Month: November 2012

A Visualization and Inforgraphic of How the Millennials Eat

A Visualization and Inforgraphic of How the Millennials Eat

I recently came across a Infographic made by ThinkSplendid.com that puts into visual form the food and food spending habits of the millennial generation.   I currently teach students who are of this generation (born between 1979-2000), and I found it interesting to learn about their spending habits, types of food that they will buy, and how often they eat.

The data presented supports that young people are willing to spend more on special and premium ingredients.  In the top ten brands that are trusted, Trader Joe’s, Ben & Jerry’s, and Whole Foods are in the list.

Being a “foodie,” and exploring novel and gourmet foods is on the rise, and being socially responsible with food choices is higher with this group than other generations.

The information supports that gluten free food is on the rise, and being part of a social network influences choices in grocery shopping and restaurants.

You can check out the full graphic below, or read more on thinksplendid.com’s site.

Image Source:
www. thinksplendid.com

 

Links:

www. thinksplendid.com

 

 

The Everything Roof – A New Community Food Project in Toronto

The Everything Roof – A New Community Food Project in Toronto

Where can you grow your own food, compost, do upcycling projects, support education and awareness about sustainability, and grow food on top of a building? In Toronto you soon will be able to do these things at a new center called The Everything Roof, which is being created by a group called The About Face Collective.

The About Face Collective was started by Natalie Boustead and Lauren Pirie, in collaboration with other community members.  The group consists of people who engage with art, sustainability, food security, health, and with the city.  In Toronto, there is not a historical tradition of valuing community and public space.

The Everything Roof was developed as a platform to showcase creative approaches to sustainability and community space and to show how involving artists and designers in community projects can be a benefit to a city.  The project is unique because it incorporates art and youth as well as sustainable urban food production.  . Together, the group developed a vision of a creative community space that would promote healthy, sustainable lifestyles as well as integrating artistic and sustainable approaches. To do this, they are collaborating with other non-profit programs and groups and did a campaign to get support for the space.

The black tar roof of the spaces of the project will be replaced with green space, which will create plant life and food in the urban environment. The food that’s produced will be used on-site in educational programs and workshops, and it also will be sold at the on-site weekly office market and ground-floor cafe at the Center for Social Innovation.

Currently The Everything Roof is still in development and aims to be operational by summer, 2012. If you are interested in learning more about the space, you can email them at aboutface@aboutfacecollective.com with “Volunteer” in the subject line. You can also visit their website and check out their fun video on Vimeo.

Image Source:
http://www.aboutfacecollective.com/ 
Links:

http://www.aboutfacecollective.com/ 

http://vimeo.com/35942278

 

Food Font:  22 Community Alphabets and 1209 Letters Later

Food Font: 22 Community Alphabets and 1209 Letters Later

This year there were lots of public Food Font events done in various locations.  The goal of the events was to get the project into public and to start to build community for the project.  The Summer and Fall Food Font events have wrapped up, and currently the focus is developing the online Food Font tool.  It is nice to take a moment and reflect back on the past Food Font events.

The events started with the initial Food Font event being done at the Cleveland Institute of Art, where students, faculty and staff made two lunchtime fonts; a alphabet made of food from the vending machines and a alphabet made of food from peoples’ packed lunches.   Later in Summer, Food Font went on the road.  So what happened?  Let’s take a look.

  • 12 community events that were done this Summer and Fall
  • Events were done in 5 States which include Ohio, Wisconsin, New York, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.  Cities include Cleveland, OH; Buffalo, NY, Milwaukee, WI; Pittsburgh, PA, and Carrboro, NC.
  • Highlights in Cleveland include being at the RIPE festival at the Cleveland Botanical Garden, at the Ingenuity Festival, and at the West Side Market 100th Anniversary Festival.

So what exactly was done at the events?

  • A total of 22 community alphabets were created
  • 1209 letters  (!) were made out of food
  • A variety of types of alphabets were made that include both uppercase and lowercase alphabets.  Some of the alphabets are for English and Spanish.

If you have not taken a look in a while, make sure you check out the Food Font Flickr page.  You can view and download all of the letters and  alphabets.  There are also pictures from the events.

Currently there is one alphabet still in the works which is made of Cleveland Food Truck Food in Cleveland.  There also are about 4 alphabets that were made to launch the project and are already edited for the online tool.  These include an alphabet made of kale, a holiday dinner alphabet (made of Kbaumlier’s Holiday dinner food from the appetizer to the dessert), an alphabet made of gum drops, and circus peanut alphabet.

The Recipe Project: Great Recipes Made Into Catchy Songs

The Recipe Project: Great Recipes Made Into Catchy Songs

Michael Hearst and Joshua Camp, co-founders of the band One Ring Zero got a great idea.  Why not take Chef Chris Cosentino’s recipe for Brains and Eggs into a song?  The plan was to try to do it word for word, phrase for phrase, literally singing every word of the recipe.  They also decided to ask Cosentino to recommend a music style for the song.  He told them that the style of the Beastie Boys would work.  The band got to work mixing some beats and looped sequences into what ended up becoming a quirky hip-hop song, and The Recipe Project had begun.

The band went on to work with more chefs and recipes, and created a CD and book of recipes.  Today many chefs are getting “rock star status,” and the project highlights this by setting their songs to music, and also with the interviews in the book. The album features over 9 recipe songs  from well-known chefs.    The book has unusual interviews with the chefs and also the recipes in printed form so that you can cook the recipes without having to rewind the music.

One Ring Zero’s music is quirky, with unusual instruments such as the theramin, accordion, melodica, power drills, and bread machines used.  The songs are all upbeat and catchy.

Some of the songs include “Peanut Butter Brunnettes,” a recipe by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and “Spaghetti with Sweet 100 Tomatoes” by Mario Batalli, who happen to be two of my favorite chefs.  Each song has a music video that you can see on The Recipe Project website.  The “Spaghetti with Sweet 100 Tomatoes song is fast and catchy.  The video features plates of spaghetti, visual representations of the ingredients, puppets, and some stop motion animation.

Before you check out the sons and videos, I must warn you.  Once you play some of the songs you might find that you are tapping your toe, or humming the song a few hours later. They also might make you hungry or make you want to cook.

Image Source:
http://www.therecipeproject.com/

Links:
http://www.therecipeproject.com/

Sunday Soup:  Creative and Tasty Fundraising for Art Projects

Sunday Soup: Creative and Tasty Fundraising for Art Projects

Why not eat some vegetable soup and support local art? Sunday Soup is a quarterly community meal, which is an event that supports artist initiatives and community projects in Chicago through a grant raised by the meal. For each dinner, head chef Eric May and his friends prepare a soup and other dishes using local ingredients. The meal is served family style and costs $15 per person.

The money from ticket sales (minus the cost of food) becomes a grant for a creative project. At the dinner, diners vote on proposals for creative projects that are displayed or presented at the meal. The project that gets the most votes gets the money from the Sunday Soup event. At the dinner past grantees will give updates, and there are sometimes readings or music performed.
Past presentations have included a art historical lecture on the aesthetic practice of walking by critic Lori Waxman, a meal by San Francisco underground restaurant chef Leif Hedendal, and Portlander Marc Moscato’s documentary on Chicago’s Dill Pickle Club.  The event creates a participatory and transparent method of funding arts and culture. It also is a way to support dialogue about community, art, and funding. Who doesn’t have great conversation while eating a tasty shared meal?

Sunday Soup last occurred on Sunday May 6, 2012, and The Prison-Neighborhood Arts Project (P-NAP) received the most votes at the dinner. Prison-Neighborhood Arts Project is a new initiative that offers visual arts classes to men at Stateville prison and produces exhibitions of the resulting works in neighborhood galleries and community centers on a bi-annual basis. The Sunday Soup grant will support P-NAP to buy books for a new fall course in creative writing and literature. At the end of the fall semester, an exhibition of artworks and readings of student writing will be held in Chicago.

The project is a way to directly support projects made by individuals, which can be difficult to fund. Currently public money in general for the arts is minimal, and projects done by individuals are often funding by crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Artists and cultural producers have to often spend a lot of time putting a project into a definable category, and spending significant time in creating online campaigns.

The Sunday Soup grant is a simple and direct process, making Sunday Soup a direct and broad way for artists to potentially find support for projects. Some past projects that have been funded include Gabriel Saloman’s Spartacus School of Passing Time, AREA Chicago, Geraldine Juarez’s Tanda Foundation, Joseph Del Pesco’s Black Market Type project, and many others.

The project was initiated by InCUBATE in 2007 and restarted this past year after a two year break. Sunday Soup has helped support an international network of micro-granting community meals. Over 61 “sister projects” are currently in operation.  You can read about the project, funded projects, and contact them if you want to participate or do your own soup events. The website has links to other artist-run funding projects, so you can connect with others in cities across the U.S.

Image Source:
http://www.sundaysoup.org

 

Links:

http://www.sundaysoupchicago.org/

http://www.sundaysoup.org