Food – Page 5 – Kristen Baumlier

Category: Food

The Gleaners’ Kitchen

Posted on April 20, 2013April 23, 2013 by Kbaumlier

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/

Food and You: An Animation About Our Food System

Posted on April 5, 2013April 10, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Oxfam International Youth Partnerships (OIYP) is a global network of young people, aged 18-25, known as Action Partners, who work with their communities to create positive, equitable and sustainable change. One issue that the group works on is about food and sustainability, and specifically getting the word out about our food system.

It has been reported that the in the last 50 years, industrial food companies have led us to unsustainable food system. The system relies on oil in order to sustain it, and it takes 10 calories into our food system for every 1 calorie we get out. The chemical fertizlizers are creating unhealthy soil, and we are not able to use all of the food that we grow.

An animation called Food and You, uses motion graphics to illustrate issues that have created our current food system and then presents the transformation that is already underway to bring about change. The piece ends by asking,” What can you do to help grow the movement?” Want a fun big picture of a serious issue? Food and You can be seen on the OxFam’s Youtube. Channel.

Image Source:
www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3cGEqBrlVzM

Links:

www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3cGEqBrlVzM

oiyp.oxfam.org.au

Market Makeover – An Online toolkit for Making Healthy Changes in Corner Stores

Posted on April 2, 2013April 10, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Places that do not have much healthy food available, often called food deserts, are all over the US, in urban and rural areas. Sometimes they exist in places that ironically used to grow food, and are usually in low-income communities. In these locations, there is food to eat, but it’s not usually healthy food. Often there are few supermarkets, and there is a lot of land in between them. In these areas, junk food and fast food become the most available food. Individuals who live in food deserts often are overfed but undernourished, prone to overweight, obesity, diabetes and chronic illnesses.

In various cities in the U.S., various groups are partnering with corner stores to work to get the stores to carry healthier food choices. A group from L.A., called Market Makeover, who has worked to do makeovers at over three stores, has create a website with resources to help any group try to plan, partner, and work to create a “market makeover” in any city.

The project was created as part of the South L.A. Healthy Eating Active Community Initiative (HEAC), local high school students, and Public Matters. The groups worked together to transform 3 stores and out of the experience they have compiled a combination of helpful realworld information and creative, innovative strategies. The resoruces are available in multiple presentation formats including downloadable pdfs, videos, and other information.

One main message of the group is that there is not one single quick fix to get fresh food into neighborhoods that don’t have it. In the planning area on the site, there are resources that include a community resource mapping, a food assessment worksheet, food fact sheets, and marketing materials. In the During Area, there are materials to support developing strategies for different retail stores, information about transitioning a store, and also insights and advice from groups that have worked on doing a Market Makeover.

The site also has YUMTV, a video channel that has videos that use humor to present issues about food and health, and food challenges called, “So You Think You Can Cook?” All the videos, materials, and information can be seen on the Market Makeover website.
Image Source:
marketmakeovers.org
Links:

marketmakeovers.org

Save Food From The Refrigerator

Posted on March 31, 2013April 1, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Before the invention of the refrigerator, foods were stored in low-tech ways to store food. Refrigerators have been widely in use for less than 100 years, and have become the main way that most of us store our food. Many of the foods in the fridge could last as long and even taste better if they were not in the fridge.

Korean designer Jihyun Ryou, has developed a series of storage designs that uses traditional techniques of storing food that she learned from her grandmother and other elderly people in the community. On her site she writes, “We hand over the responsibility of taking care of food to the technology, the refrigerator. We don’t observe the food any more and we don’t understand how to treat it.”

One unit called The Verticality of Root Vegetables is a shelf/container made of Maplewood treated with beeswax, which houses two containers filled with sand. Carrots, green onions, and other root vegetables can be stored easily in a vertical position, which allows the organism to save energy and remain fresh for a longer time. This shelf and sand gives a place for them to stand easily and the sand helps to keep the proper humidity.

Another piece, called the Symbiosis of Potato + Apple is another wooden unit that has a lower space for potatoes, that are kept in the dark, and a space above for apples to be stored. The apples emit ethylene gas, which prevents the potatoes from sprouting.

Other storage units include ways to store spices, ways to store eggs so they can breathe, and ways to store vegetables that will stay fresh longer when at room temperature.

Ryou’s project aims to re-introduce and re-evaluate traditional oral knowledge of food, and to connect us back to the relationships of food that exist. More of her designs, and a book about the project can be seen on her website.

Image Source:
www.savefoodfromthefridge.com

Links:

www.savefoodfromthefridge.com/

Identical Lunch: Food + Performance by Alison Knowles

Posted on March 19, 2013March 24, 2013 by Kbaumlier

Ever eat a tuna fish sandwich on wheat toast with butter and lettuce, no mayo, and a cup of soup or glass of buttermilk? Alison Knowles, conceived of the piece the Identical Lunch in the 1960s. when a friend and fellow Fluxus artist Philip Corner observed that she ate the same lunch every day at a local diner This daily ritual became a performance where she invited friends to try the same lunch and to write about their experiences.

Knowles wrote a score for the piece, which reads, “The Identical Lunch: a tunafish sandwich on wheat toast with lettuce and butter, no mayo, and a large glass of buttermilk or a cup of soup was and is eaten many days of each week at the same place and at about the same time.” The piece explores how no object is identical to itself within the context of the human experience. Years later, the project has evolved to have communal events where groups of people eat the lunch, and people generate photographs and writings about the experience.

At MoMA, the Identical Lunch event was done in 2011 with visitors eating the Identical Lunch with Knowles. More recently, the piece was part of the exhibition Feast at the SMART Museum of Art at the University of Chicago. Here it was featured in an installation where several times a week, the security supervisor Paul Bryan puts out a real glass of buttermilk and a tunafish sandwich prepared fresh by a local caterer, according to the specifications of Knowles’ score. The lunch is on display and age (and most likely start to mold and smell) until a few days later Paul replaces them again. The museum’s café has the Identical Lunch available for purchase, and visitors are invited to perform the score and eat lunch.

A video about the Identical Lunch is online, and by watching it – you might even get inspired to eat a tuna sandwich.. and maybe a glass of buttermillk.

Image Source:
www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1126
blogs.uchicago.edu/feast/2012/05/planning_the_identical_lunch.html

Links:

vimeo.com/36770058

www.moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1126

blogs.uchicago.edu/feast/2012/05/planning_the_identical_lunch.html