Author: Kbaumlier

Kristen Baumlier’s work spans the full spectrum of interdisciplinary media, including performance, interactive installation, video and audio works.
Dirt:  The Unique Food Ingredient at Ne Quittez Pas

Dirt: The Unique Food Ingredient at Ne Quittez Pas

Ever quickly wash a fresh vegetable, and then you find that you missed a little bit o dirt?  Due to my quick lettuce washing technique, I have eaten my share of dirt, but on accident.  Today at the French restaurant called Ne Quittez Pas in Tokyo, you can order southern French cuisine made with seafood, vegetables, and soil, which is the newest fresh ingredient.

A six-course dinner, which features dirt as an ingredient is created by owner and chef Toshio Tanabe for the cost of 10,000 yen or US$110.  The dirt is unique, in that it is chemical-free soil that comes from a supplier in Tokyo. In order to prepare the dirt for cooking and eating, the dirt is lightly cooked in order to release the flavor, and is run through a sieve to remove any sand grains.

Some of the dishes of the 6 course dirt experience include an appetizer of soil soup, a  soil-dusted potato ball with a truffle center, and soil sorbet with sweet dirt gratin.

Rocket News 24, a Japanese-language news blog, has an article written by  Jessica Kozuka who tried the dinner and soil experience, which describes in detail the menu and dirt courses.

An excerpt from her account of trying the dirt dishes reads:

“The first course: a potato starch and dirt soup. It arrived in a shot glass looking so dark brown, it was almost black. It definitely looked like it had dirt in it. A slice of black truffle was balanced on top, and the staff instructed us to take a bite of it and then try the soup. So we did… and it was divine! There wasn’t a dirty flavor at all. Instead, this simple soup went down smoothly with just a hint of potato flavor.

The rim of the shot glass was dusted with salt like a margarita, so after the initial saltiness, your mouth filled with the mild flavor of the soup. The dish impressed us more with the chef’s skill than with the potential of the unusual ingredient, though.

Next up: salad with dirt dressing. As simply as I can describe it, this dish featured fresh vegetables like eggplant, tomato and turnips grilled and served with a dressing made from dirt and a fine powder made from ground popcorn. Here too the surprise wasn’t the dirt, but the deliciousness of the vegetables. The tomatoes had the perfect balance of sweetness and acidity, and the eggplant hadn’t taken on any bitterness from the grilling.

I’d come here to try a dirt course, but the food tasted so little of the earthiness I was expecting that I’d kind of forgotten about that ingredient. According to the staff, the dirt used is a special black soil from Kanuma, Tochigi Prefecture. It’s strictly tested for safety and purity to be used in food, but so far I thought I hadn’t been able to notice a “dirt” flavor in the meal.”

Got dirt?

Image Source:
en.rocketnews24.com

 

Links:

nequittezpas.com

en.rocketnews24.com

 

 

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Street Furniture – Pop Up Public Seating

Ever been somewhere and wanted to take a break, but there was no great place to sit?  Designer Oliver Show decided to create a simple way to put seating into public areas, using yellow drainage pipes that are found sound the city of Hamburg.  The pipes are flexible, cheap, and weather resistant.  The design is simple – find a spot and wrap it in the pipe material.

The result is a bright yellow solution to making benches, recliners, and loungers in any urban location.  The pipes can be wrapped around a bridge trussel, bike rack, or safety rail, and quickly create a place for you to sit.  I haven’t read anything about how comfortable the seats are, but in the pictures the seats look pretty good.

Show, who studied architecture, won a HFBK Leinemann Foundation for the Education and the Arts award for his seating idea.The series is called “Street Furniture,” and you can see a video about the construction online, or see more pictures on the Architizer website.

Image source:
Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website

Links:

Video about the construction online

Street Furniture – featured on the Architizer website.

 

Superbrushes:  Better Than Other Brushes

Superbrushes: Better Than Other Brushes

Last Friday I attended a launch event by Evan Marcell where he introduced Superbrushes, a set of new Photoshop brushes that he has created for use to paint and create digital images.  Marcell created the brushes by taking pictures of textures around Cleveland, editing them, and preparing them as brush files to be loaded into Adobe Photoshop. The abstract brush forms provide a unique shape, texture, and pattern that make it easy to make great images and graphics.

Most of the time we use the standard brushes that come with Photoshop, but Superbrushes introduces a new exciting set of brushes to try.  One interesting thing about Superbrushes is that the process of how the brushes were created was through the phenomon of the “butterfly effect,” where one action affects another action.  One brush created another brush.  This new brush was used to make another brush, and so on. Marcell says that the project and process of reusing a brush to make a new brush was inspired by breakbeat music, where beats are cutup and reused to make new beats.

The goal of the project is to enable artists to make more work, and to appreciate the brush.  Marcell writes on the Superbrushes website, “.. artists are possibly the greatest appreciators/would-be art collectors if we didn’t feel obligated to put all of our funds right back into our art. SUPERBRUSHES brushes are beautiful compositions in themselves, enabling artists to fuel their art in appreciation of each gorgeous brush as an artwork in itself.”

At the launch event we were given direction to a webpage where we could download a set of  25 free Superbrushes.  We watched a demo of how to install and setup the brushes, which was followed by a live contest – a Superbrushdown, where the audience members who brought laptops, had about 8 minutes to make an image.  After the time was up, the group voted by clapping, and I am proud to say that I won(!), and got a prize of the full pack of 125 superbrushes, which usually sells for $20.00 off of the Superbrushes site..

Marcell is working to build a Superbrush community.  The website is currently featuring pieces made with Superbrushes on the website.  You can download a set of free 5 superbrushes to try, and then submit your image to be featured in the gallery.  Why use ordinary brushes when you can use Superbrushes?

Image Source
http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes
Links:

http://evanmarcell.wix.com/superbrushes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Go Fossil Free Campaign:  Eleven Cities Have Committed to a Future without Fossil Fuels

Go Fossil Free Campaign: Eleven Cities Have Committed to a Future without Fossil Fuels

350.org, a group that for several years has been working to battle climate change through organizing, events, and petitions has a new campaign for communities and cities to commit to moving away from Fossil Fools.  The latest update from the campaign is that 11 cities have made a commitment to moving away from spending money on fossil fuels, and there are over 100 petitions active in various cities and states.

The cities that are committing to divestment so far range in size, like Bayfield, Wisconsin, which has just 530 residents, to large cities, like the City of San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously this past week to push the city’s retirement fund to divest $583 million from the fossil fuel industry.

Citizens who are starting the petitions feel that we are all part of institutions, such as city and state governments, religious institutions, charities and non-profits that do work to do public good.  Most of these institutions invest money in stocks and bonds, and have a responsibility to divest from an industry that’s negatively impacting the environment and our future, and reinvest in solutions to climate change.

You can start a petition to show that there is support for fossil fuel divestment, and there are materials to support you in getting started.  To view the campaigns that are already happening in your area and get ideas of how to promote your petition, check out the website.

If you’re not up for starting a petition, the campaign encourages you to talk to your friends, neighbors, and coworkers about the issue, and see if others are interested in stating a campaign.

Image Source:
http://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/

 

Links:

http://campaigns.gofossilfree.org/

 

 

 

 

The Gleaners’ Kitchen

The Gleaners’ Kitchen

Gleaning is a practice that has been around since the beginning of agriculture. The first gleaners were poor peasants who picked up crops that had been left in the fields after the harvest.  Today there are modern gleaners who have created a underground restaurant and grocery store called The Gleaners’ Kitchen where everything served is made from foods that came from dumpsters.

To support the project, founder Maximus Thaler and his collaborator go dumpster-diving behind grocery stores near Boston, getting fruit, vegetables, and packaged food which has been discarded for being past their expiration date.

Once cleaned up and prepared, the food is served and given away for free. The goal of the project is to foster community and support discussion about food and waste.  The project’s website reports studies indicate that up to half of the food produced in the U.S. is ultimately thrown away, and that the National Resources Defense Council estimates that around $2300 dollars worth of food is thrown out by grocery stores nightly.  Due to the variability of what is in the dumpsters, the food served in the Gleaners Kitchen is always changing.

At the last restaurant event the meal included:

Pesto Spaghetti
Curried Cauliflower and Peppers
Roasted Potatoes
Quiche with Cream, Onions, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, Tomatoes and Chives
Roasted Chicken
Fruit Salad with Oranges, Clementines, Grapefruit, Apples, Bananas and Pomegranates
Green Salad with Lettuce, Arugula, Cucumbers, Peppers and Tomatoes
Warm Bread
Fresh Squeezed Apple Cider

The Gleaner’s Kitchen is currently operating out of Thaler’s apartment, but he’s hoping to get support s through Kickstarter to open up a dedicated café where everyone can eat for free.

Images:
www.thegleanerskitchen.org/

 

Links:

www.thegleanerskitchen.org/