5 Prompts about Food

Who says you can’t play with your food?

Here is a bundle of five prompts on food-related topics that will get your middle school and high school students writing. Whether they’re telling personal stories, trying to persuade readers, or expressing an opinion, your students will enjoy sinking their teeth into these prompts.

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Food in a Cabin

True story: Every summer at church camp, my dad and his friend would choose a night to eat their specialty sandwich. The type of sandwich was a secret, and it felt as though the two friends had their own clandestine club.

One night, Dad invited me to enjoy this secret sandwich with his friend and his friend’s granddaughter. We sat in the small, dimly lit cabin around a wooden table. The ingredients were laid out before us: slices of white bread, thickly sliced white onions, yellow mustard, and Limburger cheese.

I was surprised to see how potent the sandwich filling was. All of it was hearty, sharp, and, as for the soft Limburger cheese, highly stinky.

I didn’t care. I was going to do this. We assembled our sandwiches and bit deeply into them. I can still feel the onion’s crunch, taste the mustard’s sharpness, and smell the cheese’s rotting, pungent scent.

A powerful whoosh bit through my palate and into my brain. My eyes watered. I choked out, “That’s. Strong!”

But I was in. I belonged.

Now it’s your turn: Choose from one of the options below.
1. Do you have a personal story about food? Write your own food-related narrative.
2. Are there limits to what people should do to be accepted into a group? Write your opinion. Use examples from real life, if you have them.
3. Would you do something to be accepted by a certain person or a group? Write your thoughts. Use examples from your life.

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Rice and Beans . . . or Steak?

Every year around Thanksgiving, folks participate in National Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week.

Some communities host fund-raisers, go door-to-door collecting canned goods, or hold hunger walks to raise money for homeless shelters. Some even encourage families to sleep overnight in the library—in cardboard boxes (Kokomo, Indiana)—or organize a dinner in which the “luck of the draw determines the type of meal you will eat—communal rice and beans on the floor or a multi-course meal,” according to WIBW News (Topeka, Kansas).

Now it’s your turn: What can you do to raise awareness of hunger or homelessness? Devise a plan or an event. In a paragraph or two, explain your plan or event and how you would like it to work in your homeschool group, co-op, church, neighborhood, or community.

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Waxing Eloquent Over a Piece of Cheese

When was the last time you went into raptures over a piece of cheese—or any food? Being able to effectively describe food is important to people who write menus and to food critics who must write to warn people or entice them to eat certain foods.

Follow this link to read Michael Paterniti’s paragraph about a luscious bite of cheese he experienced in his travels.

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