Sunday 31 October 2010

Pan-duh.

My sad attempt at making panda bear onigiri.

Can do attitude

Reusing old food packaging is all well if you have a purpose for it. I have occasionally used a can of chickpeas as a plant pot, a plastic grape container as the plants water dish, and old sweet boxes for storing jewellery. But you can't fill your house up with all your cans and plastics. I had a look at other suggestions with what to do with old fizzy drinks cans. I found a stupid list of things I did not want or need; picture frames, wreaths, centerpieces etc  so I thought about what I did want, I drew a can I had, I thought about bringing him alive; giving him arms and legs. I thought about buying another can, and cycling to the shop; although it is scary thought cycling around Düsseldorf with the lack of bike paths, fast cars and tram tracks. If more people rode bikes, bike paths would become a necessity... more cheap bikes, make bikes out cans.... I know this is a ridiculous idea and so I went about making a bike out of this can. Using the top and the bottom as wheels, a couple of pipecleaners, some tape and a mini pom pom I ended up with this piece of shit.

Food I Have Cooked and Eaten

Happy Halloween

A home 8mm video of a dinner party held on Halloween 1939.


Essen

Victoria Stanton . Essen


"This playful and meditative performance insists that one is not permitted to feed oneself but instead be fed by one's dining partner (drinking independently is allowed). As a performance, ESSEN creates an opportunity to pay close attention and to slow down time. In so doing, it serves to address several themes that have occurred in much of my artistic work over the last number of years - my contentious relationship to food (and eating), as well as issues around body, sexuality, intimacy, and obsession/addiction. While this work has previously only been undertaken in non-art spaces, for the exhibition I plan to bring the performance into the gallery, inviting audience members (participants) to come and share a meal. Public meals, carried out in the same manner as previous ESSEN performances, are scheduled repeatedly throughout the course of the exhibition."

Ramen Factory

Sunday 24 October 2010

BBB Johannes Deimling

I saw this video from BBB Johannes Deimling at the Eating the Universe exhibition at the Düsseldorf Kunsthalle earlier this year. The whole exhibition was fantastic. I often remember a video I saw from Elke Krystufek where she just eats slices of ham whilst reading and listening to a casette tape of old german folk songs, unfortunately I can not find anything related to that video. But through my scouring I found Bread or Alive and more work from Johannes Deimling. Here he lives covered in alaphabet pasta.

Sprachlos


"Description of action My body is covered allover with severeal kilograms noodle-letters. Motionless, like a sculpture I am sitting on a stool."

Edit: I have since found more information about Elke Krystufek's eating ham video "Eating/Vomiting", 1992. What I didn't see during the, maybe, 5 minutes I watched, was that she eats various food items for, I think 40 minutes, and for the following 20 minutes throws it up.

Alexa Meade

Alexa Meade paints people to make them look like 2D painting, and like totally messes with your brain. The colours on their skin sort of reminds me of streaky bacon. And offal.




More on her Flickr page.

Ikea!

Ikea have brought out a cookbook, and the way they've laid out their ingredients has tickled my visual taste buds.



Thursday 21 October 2010

Sachiko!

Sachiko Akinaga is a Lego Artist! She can make everything out of Lego. These Lego Men Bento's are the best idea ever. If only there was real food in there. 










"I thought...I would cook something!...well...I didn't know why, but I thought it should be a McDonald's hamburger...


The full scale LEGO version of "BigMac Super value set"! 
Do you wanna try it?"

Thanks to It's Nice That for finding Sachiko :)   




Wednesday 20 October 2010

David Kühne

Düsseldorf based photographer, David Kühne, has taken a photo of every Ja! product in german supermarket Rewe and made them into a book.



Runny Runny

RunnyRunny999 is my favourite YouTube cook. He takes requests for japanese food from other YouTube members. My favourite is his Oyako-don as it's so easy to make and so good, and his easy Teriyaki sauce - using marmelade and soy sauce (it works!). His very latest video was a bit different - Chirashi Sushi...Cake. Amongst other things he has an alter ego who pops up every now and then as well as a pair of comedy-glasses making him way cooler than Cooking With Dog although Francis' voice does make me melt.

Vending Machine Food

Quite possibly the most unauthentic type of convenience food is that which comes out of a vending machine, here are some of the latest innovative ideas...

This spaghetti and tomato sauce in a plastic container heats itself up by just tugging a rope.



Can't imagine this could actually be real...



And if preparing a steaming pot of cup noodles just seems too much work - here's a machine that will do it all for you.

Tuesday 19 October 2010

The Meatballs Song

Sometimes it's nice to sing about food. This time sung by Joe Cornish.



Eating

I put "Eating" into vimeo.com's search box and this came up. A second later, all the videos called "Eating" disappeared stating that there were no videos found.

Eating from Jira on Vimeo.


I then typed in "Food" and found a very nice video from Mirjam Letsch, who has filmed food being prepared in on the street in India. Click on this LINK to see it on vimeo.com

Yuri Suzuki

Yuri Suzuki re-designs a kettle into an instrument. He also makes a lot of other really cool interactive, kinetic pieces...


Musical Kettle from Yuri Suzuki on Vimeo.


His Ontbijtmachine (Breakfast Machine) that he did in collaboration with Masa Kimura is super fly. Here are two videos about the project in dutch and an article in english.

The project was for Platform 21, an initiative that was based in Amsterdam as a design platform, another project they organised was this Cooking and Constructing studio and this Sweet Graffiti project. Unfortunately Platform 21 is not longer in operation.

Monday 18 October 2010

Zine Picnic

More onigiri, this time images used as a logo of Tokyo based Zine Picnic. There is a noticeable link between crafty, creative types and a certain focus, and enjoyment of food. I digg it.




"[Zine Picnic] is a picnic for  self-publishing lovers.



Let’s relax and have a great time gathering, sharing and exchanging zines with a cup of coffee and homemade sweets under the blue sky.

Your best zines and dishes are most welcome!
We recommend you to bring your own cup and leisure seat.
Of course, you can just drop by to say hello to us."

Masako Mimoko

Masako Mimoko makes Onigiri (japanese rice balls) out of socks. Possibly the first time socks have made me hungry. As far as I can make out, Masako Mimoko is a spanish lady named Eva, she makes super cute stuff and has an array of cool crafty stuff to buy. 

Guess this sock onigiri can be filed under non-authentic food, because a) she's Spanish and b) it's not food. I joke, of course. 

Saturday 16 October 2010

Wise Words?

My dad always points out if a restaurant is really Japanese by whether the people that work there are all japanese or not, and that fusion food is basically a load of bollocks (my words not his). Does it matter where the food is from and whether the food is cooked and served in it's traditional manner? Tommy writes on her blog, This is Naive, that is should surely come down to whether it tastes good. Food for me is there to be enjoyed, so surely if it tastes good - who cares? I live to eat, not eat to live! When you dine in a Chinese/Japanese restaurant is it important to know which dish came from where? Will the Surinaams food in a Surinaams/Chinese restaurant be authentic when these countries are geographically so far apart? I do get a bit judgemental when other diners eat sushi thinking that raw fish is all there is to japanese food, or they simply think that sushi means raw fish. Although in all honesty I really don't know much more about japanese food than that. As Tommy also points out that with immigration and multi-cultural societies people will be exposed to new recipes and ingredients, which are bound to be adapted and created into new things. Ramen and Gyoza are generally associated to Japanese food, although they are both originally from China.... I don't know where I'm going with this... maybe, all I want to say is I think Wiener Sushi (nirgiri) looks gross.

Watch how you eat them peas.

Story of a man who grew a pea plant in his lung.

Thursday 14 October 2010

Things I Ate Yesterday

I had a green apple with some red leicester cheese.

I sampled the Calorie Mate from Ai. I had no idea what it was before I opened it. It was a biscuit like short bread but without the sugar, it was maple syrup flavoured with some nuts inside - they were great, they made exceptional tea dunkers.


Breakfast this week has been crumpets, today saw the end of the bag of six I brought back from England. Flatmate bought this nice place mat from Ikea.


Lots of tea has been brewed and gulped, occasionally when I have time to mooch, I make a pot of one bag PG Tips, one bag Earl Grey. Drinking tea from a pot always feels special.


Monday 11 October 2010

Saturday 9 October 2010

How NOT To Cook

The 'How Not To Cook' Book

from Aleksandra Mir

Controversial/Amusing/Gross Drink

Shirouo

Article here about "shirouo".


"Shirouo are very small transparent fish destined to be eaten alive. They dance in your mouth - or rather do the odorigui (dancing while being eaten) as the locals in the few places where you can enjoy the fish put it.
The cute little fish will arrive on your table in a big bowl, darting through the water and most likely dreaming about sex. It's their annual mating habit that has them swimming up the river, and getting them into the trap that brought them to your table.
Along with the bowl of fish come a quail egg and a bottle of vinegar. You crack the egg and pour it into the cup provided, then mix it with some vinegar.
Then, you start the delicious cruelty with a device which is half ladle half sieve, you catch some of the fish out of the bowl and throw them into the smaller bowl of quail egg / vinegar mix. Locals will tell you that the vinegar is numbing the fish, rendering it unconscious. But if you look at the proceedings yourselves, you will discover that the vinegar may be pure torture to the poor little beast - it wriggles like crazy.
Now, you catch the little fish with your chopsticks, look at it while it hopelessly wriggles for its life, and no, you don't walk out to the nearby river to put it back home. You put it into your mouth. And let it dance. It's quite a sensation to have the little devil jump through all of your oral cavity. He tingles your tongue, he might jump at sensible taste nerves never touched in years. This doomed little guy may even reach pleasure zones you didn't know you have in your mouth! Cruelty can be so beautiful! Let him jump around in your mouth just a little more!ventually, of course, the question arises… To Swallow or Not to Swallow? I always preferred to crush the little beasts between my teeth. Killing them brutally but sparing them any further discomfort.
My Japanese friends tend to swallow them alive… and then tell me that they swim freely through their stomach and irrite their intestines, which was of course always a great excuse for drinking large cups of strong shochu to get rid of those strange feelings deep inside their bellies.
I always joined them on the shochu … a great way to finish off an afternoon of exquisite pleasure."


Text from japanvisitor.com

Sashimi

Bento Box Items

Bento Box accessories from Japan.