1. 
   Michigan: is relevant to us understanding the poem “Ode to the Avocado” because photoshop was developed by two brothers at the University of Michigan in 1987. This is significant because photoshop is very controversial due to the ways in which it is used today to create unrealistic ideas of “perfection”. The main message within the poem has to do with imperfections and how much we see them within ourselves despite the fact that others often don’t see them in us. Photoshop is a tool used by many people today in social media in order to change themselves to look what they believe they would look like without their “imperfections”. However, oftentimes the image created is so unrealistic it in turn causes other people to feel that they too need to change themselves to become slimmer, wear more makeup, smile more, etc. While this location does not have to do with avocados; I believe that it has to do with the main underlying message of the poem as it is where photoshop was created- one of the main ways in which unrealistic beauty standards are created. All in all, these unrealistic standards have caused an obsession with looks and “perfection” to be at an all time high in today's society.  

1. The Oaxaca Highlands of Mexico is relevant to us understanding the poem "Why It’s Delicious" because it is where pumpkins as we know them originated, leading to the popularity of their seeds, or pepitas, being popularized in the region, with pepitas being directly mentioned in the poem as “white oval seeds” (Albo 2). While these pumpkins weren’t the bright orange crops we know today, they were still pumpkins, and their seeds were used for dishes while their skins were used for storage during cold weather, making them extremely useful in the area during winters. As time went on, families continued to use pumpkins for these purposes, passing down dishes that used their seeds, sharing their recipes with their children and others. This led to pumpkins and their seeds being widely popular in the region, becoming a part of the cultural cuisine that people still share with others, embodying the poem’s message of how food is delicious because it is shared; pumpkins and their seeds have stayed a staple in the cuisine of the region since people continue to share the food they make with it, both with their families through generations and with others. The poem is also about how food is delicious when you work together with others for it, even highlighting how pumpkins essentially make it necessary for people to work together for their food, as they get “large and heavy” and require more than one person to handle (Albo 9). This stayed true historically as well, and helped foster stronger unity between people as they had to work together to make sure they could eat, only for pumpkins to stay a staple for the diets of families, with families working together as we see in the poem to harvest and make dishes out of pumpkins. Everything here regarding pumpkins and how they embody the core ideas of the poem can be traced back to them being cultivated in the Oaxaca Highlands of Mexico, making it a location worth looking at when trying to understand how sharing and hard work can make food delicious. 

1. Rome is relevant to us understanding the poem "Why It’s Delicious" because of how Rome is a story of preservation, in the imperial and culinary sense. Rome was capital to one of history’s greatest empires, one which focused heavily on preserving its unity and power, in hopes of spreading ‘civilization’ and Roman influence across the globe. This was reflected in its food to some extent, with some of the first jam recipes that we know of being found in a Roman cookbook from the 1st century AD, called ‘De Re Coquinaria’. Jams were - at the time - a new way to preserve fruits long term, and this simple method evolved over time into what we know today. While the Roman empire fell and could not preserve itself as a whole, small parts of itself, such as jams, were preserved and lived on. This context allows us to draw a line from that time in the past to what we see in the poem, with a family picking “fat strawberries” in modern times to “carr[y] home” and preserve for later as a jam, and highlights the idea that food will always be a constant in the human experience, no matter how the world changes (Albo 24, 25-26). Food is not delicious because we make it so or because it is of a certain time or place, but because we as humans need it, and do what we can with it to make it delicious, to the point where we figured out how to preserve foods we like for later. Empires like Rome will rise and fall, but jams will continue to preserve food as long as humans are around to eat it, and we wouldn’t have jams without Rome.

1. Lake Titicaca, on the border of Peru and Bolivia in the Andes mountains, is relevant to us understanding the poem "Why It’s Delicious" because of it being the origin of domesticated potatoes, a food which the poem mentions and a food that embodies the poem’s idea of sharing food with people on a global scale. It is believed that the potato was domesticated in the Lake Titicaca region, with it being home to the most diverse amount of wild potato species. From here, the potato was found to be highly adaptable and spread throughout South America’s native cultures, and eventually was taken back to Europe by the Spanish in the 1500’s. This alone already showcases how the potato embodies the idea of sharing food for everyone’s benefit, as the versatility of the potato allowed it to be incorporated into a variety of cultural cuisines, each with their own twists which in turn influenced other culture’s usage of the potato. Once in Europe, this trend continued as the potato was shared with and spread across the continent, with even more different takes on potato based dishes. Eventually these European dishes were spread back to the Americas, more so through colonial American diets, and we ended up with dishes such as mashed potatoes becoming a staple in American culture, as seen in the poem where they talk about a family enjoying mashed potatoes together. To bring it all back to the poem again, the potato is the perfect example to answer the question posed in the poem’s title: the potato is delicious because it has been shared between so many people and cultures, not because it itself is delicious. It has been made delicious due to how people have decided to use it, and how those dishes are shared with others only to be adapted more until something new is created, created many delicious dishes that people enjoy all over the world. The poem focuses on food being delicious because it is shared, and does so on a smaller scale between families, while the potato is the embodiment of the same idea, simply on a global scale, being shared between all cultures and people. This all can then be traced back to the origin of the potato itself, around Lake Titicaca, making this location extremely important to global cuisine, without which we wouldn’t have the mashed potatoes mentioned in the poem, and we wouldn’t have had the opportunity for humanity as a whole to share a versatile food and create dishes that are truly delicious.
2. In adding the source of  “Potatoes (White)” by Ellen Messer (https://www.bloomsburyfoodlibrary.com/encyclopedia-chapter?docid=b-9781474208710&tocid=b-9781474208710-icm00000c019&st=mashed+potatoes) to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by going more in depth as to the history and spread of the potato, describing more about how it appears in different cuisines, highlighting how it was shared globally and further emphasizing its importance on a larger scale, which in turn can be applied to the scenario described in the poem. Some examples of its global spread and diversity include its importance in Europe and its relation with a variety of situations through different time periods and countries on the continent.

"A Brief History of the Cuban Community in Miami" to this pin, it increases the multimodal rhetorical situation for readers by showing them the effects of cultural diffusion on cities like Miami. This source discusses the impact of high Caribbean American populations on the culture of American cities. This is why in the poem it feels like the author is describing a city in South or Central America rather than the United States.