The Details:

I'm Kim Herzog, and I've been an English teacher at Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut, for 13 years, having taught nearly every course we offer, and having designed three classes thus far.

Maybe it’s my insatiable hunger that drove me to design Food in Literature. Maybe it’s my love of food media. Maybe it’s my growing obsession with food photography.

Whatever it was, the deeper I dove into the food literature world, the more I became intrigued by all of its possibilities for evolving readers and writers. It was impossible to ignore this growing genre as it appeared on lists of best-sellers and recommendations in my Netflix queue, and as friends family and fellow educators talked food each and every day. In fact, so much of our daily experience revolves around food – so why not create a class that explores the world of food literature?

The creation of this class was a multi-year exploration with chef Cecily Gans, who inspired me and made me think deeply about how a class like this would work at the high school level. The more we spoke, the more we realized the need to have this class be hands-on.

Enter the test kitchen!

In this double-period class, with both English and Culinary credit, students get to choose a topic or theme based on their interests and/or experience. No matter their choice, the class explores, analyzes and applies their learnings from the multifaceted food literature genre in their writing and their experiences in the kitchen, culminating in a professional food blog.