Kristen Baumlier

NEWS

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 [email protected] 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

Maps and Being Here: Unique Geographies

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

Every so often things just seem to coincide and pop up into my inbox and life. Recently things related to maps and mapmaking have been coming up.

This week I saw some of my students working on an assignment for another class. They were creating a Google map about a place they have not been to, but wish that they could. One student shared what she was working on, and it was a map of the Yukon. She was creating a journey and trail and added images of moose, an overhead view of the Yukon, and other photos for a trip she has not taken.

The other day I read and checked out a book called You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination by Katherine Harmon. The book shows images of various maps that are not about reality – but about the imagination. There are maps to heaven and hell, happiness and despair, moods and mythological places. One section of the book is about the mental geography of Appalachian Trail hikers, and has examples of inventive maps that show this trail and experience through mapping and design.

And the third mapping event happened today when I randomly chose an episode to play of This American Life radio show while I painted our porch. The show I had picked was called “Mapping,” and had 5 stories about people making maps.

One interesting thing I learned in the opening of the show is that the majority of maps have been created in the last century. Previously, people did not really use maps that much unless they were an explorer of some kind. Today we see maps every day which includes weather maps, directional maps, and other visualizations. Some of the stories were about a cartographer who maps things in his neighborhood (like who ha pumpkins on their porch at Halloween), someone who maps different kinds of sounds, and people that map smell and taste. The show focused on how the world could be redrawn by the five senses.

So far I have looked at one weather map today, and will use a directional map later.

Images:
You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination – book

Links:

You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination – book

thisamericanlife.org – Radio Show “Mapping”

Farmers@Firehouse Market Alphabet : Dill, Greens, Onions, and Cucumbers

Posted on October 19, 2012 by Kbaumlier

On Saturday October 13th, Food Font was at the Farmers@Firehouse Market in Pittsburgh, PA. It was sunny but chilly, but lots of people came by to make letters.
Special thanks to Next Life Farm who gave us some interesting cucumbers and peppers to use and to Mott Family Farm who gave us some greens to use.

At the event, people made letters out of tomatillos, cucumbers, dill, greens, peppers, eggplants, and onions.Food was from Next Life Farm, Blackberry Meadows Farm and Mott Family Farm.

Farmers@Firehouse market is located in the strip area, where there are lots of other outdoor markets. We saw lots of people in yellow and black (Steelers fans) and lots of dogs (with their owners.)

The pictures from the event are posted on the Food Font Flickr site, and also can be viewed in the slideshows below.

Farmers@Firehouse Market Alphabet – Pittsburgh, PA October 13, 2012

People at the Event

Farmers@Firehouse Market Alphabet

Links:

http://www.farmersatfirehouse.com/

Today is World Food Day : A Focus on Hunger and Agricultural Cooperatives

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Kbaumlier

Today, October 16th is a worldwide event that is designed to increase awareness, understanding and informed, year-around action to alleviate hunger. Today around the world people are participating by organizing a World Food day food packaging event, walking to end hunger, doing food drives, and hosting a “World Food Day meal.” The day focuses on how each of us does can do something to help stop the needless suffering of nearly a billion people worldwide who are hungry.

This year’s World Food Day theme is “Agricultural cooperatives – key to feeding the world.” The theme is announced each spring by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This topic was chosen since
cooperatives are an important force in achieving food security.

The World Day food website reports that:“70 percent of those who face hunger live in rural areas where agriculture serves as the economic mainstay. Smallholder farmers are central to addressing hunger, yet many face barriers such as a lack of infrastructure, outdated farming practices, and a lack of access to financial services. Cooperatives improve farmers’ agricultural productivity and equip them with access to marketing, savings, credit, insurance, and technology. Farmer cooperatives serve both to connect farmers to markets and to increase food production.”

Over 1 billion individuals are members of cooperatives worldwide, generating more than 100 million jobs around the world. Areas include agriculture, forestry, fishing and livestock keeping, members participate in production, profit-sharing, cost-saving, risk-sharing and income-generating activities, which lead to better bargaining power for members as buyers and sellers in the marketplace.

More information about World Food Day and Agriculture Cooperatives can be seen on the World Day website, and in video made for the event that is on Youtube.

Image Source:
www.worldfooddayusa.org

Links:

www.worldfooddayusa.org

youtube video – Agricultural Cooperatives