This is the manifestation of a concept I have been working with for the past week. After having my Fulbright interview, I did some serious brain-digging about where all my ideas were coming from. It is important to me, which I know, but how can I convey that to others? It started with getting back to something that has been in my family for generations. My great great grandmother’s Apple Kuchen recipe. How can I translate this memory for others to be able to partake and enjoy or even just connect with? So I wrote Why Taste Matters: Where it Began, and printed it on the parchment which I also screen printed the Taste Matters logo onto, wrapped the Kuchen in, and gave it to members of the Fulbright committee who interviewed me.
The interview was a stepping off point. A place where I realized there needs to be concrete material to serve my bigger ideas of taste, memory, history, place, and community on. Taste Matters, or TM, also means Trade Marked and Tricia Martin. I like the layered effect that this design can have with the food it will envelop and eventually become a stepping off point for others to share with each other. Watch out, next comes an entire brand, a space and interior, and a whole sustainable design philosophy to boot. 
Why Taste Matters: Where it Began
As I walked from the room, I felt my ears still burning. I felt deflated but not defeated. This was a welcome critique of an idea, a metaphor, and an exercise that I was working to find a language for and put into practice for the past month and a half. Now, I am even more convinced about my ideas concerning taste, place, history, memory, and community. I am passionate about design as a sustainable practice, people, and food. In spite of this, I have realized my passion was not enough. Passion that is well articulated, however, can be powerful.
Growing up, I spent my formative years in the kitchen. My grandmother used to watch my younger brother and I while my parents worked. I remember days coming home from kindergarten to the smell of her sweet rolls, jealous that I was left out from helping make them. But she always saved the apple kuchen to make on days when it was just the two of us. Step by step she would show me how to sift the flour with the baking powder, how to cream the butter and the sugar, and to slice the apples just so. After each step, we would taste. ‘Is this right? ‘ she would ask wanting me to think about what I was tasting.
It was the apple kuchen that was the first thing that came to mind as I sat quietly contemplating what had happened during the interview. This recipe is one of the only traditions left from the “old country” of Austria. It survived covered wagons in their move along the Santa Fe trail, and became a staple of the “new country” farm my grandmother grew up on in Oklahoma. It was a source of pride for my grandmother to say this is what our heritage tastes like. I, in turn, feel a similar pride in sharing this with you.
So I went home and I made it. I made it as a call of support from the generations of women before me who went through the same motions to make this cake. I take comfort in knowing I am partaking in a generations old ritual and experiencing my personal history through taste. I was able to refresh my memory to the taste of the first batter I remember making, taking as much as my small five year old finger could hold and eating it. Most interestingly though, I made it as a way to ground myself and to bring myself back to the earliest days of this tastes memory.
What you are about to eat is dense with personal history and layers of memories from generations past. This kuchen is something that I can make no matter where I live, just as my ancestors did. By eating this piece of cake, you have become part of a greater community through my family’s apple kuchen recipe. Not only are you sharing in this taste with me and a few other people today, you are participating in a centuries old ritual this recipe has created.
This is the power of taste. As a member of the community, an artist, and designer I want to transcend this experience of taste, opening up the doors for honest conversation. In turn, this conversation can lead to a mutual understanding between the taster and the originator, finding a common ground through food.
