Plenty of food for thought here, with this photography series from Peter Menzel. He and writer Faith D’Alusio travelled the world, documenting what an average family typically eats in a week, and what it costs.
This article in The Guardian pairs a selection of the photos with a line on how much the families spend each week on their food bill.
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats – The Guardian Californian photographer Peter Menzel visited 24 countries for the book Hungry Planet. From the Aboubakar family, from Darfur, Sudan, who spend 79p feeding six people, to a German family who spend around £320, his work shows how much the world’s weekly groceries cost
The differences are quite startling. Food for thought, indeed.
What better way to start the day than with a bowl of eggo nut frosted strawberry pancakes. I think I’ll pass on the carbonated waffle balls, even if they are the “gold standard for waffle ball fun innovation using wheat-based flavors and crispy aluminum foil.”
I thought these two recent links from Laughing Squid went together well.
How to properly cut and serve different cheeses – Laughing Squid Anne Saxelby, the resident turophile of Saxelby Cheesemongers in New York City, gave an informative Epicurious lesson on how to properly “cut the cheese”. All jokes aside, Saxelby, who has a long history working with artisanal cheese, offers helpful tips on not only cutting but appreciating and serving different varietals from all over the world.
How to make just about every shape of bread – Laughing Squid Peter Endriss, the head baker at Runner & Stone in Gowanus, Brooklyn partnered with Epicurious to offer a rather comprehensive tutorial in shaping a variety of different bread. Included in this list are simple loaves of bread and rolls along with such tasty treats as brioche à tête, pretzels, bagels, English muffins, challah, chapeau, and even a pizza crust.
Watch a Korean chef make the perfect tornado omelet – The Awesomer We have a hard enough time making omelets that don’t break apart on us when folding them over, but this Korean chef makes it look easy to create one with a swirled design that looks like a tornado.
Ingredients. — Thin cold toast, thin slices of bread-and-butter, pepper and salt to taste. Mode. — Place a very thin piece of cold toast between 2 slices of thin bread-and-butter in the form of a sandwich, adding a seasoning of pepper and salt. This sandwich may be varied by adding a little pulled meat, or very fine slices of cold meat, to the toast, and in any of these forms will be found very tempting to the appetite of an invalid.
Don’t forget your five portions of fruit and veg.
The value of a banana: understanding absurd and ephemeral artwork – The Conversation In September, the Guggenheim Museum in New York acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s Comedian by anonymous donation. … Comedian reignited a set of questions that seem to flare up with some regularity: what makes something a high-priced artwork when another, seemingly identical, object is not?
There were a number of significant worries about what the start of this academic year might look like for university recruitment. But perhaps things will be OK.
The results comes as British universities are becoming cautiously optimistic that most have avoided the worst scenarios anticipated following the worldwide coronavirus outbreak and the exam grading turmoil that engulfed UK schools. Several institutions have said that student recruitment has held up across the board, with few domestic students opting to defer their studies, while international students numbers appear not to have fallen as feared.
There’s no shortage of advice out there, for universities …
Higher education: reopening buildings and campuses – GOV.UK This guidance is designed to help HE providers in England to understand how to minimise risk during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and to provide services to students to ensure they can have an enjoyable experience, while staying as safe as possible. We recognise that providers have been working to prepare for safe reopening and this update is designed to support finalisation of these preparations and provide clarity on some issues raised by providers.
… as well as students.
‘Don’t buy grated cheese’: student cooking tips by top chefs – The Guardian Cooking as a student can be tough because you often have a small kitchen. In our kitchen in student halls there were four burners on the hub. Two didn’t work and the others timed out after an hour for safety. You’re also sharing a fridge. So the key is to start simple.
Bars, cafes and restaurants are still closed here, but other countries are cautiously opening them back up, with some fun responses to the challenges they face.
Restaurant finds a genius way to help their customers feel less lonely while social distancing using pandas – Bored Panda Maison Saigon placed plush pandas in the restaurant so that people have to sit at a safe distance. Also, if you come to eat alone, you have some company. The rules and regulations are changing rapidly and most of us are confused about what to do and how to be safe, so this idea is a charming and smart way to make sure everyone is being protected from the virus.
Restaurant to reopen with cardboard customers to make diners comfortable – Sunrise Five Dock Dining owner Frank Angeletta has placed cardboard customers in empty seats around the venue. He’s also prepared ambient background noise, including chatter and the sounds of clinking cutlery, to play in the background. “We really wanted to add some atmosphere and give diners that realistic dining experience,” he told Sunrise. “The cut outs and background noise are a bit eerie when you first walk in – but once you’re sitting down it’s a bit of fun.”
Cafe in Germany gives customers hats with pool noodles to keep them apart – Bored Panda The owner of “Café Rothe Schwerin”, Jacqueline Rothe, went the extra mile and came up with an ingenious idea to make sure the patrons keep their distance—pool noodles! Yup, you read that right. The business is using pool noodles attached to customers’ hats to help them with social distancing! She also clarified that this was a one-time event only for the reopening of the cafe and the guests don’t wear the hats regularly.
Don’t quite know what to make of this, though.
Mask in a restaurant? This one can gobble like Pac-Man – Reuters Israeli inventors have developed a coronavirus mask with a remote control mouth that lets diners eat food without taking it off, a device they say could make a visit to a restaurant less risky.
The post-nineties generation that uses sites like Xiachufang is not one that usually cooks. Their lives are defined by an arduous work culture and precarious careers. They rely on cheap and convenient food-delivery apps for most meals, making only occasional trips to the kitchen. Yet eating with friends and family is central to their idea of a “good life”. When restrictions in response to the COVID-19 outbreak take that away, quarantine cooking is the response, rebuilding that lost social connection with what’s at hand and what’s possible. […]
Sharing its preparation online is as important as the food itself. They are transmissions sent from isolation, like radio diaries from a stranded spacecraft. It’s about re-creating the conviviality of sharing a meal. It’s a response to boredom and a salve for the constant anxiety of following updates on the outbreak. […]
The act of looking for a recipe and reading others’ quarantine diaries has become like a trip to the supermarket. We tend to think of the Chinese internet as just a battleground—activists and censors locked in an endless conflict. But, to many, it is also homey and comforting, parts of it as familiar as a cozy kitchen.
The link seems broken currently, but here’s another, and here’s a screenshot that Joanne McNeil shared in her recent newsletter, when she noticed that Krish had mentioned her work in relation to this.
Meanwhile.
How Facebook turned into a coronavirus conspiracy hellhole – Wired UK The posts, which are filling innocuous Facebook groups normally dedicated to political discussions and flight deals, are a strange evolution of conspiracy theories that have been knocking around the internet for years. One much-mooted theory, for example, is that the coronavirus has been caused by radiation from 5G masts. […] These posts incorporate political conspiracies – for instance, one post on the “We Support Jeremy Corbyn Facebook” group, states that “people have bugs like this all the time, the media are basically covering up the economic global crash which is coming and also the Brexit shit show.”
‘It isn’t Mad Max’: women charged after fight over toilet paper in Sydney – The Guardian A video of the incident was shared on social media and showed a small group of women pushing, yelling and fighting over a shopping cart filled with toilet paper. “We just ask that people don’t panic like this when they go out shopping,” the New South Wales police acting inspector Andrew New said. “There is no need for it. It isn’t the Thunderdome, it isn’t Mad Max, we don’t need to do that.
What is going on?
Coronavirus: why people are panic buying loo roll and how to stop it – The Conversation In research I conducted with marketing professors Charlene Chen and Leonard Lee, we found that consumers compensate for a perceived loss of control by buying products designed to fill a basic need, solve a problem or accomplish a task. This is what we’re seeing as people rush to buy rice, cleaning products and paper goods in illogically large proportions.
Well here’s one possible solution.
Coronavirus: Australian newspaper prints extra pages to help out in toilet paper shortage – The Guardian On Thursday the NT News, the Darwin-based newspaper with a national reputation for its headlines and antics, printed a special eight-page insert that can be cut into toilet paper. Its editor, Matt Williams, told Guardian Australia the paper was selling well and was “certainly not a crappy edition”. “We are a newspaper known around the world who understands the needs of our readers,” he said. “Territorians … are in great need of toilet paper right now so we had to deliver what they needed.”
A video from The Kid Should See This that I’ll definitely be making sure my kids see. They love all these ‘hacks’, but they aren’t all what they seem. #gross
You don’t normally associate McDonald’s with minimalism, but these new billboard ads are pretty cut back, to say the least. No photos, no logos, no branding.
These ads make you think of McDonald’s with just 5 words and 5 colours – Digital Arts
The messaging is equally simple. It isn’t introducing ‘healthy’ options, a new burger, offer or competition – or putting the idea of McDonalds as comfort food in your mind. It’s just designed to catch your eye, bring a moment of delight at the recognition of what you’re seeing and make you think of picking up a McDonalds on the way home or stopping during a long journey.
I admit I find these ads quite appealing. The product, not so much.
We all do it. We all know we shouldn’t. But are we at least allowed to read about the perils of eating lunch at our desks, whilst at our desks during lunch?
Why you really shouldn’t be eating lunch at your desk – Wired UK “Often meal breaks are a time where you are able to refresh your attention,” says André Spicer, professor of organisational behaviour at Cass Business School in London. “If you don’t take a break in which you go away from your actual place where you’re working, you’re not able to get a boost in attention. Meal breaks basically allow us a productivity refresh.” […]
“If you eat at your desk when you’re distracted through working and you’re not giving yourself a proper lunch break, then the food you eat doesn’t fill you up as much,” she says. “You don’t remember that you have eaten in the same way, and you don’t code food in the same way. You’re more likely to feel hungry in the afternoon and then eat more.”
A drop in productivity (heaven forbid!) isn’t the only worry. But help is at hand.
Oh crumbs! Hope of an end to food in keyboards – The Times
Forget about fingerprint readers, retinal displays or edge-to-edge screens. There is one innovation that computer users have been waiting for since the first office worker decided to eat at their desk, and it could soon be here: crumb-proof keyboards.
Apple patents world’s first crumb-proof keyboard – The Independent
The filing suggests a number of ways in which the problem might be eradicated, discussing the application of gaskets, brushes, wipers and flaps to block gaps, the installation of a membrane beneath each key and even a “bellows” effect in which each key stroke forces air through the board, pushing irksome crumbs out.
Luxury ‘bespoke’ KitKat candy bar to be sold in the UK The range, which will be sold at the “KitKat Chocolatory,” includes several special edition flavors, including gin and tonic, cherry bakewell and earl grey, which will cost £7.50 each.
Customers will also be able to create their own bespoke candy bars for as much as £14, with almost 1,500 flavor combinations on offer. Custom-made “Create Your Break” KitKats will be eight-finger bars, which will offer a choice of milk, white, dark or ruby chocolate and three ingredients, such as salted caramel chunks and rose petals.
An interesting take on places I often find myself in.
In praise of museum cafes and little restaurants in botanical gardens Man, I don’t know exactly what it is about the kind of cafe/restaurant that one encounters attached to museums and botanical gardens that brings out the most refined, Edwardian-style lady-of-leisure-who-lunches in me, but I can’t walk past one without being completely overwhelmed by the urge to order an $18 egg sandwich from a cold case, then pick at it for the next two hours at a small, circular table.
From the oldest …
Victoria & Albert Museum Dining Rooms Walking into the Victoria and Albert Museum’s café feels a bit like entering the inside of a Fabergé egg: No space is left untouched by the grandeur of gilded domes, ornate tiles, and ceramic wall reliefs.
The first museum café in the world, the V&A’s original “refreshment room” opened in 1856, but was subsequently demolished and reopened in 1868 as three separate refreshment rooms, which still exist for visitors’ enjoyment.
… to the nearest (to me, anyway) and best.
Tiled Hall Café at Leeds Art Gallery The Tiled Hall was originally the main library reading room, and from 1888-1941 it functioned as a sculpture court. The magnificent Victorian hall was renovated extensively in 2007 with the help of English Heritage, to reveal the original fabric of the room. The space is now one of the most popular and iconic eateries in the city of Leeds.
In the 50s, that was all covered up.
Leeds Central Library Tiled Hall – Leeds Libraries heritage blog The ceiling and walls of the Tiled Hall were then hidden for nearly fifty years behind a false ceiling, bookcases and panelling. A gallery for staff use was also created in the Tiled Hall where further book stock was shelved, office space for cataloguing services and a staff room created.
Certainly, growing up in Leeds and visiting the library and art gallery often, I had no idea what was behind all that panelling. When it was finally revealed, it came as quite a shock.
Tiled Hall Cafe – Breadsticklers, Leeds food blog Thankfully in 2007 the room was restored when a £1.5 million refurbishment took place and the beautiful tiles, marble columns, gold detailed ceilings were brought back to life again. You will now find here a contemporary cafe and great place to eat from breakfast through to late lunch.
A partially submerged train car provides a dramatic entrance to Frankfurt’s Bockenheimer Warte subway station
Subway stations are typically just a means to an end, simple structures that allow a large overflow of commuters to enter and exit at will. It is less common for the design to be a destination in itself, like the popular Bockenheimer Warte subway entrance in Frankfurt, Germany. The station, erected in 1986, was built to look as if an old tram car had crash landed into the sidewalk that surrounds the station.
Then up to Norway.
The world’s largest undersea restaurant
Located 5m below the sea off the coast of Lindesnes, Norway, Europe’s first underwater restaurant serves fresh seafood with a one-of-a-kind view.
Mach 1: Arts & event venue made from a tangle of shipping containers
The shape of the new building takes inspiration from piles of rocks on the Fife coastline, the color of nearby Forth Bridge and the industrial heritage of the area. Once completed, Mach 1 will stand 15 meters (about 49 feet) high and stretch 50 meters (about 164 feet) at its longest point. Inside, visitors will find a coffee bar and double-height exhibition space used to showcase the Edinburgh Park masterplan through drawings, information boards and scale models.
“Shipping containers are really interesting to me architecturally. They are really honest and are also really familiar to people. They also go all over the world. But this will be different to anything else that has been built of them before, which is what you really want as an artist.”
Is this a reversal of the phrase, ‘you are what you eat’? Now you can eat what you are.
Burger King trolls McDonald’s while nodding to mental health issues in new campaign
One of the joys of a big brand rivalry must be the chance every now and again to get one over on your nemesis through a catty campaign – or to try to at least. This week Burger King has stepped up to the plate, waving a red rag to its biggest foe McDonald’s with the launch of five “Real Meal” boxes, a cheeky rip of McDonald’s famous Happy Meal. Including Pissed, Blue, Salty Meal, YAAAS and DGAF (that’s “don’t give a f–k” to save you the Urban Dictionary trip), the new boxes allow customers to order a Whopper based on their mood, alluding to the fact that many people ordering a “Happy” Meal are far from it.
The matcha moment: why even KitKats now taste of green tea The chocolate coating is an Instagrammable – if lurid – lime green, with the promise of a “sweet and fragrant” flavour. Fifteen years after it went on sale in Japan to squeals of acclaim, the matcha green tea KitKat will hit UK supermarket shelves from this month as its manufacturer, Nestlé, brings the cult snack to a wider European audience – albeit with its flavour modified for our less-refined tastebuds.
Nestlé brings green tea-flavored KitKat to Europe “Nestlé in Japan has taken KitKat to the next level in the last two decades, with innovative flavor combinations and inspiring special editions. We are excited to bring one of the most iconic Japanese KitKat back home to Europe this year,” von Maillot said.
“The launches of KitKat Ruby and KitKat Green Tea Matcha are further proof of our commitment to our leading international confectionery brand,” he added. “We have introduced other innovative flavors and premium products to KitKat, KitKat Chunky and KitKat Senses in recent years, and there is more to come.”
I was inspired to search through my Pinboard bookmarks for things relating to Japan, following my son’s recent school trip there. Here’s some of what I found.
David Bowie memorialized in traditional Japanese woodblock prints
The recent release of two modern ukiyo-e woodblock prints featuring the rocker has caused such mass swooning among legions of Japanophile Bowie fans, the reverberations may well be powerful enough to ring temple bells in Kyoto.
We could all use a little more Chindogu, the Japanese art of useless inventions
A little bit Dada, a little bit “only sold on television,” intentionally useless inventions called Chindogu look like a bunch of plastic junk at first glance, but there’s more to it than that. And they’re not quite altogether useless. In fact, as creator Kenji Kawakami stated when he first revealed Chindogu to the world in 1995, these objects are “un-useless.” They have a purpose, but they take their halfway practical solution to a perceived problem and stretch it to maximum absurdity. It’s all kind of dumb, and that’s the point.
Japan pampers its pets like nowhere else – A dog’s life
It is common for a parent taking a baby for a stroll to exchange a look of solidarity with another pram-pusher, only to glance down and realise the other’s contains a furry friend. Greying Japan is alert to animal ageing, too: there are acupuncture services for elderly pets, and several firms offer funerals.
In Japan, the Kit Kat isn’t just a chocolate. It’s an obsession.
There are also carefully chosen collaborations that capitalize on Japan’s culture of omiyage, which can be loosely defined as returning from travels with gifts for friends, family and colleagues. The Kikyou shingen mochi Kit Kat, which would go on sale in mid-October, would be sold right alongside the real Kikyou shingen mochi at souvenir shops and in service areas along the Chuo Expressway, a major four-lane road more than 200 miles long that passes through the mountainous regions of several prefectures, connecting Tokyo to Nagoya. With any luck, people would associate the Kit Kat with the traditional sweet and snap it up as a souvenir. But for this to be a success, for Kit Kat to expand into the souvenir market, consumers would have to believe that Kit Kat, originally a British product, was Japanese, and that although it was manufactured in a factory far away, it somehow represented the very essence of a region.
Miyu Kojima creates miniature replicas of lonely deaths
Twenty six-year old Miyu Kojima works for a company that cleans up after kodokushi (孤独死) or lonely deaths: a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time. […] Part art therapy and part public service campaign, Kojima spends a large portion of her free time recreating detailed miniature replicas of the rooms she has cleaned.
An early 20th century guide to wave designs for Japanese craftsmen is now available online
In 1903, Japanese artist Mori Yuzan’s wave designs were published in a resource guide for Japanese craftsmen looking to add aquatic motifs to their wares. The three-volume series, titled Hamonshū, includes variations on contained and free-form wave patterns suitable for embellishing swords, religious objects, and ceramics.
A Brexit sandwich may consist of bread, and not much else
The convenient lunch-time snack invented by the Earl of Sandwich seems simple enough, but new research from Politico shows how it relies on a complex supply chain of European imports. […] The most British thing about the 4 billion sandwiches that Brits purchase from supermarkets each year is, more likely than not, the bread. Last week, Jim Winship, director of the British Sandwich Association, was mocked for pointing out Brexit’s threat to BLT sandwiches. And while it is unlikely that produce will completely run dry, the risks of a disrupted sandwich supply chain are looking very real.
The article jokes we might have to make do with chip butties. That’s fine by me: I’ve never thought of these things as strange or unusual, but perhaps they are.
The chip butty is the deranged nonsensical sandwich of my dreams
Besides my general attraction to trash and slop, what first drew me to the chip butty was the perfect combination of innocence and absolute dumbness. It’s a sandwich that would make Michelin inspectors shit themselves. It’s a sandwich that kids might design while on too much child cough medicine. It’s goofy and precious, like spaghetti tacos or hot dog lasagna, except it actually tastes good and doesn’t just exist for the sake of novelty.
But maybe these, too, are under threat in the coming years — even the chips for these quintessentially British chip butties could be European.
Brexit and the potato industry
In the year to April the UK imported GBP266m (EUR332.5m) more potatoes and potato products than it exported with sales into the country worth more than half a billion euros. The biggest deficit is in the trade of frozen fries with the UK importing GBP320m (EUR400m) more product than it exports with virtually all its imports coming from the EU.
PES (Adam Pesapane), the stop-motion animator, needs his own cookery show. Here’s Fresh Guacamole, which was nominated for a Best Animated Short Film oscar:
Follow that up with some Western Spaghetti, his 2009 Sundance Film Festival Winner:
Maria Popova at Brain Pickings has found an excellent cookery book, Modern Art Desserts: Recipes for Cakes, Cookies, Confections, and Frozen Treats Based on Iconic Works of Art by Caitlin Freeman (amazon.com, amazon.co.uk). Particularly taken by the Rothko dessert.
Miscellaneous Details 