A crucial part of writing is observing the small moments around you and putting them into words, as Sophia Raines shows in her winning entry to our Food Writing Competition, all about the process and history of cooking pepperoni rolls with her family. “Food is an innate part of culture in every society”, she says. “Making dough from scratch takes us back to when that was the only option we had, and I feel it lessens the burdens of our ancestors.”
Read on to learn about Sophia’s inspiration for writing the piece, the connections she finds between food and history, and what else she is working on at the moment!
In your winning entry, you wrote about making pepperoni rolls with your family. How did you come to choose this topic, and what was your process for writing the piece?
A day or two before I started writing the piece, I was struggling to come up with an idea. Food plays an important role in my life (namely survival), but I was having trouble narrowing this into a coherent plot. Then, as written in my piece, we made pepperoni rolls for my brother’s birthday. I mentioned to my mom how making them as a family was a similar tradition to other cultures, we just had a different type of food. After saying that, it was a total lightbulb moment. I had an idea for what to write that was not only deeply rooted in my culture, but also something I absolutely loved. My essay was completely based on what happened that night, with some cultural tidbits scattered in.
Guest judge Sally Sampson praised the way in which your piece “melds your sense of place in your family”. How did you go about exploring this family dynamic, and how it is influenced by the food you share?
Most families in Appalachia are very close, but the dynamic I expressed in my essay goes beyond blood relatives. The sense of community Appalachians share is very strong. Most of us have struggled at some point in time, and since we know how difficult it is, we often will go out of our way to help others. Pepperoni rolls are cheap and easy, and most everyone in West Virginia has tried some variation of it. It’s in our school lunches, after all. Making food and sharing it is deeply engraved in our culture, and it is something that I feel very lucky to have in my life.
In your piece, you talk about how making the dough for the rolls from scratch is “more raw, more traditional”. Can you expand on the connection between the creation of food and tradition? Does the food we eat in our daily lives inherently link us to our heritage?
Food is an innate part of culture in every society. Making dough from scratch takes us back to when that was the only option we had, and I feel it lessens the burdens of our ancestors. When we knead the dough and start spreading cheese in it, we are performing a task that thousands of others performed before us, celebrating a delicacy that has stretched through time for almost one hundred years. Technology and fashion change: food is one of the only constants we have.
Are you working on any other pieces of writing at the moment?
Yes, always! Writing is as important to me as eating. Often, I’ll wake up from a dream with a new plotline or with remnants of emotion for poetry. If I go too long without writing, my anxiety worsens. It’s a very important method of self-expression, and writing helps me work through my emotions/problems so life doesn’t become too overwhelming. I have a dozen open files on Google Docs right now, and I’m sure most of them will never be read by other eyes, but writing is something I do wholly for myself – perhaps the only time that I’m not seeking constant approval from others.
