[Interview] Chicago Artist Fereshteh Toosi Explores The Definition Of Soul Food

Whitney Henry-Lester on Tuesday, Jan. 24th

By Whitney Henry-Lester

Fereshteh Toosi is an interdisciplinary, Chicago-based artist who works with art you can interact with. While designing a community garden accesible to people with disabilities, she began her latest project: Garlic & Greens. Inspired by her interest in growing food and cultural migration, Garlic & Greens aims to capture soul food stories in Chicago. She also teaches art at Columbia College Chicago. Turnstyle contributor Whitney Henry-Lester spoke to Toosi about her new project and the documentation of soul food.

How do you describe yourself as an artist and the art that you like to make?

I collect and recombine sounds, words, images, and actions. I’m interested in migration issues, social geography, and sustainability. I enjoy exploring the history and people of a particular place, and I like working with other people and I like working outside of traditional gallery spaces. Sometimes the work I make doesn’t seem like art, and that’s ok. I don’t really care if it’s understood as art or not.

How did your interest in art begin?

I get a lot of satisfaction from taking material meant for one thing and using it in an unusual way, transforming it into something unexpected. My art education was in a liberal arts context, and as a result I’ve always been focused more on concepts and ideas than on purely technical explorations.

Tell me about the ARCHEWORKS Garden project and how it evolved into Garlic and Greens.

GARLIC & GREENS began at Archeworks, a multidisciplinary design school in Chicago. Our collaborative team was designing for a site at the north end of Chicago’s Washington Park. The garden project we developed was called INSPIRE! Gardens for all. At Archeworks we were developing a multi-modal project that included a toolkit to help groups who wanted to create dynamic, accessible community gardens for people with disabilities. Among other things, we wrote gardening tutorials for people with stroke-related disabilities and designed outdoor furniture for a high school located on our site. The team was full of amazing people and ideas and they all played a role shaping GARLIC & GREENS.

GARLIC & GREENS was motivated by my perspective on our design dilemma. I was bothered by the fact that none of us on the design team were directly connected to the culture and history of this black neighborhood where our project site was located. There are a lot of ways to do good socially-engaged, participatory design, but ultimately, the best design happens when the users can play a direct role in developing creative solutions for their own community. Designers have a lot of power, and it’s hard to find ways to distribute it. We need to be mindful that the people and history of a place are its strongest assets. I really felt like race and cultural difference was an elephant in the room that we needed to address head on. GARLIC & GREENS my best idea for solution using the skills I had with audio and oral history.

So what is Garlic & Greens?

GARLIC & GREENS offers public programs on migration history, food heritage, social justice, the arts, and disability studies. There were two events scheduled in the summer of 2011. Phase One of the project focused on the production of free public events showcasing the work of artists and community experts, Phase Two of the project focuses on collecting and sharing food and migration stories. The final product will be a multi-media art experience accessible for people with visual disabilities and their allies.

Why are you focusing on food? Are you telling food stories or people stories or a community stories? How do they intersect?

GARLIC & GREENS focuses on food because of how the project evolved from a community garden design initiative. At Archeworks, we were doing a bit of landscape architecture, and with that you get to choose the plants. We threw around ideas about what it would mean to have a soul food garden: okra, garlic, beans, yams, collards, turnip greens, kale, et cetera. That’s when I started thinking about the cultural connections between gardening and the personalities and histories of the people who garden. Gardens are very personal, they’re curated spaces where you get to grow things that you like or that are important to you. If you don’t like eating okra, you’re probably not going to grow it. Or you may decide to grow it because it’s an interesting tropical-looking plant that has a devastatingly beautiful flower.

People grow foods that are connected to their homelands and the places they have lived. Unlike commercial farming, gardens can reflect not only the climate of the place, but also the desires of the growers, their tastes, and cultural backgrounds. I wanted to create a way to address this cultural aspect of gardening while focusing particularly on stories from African American residents who live in the neighborhoods around Washington Park. Since our team was focusing on issues around accessibility for people with disabilities, a multi-sensory approach seemed like a way to go about it.

I’m an enthusiastic edible gardener, and I like interviewing people about their lives, so the two elements came together naturally for me. The stories are about food, but they are more about people’s attitudes to food…I want to talk to people about what they do know, and also to use the interviews as a way to hear about the cultural histories of foods that are important to people as part of their family traditions.

What are you asking people?

I ask people where they live and where their people are from. Has their family lived in Chicago for many generations? When did they move here? I also ask them to describe a favorite family food tradition or a cherished family recipe. I ask the person to describe its preparation in the kitchen. I’ll ask the person how they learned to cook, and who in the family does the cooking. Who carries food traditions in the family? I’ll also ask them to define soul food. I don’t really go through a list of questions one by one, but these are the topics and questions I focus on, while allowing the conversation to evolve as things come up.

Have you defined what “soul food” is?

The question about defining soul food has been a favorite of mine as most people have expressed a sensibility that goes beyond race or geographic location. In an interview with 10 year-old Malik, we hear a young person struggling with the assertion that black people eat a certain kind of food. He seems uncomfortable (rightfully so) with the notion that people of different races should claim ownership over a particular food at all.

I like the connections that are emerging from the definitions that people have shared with me during the interviews. Soul food can be defined in a lot of ways, but it is often traced back to West Indian, Caribbean, and African influences. It’s southern American cooking that is often connected to African American traditions. Some of these evolved from the inventiveness of people who were slaves, who had to make-do with what little they had, taking advantage of every part of the animal and creating flavorful, filling food from limited resources. But this doesn’t begin to cover to what soul food really means. Soul food refers to comfort food, home cooking, and cooking from the heart. It’s food that is prepared from scratch with care and love. In that sense, every culture has a type of soul food.

What have you learned from the project thus far?

I’m learning how to be a better ally for people with disabilities. The first step was educating myself about the diverse ways ability and disability are defined. I’ve learned that we need to work on better design for people with disabilities. This includes products but also how to create events that are accessible and how to design cities and communities that are inclusive. I’ve also learned more about the history of domestic migration in the U.S. Though I knew about it before, I’ve learned more about the details, specifically with black Americans movement within the U.S. Some people call it the “Great Migration”, but in GARLIC & GREENS I refer to it in the plural, “Great Migrations”, because it happened in waves and it continues. Recently I’ve read some stories about how some black people are moving back to the south, and I’m curious to look at the numbers in a few years, to know how this rates as another wave of the migrations.

There is a focus on visual impairment with this project. Why?

When I was at Archeworks, two members of our team had stroke-related aphasia. In order to communicate with them, the group relied on written communication, such as real-time transcription of conversations. Aphasia impacts one’s ability to produce or understand words. It is not related to loss of vision, but this factor prompted a consideration of how garden programming would necessitate communication in multiple forms: audio, tactile, written, and experiential. During the research and development phase for GARLIC & GREENS, it became clear that adjusting the project’s physical infrastructure would not be adequate to becoming fully accessible. I began to see a need for connecting the traditions of vegetable gardening to cooking traditions through multi-sensory approaches. Considering the people who have been participating in the project, GARLIC & GREENS has been making a special effort to reach audiences with low or no vision because African Americans are at a higher risk for sight loss from glaucoma, diabetes and hypertensive retinopathy. The good news is that these diseases can be prevented with a healthy diet and regular access to health care.

What will the final product be?

The final product will be an interactive project about food heritage. I’m still working on the details, but I know it will be a hand-made, limited edition multi-sensory documentary package that includes audio, tactile and aromatic elements.

All photos by Fereshteh Toosi

Read the rest

In Occupy Wall Street, Some Small Farmers Find a Natural Ally

Nelson Harvey on Tuesday, Dec. 20th

On a practical level, farmers have been involved in Occupy Wall Street almost since the movement’s emergence. As soon as tent cities sprung up in parks and plazas across the nation this past September, small farmers in the Northeast, California, and elsewhere were making donations, trucking in excess produce to keep protesters fed.

It was only recently, though, that their involvement became political. On Sunday, December 4th, farmers from throughout the country descended on lower Manhattan and joined Occupiers to protest what they view as an excess of consolidation and corporate control in American agriculture. More than 500 farmers, foodies, chefs, and activists who took part protested things as varied as natural gas drilling and genetically modified organisms, but their overarching message was clear: the U.S. farming and ranching industries are stacked to benefit the largest and wealthiest corporations at the expense of most food producers.

“Corporate abusers are harming us all,” said David Murphy, founder and president of the nonprofit group Food Democracy Now, who organized the Farmers March in partnership with Occupy Wall Street members. “The control of policy by agribusiness is the main thing impoverishing small farmers. Wall Street has Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, both of which have bent the laws in their favor. Agriculture has Monsanto, Cargill, and Smithfield. They write the regulations to benefit themselves.”

The march was the most significant attempt yet by OWS to ally itself with the so-called “good food movement,” and it raised questions about whether food activists and small farmers will use Occupy Wall Street to advance their causes as they head into a fierce battle over the next Farm Bill early next year. That bill, which is the nation’s largest piece of agricultural legislation, governs crop subsidies, farmland conservation, school lunch programs, and more. It is due to be amended in 2012, and sustainable agriculture advocates are already lobbying hard to reinstate poorly funded conservation programs, limit subsidies to the largest producers, and insert provisions to help young and beginning farmers get started in an industry dominated by large corporate farms and food processors.

To date, no future collaboration between farmers and OWS has been made public, perhaps because food activists are fighting for concrete policy proposals while the broad-based OWS remains characterized more by discussion than narrow political demands. Nevertheless, farmers and activists across the country predicted further partnership between the two groups. “Right now, we are focusing on things that can be easily solved,” said Lindsey Lusher Shute, head of the National Young Farmers Coalition and the lead author of a recent report detailing the challenges facing the next generation of agrarians in the U.S. “Farmers haven’t totally fleshed out how we could merge together [with OWS] but we have a lot of solidarity with groups like that.”

Shute’s group recently helped author new legislation aimed at assisting young and beginning farmers, which she hopes to work into the revised Farm Bill next year. One of her principal collaborators is Severine Von Tscharner Fleming, a farmer, filmmaker and activist from upstate New York who was a speaker at the Farmer’s March on Dec. 4th. To Fleming, it seems clear that farmers and OWS protestors ought to be natural allies. “A lot of us have gotten involved in agriculture because we see it as a kind of activism where you are walking your talk,” she said. “Farmers have economic self-determination, which is what Occupy Wall Street protestors want.”

For his part, Farmer’s March organizer Dave Murphy has continued to engage with OWS–on a personal level. Reached in Oakland a week after the New York event, Murphy had just attended a conference on genetically modified organisms, but shortly thereafter he joined protestors with Occupy Oakland on their mission to shut down the city’s ports. Just as farmers who have learned to engage directly with urban consumers are faring better economically, Murphy believes that farmers who want their voices heard must now engage politically with urban dwellers. “[OWS] is really an organic movement, so it’s hard to predict what will happen, but we’re not going to win unless we take to the streets,” he said.

Read the rest

Austin: Trailer Eateries [State of the Re:Union]

Noah J Nelson on Wednesday, Oct. 12th

Things Fall Apart, Our Job Is to Bring Them Back Together

The Fall season of State of the Re:Union is now underway on public radio, and to celebrate we’re taking a look back through the SOTRU archives of videos and slideshows from past episodes. This week we’re traveling back to Austin, Texas for a tasty video.

Austin is known for innovative thinking and the trailer eatery movement is no exception. SOTRU examines this mobile cuisine culture and the people making it happen.

Catch the latest episode of State of the Re:Union on your local station, the SOTRU website or by subscribing to their podcast feed(iTunes). October is SOTRU’s official fundraising month and the show needs your support to keep going strong.

Hosted by Public Radio Talent Quest Winner and performance artist Al Letson, each hour-long program of SOTRU uses a journalistic, documentary-style approach to focus exclusively on one city or town and features interviews, commentary, recordings, listener-generated letters and music. The series is distributed by PRX and National Public Radio.

Read the rest

Why Are Young, Educated Americans Going Back To The Farm?

Nelson Harvey on Wednesday, Sep. 21st

I am a 25-year-old college graduate with a degree from a fairly prestigious eastern university, and I pull weeds for a living. At first blush, you might think I’m overqualified, and after four hours of weeding the squash beds, when the stiffness begins to set in, that’s what I start to believe, too. In fact, nothing in college prepared me for this. My only credentials are the past two summers, spent learning by doing: planting, thinning, trellising, fertilizing, tilling, harvesting, washing, packing and, of course, weeding.

I am a farm intern, and to me, the only thing more remarkable than the fact that I have spent much of the past three summers happily stooping over vegetable rows (I am 6’4’’) is that I am not alone. Across the country, college students and graduates like myself, many with little or no farming background, have been flocking to small farms in droves, shacking up in old farmhouses, trailers and tents, and working for free or for peanuts, all in exchange for a little instruction in the fine art of running a farm.

“It’s almost like a third education after college,” said Kelly Coffman, 30, a second-year apprentice at Rain Crow Farm in Paonia, CO. Coffman studied at Prescott College in Arizona and Naropa University in Boulder, CO, and worked in the California state park system and as a kindergarten teacher, before deciding to work on farms. “When you have [a liberal arts] education, you get to a point where you realize wait, I need to have a more basic fundamental education about being human. Food, water, shelter…these things are important,” she said.

Although their numbers are hard to pin down, odds are that if you’re reading this, you probably know someone who has followed such a path. John English, website manager for the National Agriculture Information Service farm internship bulletin board, a job clearinghouse, said through a spokesperson that postings there have jumped by around 500 per year for the last 5 years, as more small farms spring up and seek the cheap and eager labor that interns provide. “If you talk to any really good farmer they’ll tell you that they’ve had a doubling and tripling of their applicant pool over the last few years,” said Severine Von Tscharner Fleming, an upstate New York farmer, activist and the director of the new film The Greenhorns, which profiles young farmers across the country and explores their motivations. In 2009, Fleming helped found the National Young Farmers Coalition, an advocacy group for those whose taste of farm life has enticed them to take up farming as a profession.

Farming is relentless: it saddles you with endless chores, pins you in one place, and works you to the bone. For much of the 20th century, most Americans tried to escape such a life by fleeing to the city, all of which begs the obvious question: Why would we want to go back to the farm?

The reasons, of course, are as varied as the aspiring farmers themselves. “I realized that I never wanted to work for anyone ever again, and I didn’t want anyone to have to work for me, said Benjamin Capron, a 27-year old apprentice in the three-year farm school program at The Living Farm in Paonia, Colorado. “I wanted to work independently and work with people.” Capron, a Denver, CO, native who studied German in college before spending several years working at a brewery and bouncing back and forth between Germany and the U.S., fell in love with farming when he lived on a commune during one European stint. He told me that his motivation to farm comes largely from an aversion to participating in a capitalist economy that he views as exploitative. “Socially, wherever you go and whatever you buy, it supports this slavery in different parts of the world,” he said. “The tomatoes you eat come from an indentured servant in California, and my jeans come from a sweatshop in Honduras. So I see [farming] as a way of not allowing for slavery and not being accountable for slavery.”

Kelly Coffman of Rain Crow Farm agrees. “I feel like the best thing to do with my time in the system that we have set up is to learn how to not be dependent on it,” she said. “This money that’s going through the farm that’s coming to me and I’m spending on gas, its still very much a part of the culture, but I have a lot less conflicts with this than I do with many other jobs.”

This is a common trait among farm interns: a concern for social justice and the environment, coupled with a lack of faith that mainstream political structures can or will address those issues. “[The politicians] are broke, they can’t agree on anything, and they’re controlled by the corporations,” said Fleming, characterizing this attitude. “So if you’re interested in changing the world, change a little piece of it, and change it a lot.”

Whatever they might think about “changing the world,” many other farm interns are drawn to farm work right now by a much simpler need: paying the rent. With interest in farmer’s markets and weekly “community supported agriculture” produce shares at an all time high, a farm can look like a strong business opportunity to many young people, particularly those who have foundered in unfulfilling post-college jobs, or endured long spells of unemployment.

Certainly, demand for local food is on the rise, as fancy urban restaurants aim to satisfy their locavore clientele, supermarkets strive to highlight local options in the produce section, and more people catch on to the social and nutritional benefits of farmer’s markets. All of this is fueling an increase in farming in the urban hinterlands and within cities themselves, and specialty vegetable operations are a popular choice for first-time farmers, since their startup requires little capital compared to a ranch or a diary farm.

Interns interested in someday entering these growing markets confront the fact that, when starting out, they will probably earn very (very) little. Kirk Wilson, 27, a single-season intern at The Living Farm, earns $80 per week plus room and board for his work, which is more than many farms can offer. But he said he likes working outdoors, getting dirty, and seeing things grow, and is learning the skills to run a small farm of his own someday. Having spent endless hours job surfing on Craig’s List, Wilson also knows what he’s not missing.

“Before I came here I was working at a [self-storage] place called StorQuest,” which was basically the worst job in the world,” said Wilson. “I got that job because I was unemployed for five-and-a-half months, ended up doing it for three months, and then was about to shoot myself in the head if I didn’t do something else,” he said. Wilson, who like Capron is a native of Denver, has a degree in Visual Effects and Motion Graphics and had worked for a post-production house on TV commercials after college. He said he was fired when an ad containing error he had made wound up on the air. After competing with 400 other applicants for the storage job, only to quit a short time later, he began to feel that he had nothing to lose.

“I mean, am I gonna make $10 an hour for the rest of my life?” he asked. “If that’s the case, then coming here and having no rent, room and board, and making $16 a day…I’m completely fine with that.”

If the flood of applications that show up in farmer’s mailboxes each winter are any guide, a surprising number of Wilson’s contemporaries share his willingness to do farm work for almost nothing. The result is a sometimes fierce competition for farm jobs, and a sort of “race to the bottom” where wages are concerned. “The farmer I work for is always saying ‘did you hear about such-and-such farm? They work this hard, this much, and they don’t even get paid!” said Kelly Coffman. “It’s like, am I supposed to feel bad about that?” (Coffman earns $250 per week plus room and board, a relatively high wage that stems, in part, from her three years of farm experience).

“As I’ve watched in the last 4 years, I get on the farm job websites, and there’s less and less availability,” she said. “I was just talking to a friend in [organic farming mecca] Ashville, North Carolina, who was saying that she almost feels like you have to have a Master’s degree to get a job on a farm there.”

Increased competition for such low pay raises a troubling possibility, one that has plagued other attractive but low-paying fields, like journalism: those with bills to pay or families to support, who cannot afford to accept farm wages, may be squeezed out, leaving the best farm jobs to those whose financial safety net (parents, trust fund, etc) allows them the luxury of working for nothing.

The thought of young, idealistic and educated people fleeing to farm in the countryside might evoke, for many, the 1970’s “Back to the Land” movement. Indeed, today’s farming revival is strongest in areas– upstate New York, Vermont, northern California – that were first seeded with ecologically-minded farmers during the back-to-the-land era, but there are important differences between the two movements. While many back-to-the-landers eschewed technology, farm interns of today are plugged in, skimming for their next job online in their off hours and downloading political podcasts for listening while they pick peas. Organic farming today is bigger business than it was 40 years ago, when organic growers catered mainly to the counterculture movement. Today, organic food is everywhere from Whole Foods to the corner deli, and modern aspiring farmers are more comfortable than their hippie forebears treating their farm like a business, one that is designed to serve these growing markets.

And yet, just as so many “Back to the Landers” eventually left the woods and returned to the lives they had left behind, it’s likely that many of today’s interns will opt to exit farming, going back to school or taking city jobs, carrying a small piece of the farm with them. The obstacles to becoming a proficient farmer are tremendous: along with the many seasons of experience (complete with all the heat exhaustion, monotony, and backache that those entail), one must also endure razor thin profit margins, unpredictable and increasingly strange weather, and the reality that, if the numbers speak truth, making a living on a small farm is as hard today as it has ever been.

USDA data suggests that the number of hobby farms–those earning less than $10,000 per year–increased slightly in 2010, while the number of midsized farms–those which earn between $10,000 and $100,000, and account for most people who make a living off the land–decreased. And yet, the formation of groups like the National Young Farmers Coalition suggests that there is a contingent planning to stick it out. Their goal seems less about getting rich than simply getting by, and perhaps changing a sliver of the world in the process. “I don’t see myself doing anything else from here on out,” Kirk Wilson said.

Additional photo courtesy of Caroline Glover.

Read the rest

A Food Revolution In Milwaukee [State of the Re:Union]

State of the Re:Union on Wednesday, Sep. 14th

From the multimedia archives of State of the Re:Union.

Will Allen started a food revolution in creating new urban farmers across the country. State of the Re:Union explores one of those farms in Milwaukee called Sweet Water Organics. Check out their incredible process that utilizes aquaponics and hydroponics, as well as their philosophy on taking another step to fighting the phenomena known as food deserts.

Each week Turnstyle features work from the archives of State of the Re:Union, the public radio show that travels this great nation one town or city at a time. Hosted by multifaceted artist Al Letson. Check your local listings for the upcoming fall season of the show, or subscribe to their podcast feed (iTunes) to catch all the episodes.

Read the rest

Hungry In The Hood: Hungry Man Shake

Kai Hsing on Friday, Aug. 5th

What if we all had to buy our groceries at the local convenience store? For about 23.5 million people in the U.S.—according to census data—who live in neighborhoods without easy access to fresh food, or “food deserts,” this is often a day-to-day reality.

On Wednesday, July 20th, First Lady Michelle Obama launched another phase of her Let’s Move! campaign that will help businesses in these so-called food deserts sell healthier food.

Naturally, we thought it appropriate to launch our five-part web series “Hungry in the Hood,” in honor of the occasion.

These webisodes take a farcical look at what “interesting” culinary delights are possible using food often found on convenience store shelves. Yes, we hope you find it as absurd as we do.

Obama aims to eliminate food deserts in the U.S. so people will not have to resort to following our twisted recipes.

The Let’s Move! initiative even made a nifty “Food Desert Locator”, based on census data, that helps:

locate food-deserts in the U.S.
show population characteristics of those living in food deserts
offer data that can be downloaded for community planning and/or research

In this episode, we show you how to take your savory microwaveable meal on the go – and without a microwave.

Read the rest

Hungry In The Hood: Bodega-Style Ethnic Noodle Bake

Kai Hsing on Wednesday, Aug. 3rd

What if you had to buy all of your groceries at your local convenience store? For about 23.5 million people in the US who live in neighborhoods without easy access to fresh food, or ‘food deserts,’ this is often a day-to-day reality.

On Wednesday, July 20th, First Lady Michelle Obama launched another phase of her Let’s Move! campaign that will help businesses in these so-called food deserts sell healthier food.

Naturally, we thought it appropriate to launch our five-part web series “Hungry in the Hood,” in honor of the occasion. These webisodes take a farcical look at what “interesting” culinary delights are possible using food often found on convenience store shelves. Yes, we hope you find it as absurd as we do. Obama aims to eliminate food deserts in the U.S. so people will not have to resort to following our twisted recipes.

The Let’s Move! initiative even made a nifty “Food Desert Locator”, based on census data, that helps:

locate food-deserts in the U.S.
show population characteristics of those living in food deserts
offer data that can be downloaded for community planning and/or research

In ‘Hungry in the Hood,’ we take a farcical look at what interesting culinary delights are possible without regular access to fresh groceries.

In this episode, we show you a different spin on the traditional pasta bake – bodega style.

Read the rest

Junk Food Companies Getting Fat Overseas

Robyn Gee on Wednesday, Jul. 27th

Certain brands of food and beverages might be trying to clean up their act for an increasingly health-conscious America, or even hurting in the revenue department because Americans are making healthier choices, but that doesn’t say anything about their business profits overseas.

According to an article on Food Politics, companies like McDonald’s, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are seeing an increase in their revenues due to bumps in sales in other countries.

McDonald’s, for example, reported a 16 percent increase in total revenue compared to the same fiscal quarter last year, all due to “sales throughout the world.”

PepsiCo saw an 18 percent increase in net income due to boosted sales in “emerging markets.”

Finally, Coca-Cola experienced an 18 percent increase in income. Specifically, sales rose in Latin America, Europe, Eurasia, Africa, and the Pacific Region. Food Politics reports:

“Growth in China was 24%, in Russia 17%, and in Mexico 7%. In contrast, North American volume recorded a growth of a measly 1%.”

First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign against child obesity, and her push for a healthier America, seems to have forced companies like these to be creative in their marketing and distribution.

Via The Atlantic.

Read the rest

Hungry In The Hood: Philly Three-Way

Kai Hsing on Tuesday, Jul. 26th

On Wednesday, July 20th, First Lady Michelle Obama launched another phase of her Let’s Move! campaign that will help businesses in these so-called food deserts sell healthier food.

Naturally, we thought it appropriate to launch our five-part web series “Hungry in the Hood,” in honor of the occasion.

These webisodes take a farcical look at what “interesting” culinary delights are possible using food often found on convenience store shelves. Yes, we hope you find it as absurd as we do.

Obama aims to eliminate food deserts in the U.S. so people will not have to resort to following our twisted recipes.

The Let’s Move! initiative even made a nifty “Food Desert Locator”, based on census data, that helps:

locate food-deserts in the U.S.
show population characteristics of those living in food deserts
offer data that can be downloaded for community planning and/or research

In this episode, we show you a new way to combine three of our favorite things – hot dogs, bologna and cream cheese – into one amazing appetizer.

Read the rest

More Cinemagraph Fun With Dogfish Head

Noah J Nelson on Monday, Jul. 25th

We’re dipping back into the stack just one more time to bring you this final extra from Cinemagraph creators Jamie Beck and Kevin Berg‘s documentation of the Dogfish Head production brewery in Milton, Delaware.

It all started out as a road trip to the Dogfish Head brewpub, where the duo of Beck and Berg witnessed the creation of a strawberry beer dubbed Tweason’ale. A full photo essay ran in the New York Times and is archived on the Cinemagraph website.

Not seen in this shot: the Turnstyle team unloading the case and cracking open the contents, just out of frame. [Not really, but you're thinking the same thing.]

Read the rest