Food – Page 9 – Kristen Baumlier

Category: Food

The Recipe Project: Great Recipes Made Into Catchy Songs

Posted on November 4, 2012November 4, 2012 by Kbaumlier

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

Posted on November 3, 2012November 4, 2012 by Kbaumlier

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

The Pantry Shelf: A Play About Food where Food Speaks Up

Posted on October 28, 2012October 29, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Ever wonder what the food in your pantry would say if it could? Mark Prebble and Marion Shortt, also known as Team M&M, are a husband and wife team who have created a play called The Pantry Shelf where food comes to life… with an attitude. The piece is described as “a satirical comedy where all the characters are food products. It explores branding, genetic engineering and consumerism, but mostly it’s a love triangle between a rebellious muesli bar, a shy bag of porridge and a sexy block of dark chocolate.”

Characters in the play include Carlito Cornchips , Washibi Punch!, Queenie the Quinoa, Black Velvet Chocolate, Genetically-Engineered Organic Tomato and other foods.

The synopsis of the play on the project website is described as:

“A satirical comedy revealing the micro-society of branded egos living on your pantry shelf. Queenie is a revolutionary new snack – The Quinoa, Date and Bark Bar. Like every food product all she really wants is to be loved. However, her world collapses when she realizes her healthy branding is a lie. Can Queenie live with this hypocrisy or will she revolt and become a “rogue brand”?

The Pantry Shelf explores branding, consumerism and corporate control of our diets, but mostly it’s a love triangle between Queenie, a bag of Scottish Porridge and a sexy block of Dark Chocolate.”

You can see clips of the play on their website and vimeo site.

I wonder what my oatmeal that I ate for breakfast today would say if I could hear it?

Image Source:
www.basementtheatre.co.nz/whats-on/the-pantry-shelf/

Links:

http://www.teammandm.co.nz/index.html

http://www.basementtheatre.co.nz/whats-on/the-pantry-shelf/

https://vimeo.com/43661092

Thank You For Coming: A New Food + Community Space

Posted on October 26, 2012October 29, 2012 by Kbaumlier

This summer I backed a project on Kickstarter called Thank You For Coming, a collaborative and participatory restaurant/meeting space in Los Angles, CA “where everyone can be a cook.” The vision is for participants to be actively engaged in the space in various forms including by cooking the meal themselves, foraging or harvesting their own ingredients, or by eating with a new tool.

Thank You For Coming raised money through Kickstarter to cover start-up costs for renovations, permits, materials, and equipment to get the space up and running. The space is designed to be able to hold events and to be a restaurant. Container gardens will be near the kitchen at the 3416 Glendale Blvd. location in Los Angeles.

Behind the project is a four member team consisting of Laura Noguera, Jonathan Robert, Jenn Su Taohan, and Cynthia Su Taopin, who will oversee the residency program and general operation of the space. The space will open in June, and an ongoing residency program program will give “citizens with varying interests, desires and skills, an opportunity to cook for the public, be a farmer, play with a space, and experiment.”

Recently the Thank You For Coming space got approval from the city to operate as a restaurant. They also bought some equipment (refrigerator, freezer, induction ranges, shelves, etc.), built furniture, removed 5 layers of paint from the cement floors of the space, and began work on plumbing and electrical upgrades.

A call for proposals for the residency program went out earlier this fall and everyone (Artists, Cooks, Plumbers, Park Rangers, Moms + Granddads, and others) have been invited apply to do a project and explore new and old ways of sharing food with people in the space.

All residents would be able to use the kitchen and space as a platform for public engagement and creative experimentation and presentation. To start, Thank You For Coming plans to be open from Wednesday-Sunday for Lunch & Dinner.

If you are interesting in being a resident, you can email them at hello@thankyouforcoming.la and read more about the application guidelines on the Kickstarter update page.

Image Source:
http://thankyouforcoming.la/

Links:

http://thankyouforcoming.la/

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1406166588/thank-you-for-coming/posts

Karma Kitchen: Paying a Meal Forward

Posted on October 19, 2012October 19, 2012 by Kbaumlier

What is the value of something without a price? Each week this question is raised at Karma Kitchen, a volunteer-run restaurant in Berkeley. As an experiment in generosity, guests are given a 0$ bill at the end of a meal. They are invited to pay for the next guest’s meal, and to pay ever amount they choose.

The restaurant opened in 2007 and is volunteer-run, open on Sundays, and is located in a restaurant that allows them to use the kitchen and restaurant one day a week. The food looks amazing (all Indian food), and after guests eat their bill reads, “Your meal was a gift from someone who came before you. We hope you will pay-it-forward however you wish.”

The project is an experiment in generosity and the founder Nipun Mehta hopes that his project will help build compassion and community by people being given the opportunity to “pay it forward.”

The project explores ideas related to the gift economy, where goods and services are given without any expectations of return. Mehta hopes that this and other gift-economy projects he is involved in will create a “shift from consumption to contribution, transaction to trust, scarcity to abundance, and isolation to community.”

The project has expanded to multiple locations in different cities which includes Washington D.C., Chicago, India, and Tokyo.

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

Links:

http://www.karmakitchen.org/

Video about Karma Kitchen on Vimeo vimeo