As the final project presentations were underway, I couldn't help but feel impressed and inspired by the creativity and hard work that each group had put into their projects. The first day of presentations focusedon food-related projects, and it was truly a feast for the senses. Each group had prepared their own dishes, ranging from kimchi to soba and even homemade kombucha.

Week 9 unfortunately I had left broad before class and went to the hospital because I was experiencing breathing problems. I ended up having a lung infection! Huge bummer. But my classmates who made projects about food presented their final research and pieces to the Food Studies class. I'm sure they all did amazing.

Week nine started with the food studies and fermentation presentations. My class peers brought their food study dishes ready to share with the rest of the class. My favorite was Louis’ mint and pineapple kombucha. It was surprisingly bittersweet, a taste that crept up slowly and lingered in the back of my throat. It was quite a refreshing and delightful treat.

There was a last minute request for us to present our project early, so we rushed to bake three loaves of bread, photograph all our breads and ingredients, prepare our slide deck, and design our poster over the weekend. I was responsible for photographing and editing all the bread pictures, and adding them and laying out the Venn diagram on our poster. I was also in charge of carrying three loaves of bread to class.

I spent the weekend before this week finalizing a lot of scenery ideas for the book. The beginning forest scenery spoke out to me and was relatively easier to illustrate. The foliage has always been so comforting for me, and has held me through the most uncertain of times. I also loved the reflection scenes, particularly because of the symbolism the scene carries.

This final week for presentations, Collette, Valentin, and I baked our bread based on the different grain we were researching. Since my grain was wheat, I made rosemary no knead bread from week 2 that Professor Vesna lectured on. Below are some pictures I documented of the process. In order to allow the bread to rise, I had to put it away in a warmer area for 6 hours.

This week, each group presented their final projects. I had planned to present with my group on our project about bread during our usual class time on Tuesday, but due to the last-minute change of plans to present all the projects related to food during the Fiat Lux class that afternoon, I was unfortunately not able to attend the presentations because I had already made plans and would not have been able to make it in time anyway.

This week we got to see people’s projects come to fruition and work on the completion of our own projects. On Tuesday we got to see the final projects of those who made projects relating to food. It was very exciting to get to taste people’s creations and learn about the cultural and scientific information behind it. Enjoying food together always seems like the fastest way to unite a group of people so it was nice to book-end our class with that.

During this week, each group presented their final projects, which are so inspiring and impressive to me. On Tuesday, groups who did topics with food brought us a “feast”, food they made themselves, including Kimchi, soba, Kombucha, bread, as well as cucumber. It is interesting to have a chance to eat food made by our classmates and to hear the stories behind each dish. I think it might be hard to think deeply while cooking a certain food during our daily times, so those projects could afford the group time and chance to think and experiment with food more profoundly.

This week we presented our final projects. My group joined two other groups to present to Professor Vesna's fiat lux class as they were learning about food studies.

Tuesday 

Part I