It was wildly successful.

I instructed everyone to bring a notebook, a pen, and a favorite dish for our evening potluck. But there was a hitch—there had to be a story connected with the food they brought: how they learned the secret recipe for strudel at their grandmother’s knee, the Thanksgiving their Aunt Helen insisted that the ants floating on top of the chicken soup were really black pepper, the ravioli that was a miserable failure when they were desperately trying to impress their new in-laws.

As a source for writing, food provides a rich, varied, sensual source of stories. Food is primal, visceral, and full of sensory detail—what more could a writer want? The foods we eat and how we eat them reveals so much about our culture, our families, and our relationships. And food is generally easy for people to write about— it’s so immediate.

People arrived at the foodie retreats with pots of richly textured soups, exotic salad fixings, and luscious desserts. After everyone stowed their dishes in the spacious industrial kitchen, we assembled in the living room, notebooks in hand. Everyone assumed they’d have fun writing about food—and they did. But I knew something they didn’t—that food would only be the entry point. We ended up writing about a lot more than food. The stories that poured out during those long afternoons were about hunger, scarcity, satiation, greed, poverty, excess, deprivation, sensuality, family rules, pleasure, nostalgia, loss, love, trauma, punishment, and rewards. Food was the vehicle that revealed the deeper stories.

Consider what you might write in response to the following prompts:

• Write an ode to your favorite ingredient.

• Tell me about the first thing you loved to cook and how you learned to cook it.

• Imagine that your childhood kitchen table could talk. Have it tell the story of your family. What did the table see? What did it witness? Write in the voice of the table.

• Tell me about something you were scared to eat.

• Tell me about a food you hated as a child but learned to love as an adult.

• Tell me about a time you fed someone.

• Tell me about a forbidden food.

• Tell me about a food that’s gone extinct.

• What’s the most unusual food you’ve ever eaten? (for me—bear teriyaki)

• Tell me about a food you had to spit out.

• Tell me about the weirdest diet you were ever on.

• What I’m hungry for.

• Tell me about all the kinds of hunger you have known.

• Tell me about a cooking disaster.

• Tell me about a food you ate for comfort as a child.

• Tell me about a food you eat for comfort now.

• What’s your favorite junk food and why?

• Describe the history of your relationship with food in two pages, using only sentences with three words (not four, not five, but three)

• What would your refrigerator say about you?

• What makes your mouth water?

It makes you think, doesn't it? Food is not just food. Food is everything.

I loved the foodie retreats. The people were great. The meals fantastic. The writing vivid, revealing, and spectacular. But like all good things, those day-long retreats had to come to an end. Too many people (me included) started having special diets. I had to go on an anti-cancer diet. Students became vegan. Or lacto-ovovegetarian. One couldn’t eat dairy anymore. Another couldn’t eat onions. Or garlic. The beautiful kitchen I used was no longer available—the chef who owned it moved away.

It was time for me to retire the foodie retreat and to move on: to try out new teaching ideas, to discover new, beautiful places to bring people to write. And I did. I started combining travel with writing. In the past ten years, I’ve brought writers to Peru, Bali, Scotland, Greece, Vietnam, and now Tuscany. I’ve never stopped helping people find their hearts on the page.

I’ve also never stopped writing about food. One of my very favorite prompts is to share an actual recipe, weaving a family story into the telling. While I was working on my mother-daughter memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars, I wrote two food pieces that used my mother’s favorite recipes to document her decline into dementia—which because of length constraints, ended up on the cutting room floor. Those stories didn’t move the plot along. They didn’t create tension for the protagonist—me. They were well-written, but unnecessary. I had to let them go. But I still loved writing them, and I’m thrilled to share one of them with you now. Enjoy.

BIO: Laura Davis is the author of seven bestselling books, including The Courage to Heal and I Thought We‘d Never Speak Again. Her groundbreaking books have been translated into 12 languages and sold two million copies. In addition to writing books that inspire, the work of Laura’s heart is to teach. For more than twenty years, she’s helped people find their voices, tell their stories, and hone their craft.

Her memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars tells the dramatic story of becoming a caregiver for a parent who betrayed you in the past. You can learn about Laura’s writing retreats and read the first five chapters of her memoir at www.lauradavis.net

How to Bake Ruggelach With Mom