Now for something completely different

These cakes are designed to indicate the proportions of the ingredients in each, and were taken from the website of a group of food designers sponsored by Marti Guixe which sells cooking supplies in Barcelona. According to the site “A food designer is somebody working with food, with no idea of cooking” and who

“makes possible to think in food as an edible designed product, an object that negates any reference to cooking, tradition and gastronomy. Guixé as a Food Designer builds edible products that are ergonomic, functional, communicative, interactive, visionary but radically contemporary and timeless”

It is not clear to me if any of these objects are made from edible product (I think not) but they do give pause to consider some old and puzzling questions regarding our physical relationship to food and what, if anything, food is supposed to communicate.

For example, the following picture shows a wall in a restaurant that is made of tapas. The idea here is to draw your attention to the fact that whenever we gather to eat the food is usually between us whereas here the food surround us.

The next shot is of cookies that appear to have been designed to challenge the idea that the progress of our lives is determined by chance or fate.

They are fortune cookies that allow you to choose your fortune by breaking off the part that says what you would like to happen.

Now lets wash it all down with a refreshing glass of Neutrum which is designed to allow you to enjoy the optical properties of your glass.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Now for something completely different

These cakes are designed to indicate the proportions of the ingredients in each, and were taken from the website of a group of food designers sponsored by Marti Guixe which sells cooking supplies in Barcelona. According to the site “A food designer is somebody working with food, with no idea of cooking” and who

“makes possible to think in food as an edible designed product, an object that negates any reference to cooking, tradition and gastronomy. Guixé as a Food Designer builds edible products that are ergonomic, functional, communicative, interactive, visionary but radically contemporary and timeless”

It is not clear to me if any of these objects are made from edible product (I think not) but they do give pause to consider some old and puzzling questions regarding our physical relationship to food and what, if anything, food is supposed to communicate.

For example, the following picture shows a wall in a restaurant that is made of tapas. The idea here is to draw your attention to the fact that whenever we gather to eat the food is usually between us whereas here the food surround us.

The next shot is of cookies that appear to have been designed to challenge the idea that the progress of our lives is determined by chance or fate.

They are fortune cookies that allow you to choose your fortune by breaking off the part that says what you would like to happen.

Now lets wash it all down with a refreshing glass of Neutrum which is designed to allow you to enjoy the optical properties of your glass.

 

See me, Feed me

Gotta Love Google

Who knows if Google is going to end up knowing more about me than I know myslef and use that information to turn me into a bipedal plow animal? Right know I think they’re doing a terrific job of keeping me entertained and, Ahem, informed. And they keep coming up with surprises like the new StreetView and Traffic features in Google Maps.

Check out this street view of Chez Panisse .

Funny, I haven’t been to Chez Panisse since 1994, and had forgotten how banal the neighborhood was.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Gotta Love Google

Who knows if Google is going to end up knowing more about me than I know myslef and use that information to turn me into a bipedal plow animal? Right know I think they’re doing a terrific job of keeping me entertained and, Ahem, informed. And they keep coming up with surprises like the new StreetView and Traffic features in Google Maps.

Check out this street view of Chez Panisse .

Funny, I haven’t been to Chez Panisse since 1994, and had forgotten how banal the neighborhood was.

See me, Feed me

Pre-Loaded Low Fat Cows

Chances are that if prehistoric Eurasians hadn’t chosen to domesticate aurochs ca. 6500BCE, they’d have simply hunted them to extinction as they apparently had done to the woolly mammoth and a host of other mega-fauna. Actually, late and post-Pleistocene hunter-gathers are believed by some (notably Jared Diamond see “Guns, Germs, and Steel” NY: Norton, 1997) to be responsible for the disappearances of large vertebrates on every continent and island where they had existed for, in some cases, millions of years. Instead, various auroch subspecies were captured, bred, and interbred over the millennia into the varieties of cattle that we see today.

Today I am happy to announce here that the process begun by our agriculturist ancestors all those years ago, and which assures the continued existence of auroch DNA and it’s diversification continues apace, and that we soon may see supermarket refrigerator cases burgeoning with bottles (sic) of Pre-Loaded Low Fat Cow Milk (my coinage).

Simply stated: Somebody done bred a cow that makes low-fat milk.

Scientists breed cows that give skimmed milk-News-UK-Science-TimesOnline

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Pre-Loaded Low Fat Cows

Chances are that if prehistoric Eurasians hadn’t chosen to domesticate aurochs ca. 6500BCE, they’d have simply hunted them to extinction as they apparently had done to the woolly mammoth and a host of other mega-fauna. Actually, late and post-Pleistocene hunter-gathers are believed by some (notably Jared Diamond see “Guns, Germs, and Steel” NY: Norton, 1997) to be responsible for the disappearances of large vertebrates on every continent and island where they had existed for, in some cases, millions of years. Instead, various auroch subspecies were captured, bred, and interbred over the millennia into the varieties of cattle that we see today.

Today I am happy to announce here that the process begun by our agriculturist ancestors all those years ago, and which assures the continued existence of auroch DNA and it’s diversification continues apace, and that we soon may see supermarket refrigerator cases burgeoning with bottles (sic) of Pre-Loaded Low Fat Cow Milk (my coinage).

Simply stated: Somebody done bred a cow that makes low-fat milk.

Scientists breed cows that give skimmed milk-News-UK-Science-TimesOnline

See me, Feed me

Screw the Food Network, this is the best cooking show ever

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

Screw the Food Network, this is the best cooking show ever

See me, Feed me

A Dishwasher Cants

A former dishwasher has written a book about his experience of being a dishwasher. I have not read the book and probably won’t until I get through the stack that’s on my desk right now (below) but I’m betting it’s worth a shot. Anyone who has ever worked in a professional kitchen knows that as awful as it is, it’d be pure hell without dishwashers.

I don’t like to remember how many times I walked into work to hear “the diswasher is sick” or “the dishwasher quit” and had to crank out lunch and dinner and peel the shallots and flute the mushrooms, and clean the grease trap, and wash pots and pans.

We also know that because dishwashers tend to come from the fringes of society, are generally low-paid, that they lead lives that are fraught with peril. So this might be a good read:

Pete Jordan – Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States – Books – New York Times

My Spring Reading List

Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, PhD
Molecular Gastronomy, by Herve’ This
The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil
All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac Mcarthy*

*I’m reading this now.

The best sauce in the world is hunger.

A Dishwasher Cants

A former dishwasher has written a book about his experience of being a dishwasher. I have not read the book and probably won’t until I get through the stack that’s on my desk right now (below) but I’m betting it’s worth a shot. Anyone who has ever worked in a professional kitchen knows that as awful as it is, it’d be pure hell without dishwashers.

I don’t like to remember how many times I walked into work to hear “the diswasher is sick” or “the dishwasher quit” and had to crank out lunch and dinner and peel the shallots and flute the mushrooms, and clean the grease trap, and wash pots and pans.

We also know that because dishwashers tend to come from the fringes of society, are generally low-paid, that they lead lives that are fraught with peril. So this might be a good read:

Pete Jordan – Dishwasher: One Man’s Quest to Wash Dishes in All 50 States – Books – New York Times

My Spring Reading List

Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, PhD
Molecular Gastronomy, by Herve’ This
The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil
All The Pretty Horses, by Cormac Mcarthy*

*I’m reading this now.

See me, Feed me