ABSTRACT
Using the lens of the senses in writing can leverage details of foodways, food history and landscape for effective communication. The sensing body of sight, sound, taste, smell, touch, and mind/memory, common to humans across cultural and spatial boundaries, is a powerful avenue for connection. Crafting stories using this lens, as well as the tool of specificity, engages readers from disparate backgrounds. In addition, writing that leverages what is on the plate reveals much more than taste and flavour combinations. Social, political, economic, gender roles and more are exposed. Despite an increasingly globalised food system, food is quite literally bound to place as it grows. Writing that links to place through the sensing body creates effective communication using the familiar channel of food as a personal identifier, as a gauge of cultural values, and as a catalyst of history. The resonance of story rests on these details artfully placed.
