Sarah Valor’s Food for Thought

My name is Sarah Valor. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. After graduating from UC Berkeley with a BA in Rhetoric, I pursued a two pronged career–one in the restaurant industry, working largely with businesses driven to provide local, organic, and sustainable cuisine. My other focus is education–primarily with bilingual (Spanish and English) speaking students in Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond, California. The place where my passions coincide is at the Edible Schoolyard where I volunteer in the kitchen, guiding students through the process of cooking products harvested in their school garden.

This blog is the another place I hope to merge my passions through an in depth discussion of food and the threads that stem from that central component of human life. Food is one of the most basic elements of survival. While fundamental and universal, the production and consumption of food happens within what Geertz calls a “complex web of significance” (1973). That web touches every person’s life in distinct ways, depending upon his or her particular socio-economic, political and cultural context. I want to understand how people decide what food objects they cultivate or purchase, the place of consumption and the consequences of those actions. In order to do so, I seek the collaboration and input of bloggers, writers, readers and thinkers to observe and analyze the social phenomena of food in the United States.