A Mixed Bag (7.30.09)

Takeshi Murata, Escape Spirit VideoSlime (still), 2007. Courtesy of Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Suddenly This Summer: Videos by Takeshi Murata, Lauren Kelley, Pillar Albarracín, Kota Ezawa and other artists are showing at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. Continues through Aug. 7.

Super Chocolate: Former space shuttle technologist Timothy Childs, and Wired magazine co-founder Louis Rossetto bring technology to chocolate with their new company Tcho.

Better Than Your Lover: On a list of 10 things better than sex, food comes in at number 3.

Nothing's Better Than Tom: Ford, that is. In September, the uber sexy fashion designer makes his directorial debut with A Single Man at the Venice Film Festival.

Talkin' Trash: Nike's Trash Talk, the first performance basketball shoe made from manufacturing waste, was named Best in Show at the 2009 International Design Excellence Awards.

Modern Treats: Blue Bottle Coffee Company sweetens your visit to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art cafe with Mondrian cakes, and cookies based on a Katharina Fritsch sculpture.

Frosted Cones: A step-by-step guide to cupcakes that look like ice cream.

Wallworks: The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts has commissioned artists to create large-scale works directly on the walls of its galleries and public spaces. On view through Oct. 25.

Eating on the Edge: Visit the Rubin Museum for lunch and catch Eating in the Danger Zone, a series of 30-minute documentaries about cooking adventures in the Himalayas.

Food Aid: A new $15 billion initiative will help farmers in poor countries increase production.

Rodney McMillan: Sentimental Disappointment: The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston hosts the artist's first solo museum exhibition in the United States. Continues through Nov. 1.

When in Boston slow down at the Wagon Wheel, an old drive through that serves fresh local foods.

Under the Golden Arches: A writer takes his kid to McDonald's to play, but not to eat.

Sticky Stuff: ACA Galleries, Inc. is suing Joseph Kinney alleging that he sold them a forged Milton Avery painting.

Stop and Pop: Every Thursday through Aug. 27, the Museum of Art and Design will host a pop-up wine bar with a Central Park view and a finger-food menu.

Speedy Growth: Makers of the film King Corn have turned the bed of a pick-up truck into a mobile farm and it's all the rage.

From Ohio to Dumbo: Jeni's Splendid Ice Cream has made its way to New York. At $10 a pint, savor every single bite.

Granola Girl: Nekisia Davis makes some of Brooklyn's best oats.

SnakeSweat: Watch Barney Clay's black and white short featuring the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on YouTube. Catch the band at the All Points West Music and Arts Festival this weekend.

O Yeah: Just Food's Community Chef program is profiled in O Magazine (and the writer rocks a t-shirt by Brooklyn artist Jen P. Harris).

Sweet Tart: A recipe by a health conscious athlete.

Blue M&Ms cure more than a bad day.

Looks Good: Watermelon Granita

Uploaded to Flickr by ext212 on June 8, 2009.

Composed of about 90 percent water, watermelon is a refreshing treat for hot summer days. Though you can find imported watermelon at supermarkets almost year round, their domestic season begins in May and they are at their prime in August. Every part of a watermelon is edible, even the seeds (roasted) and rinds (pickled).

Granita, which is popular in Italy, is a light slushy alternative to ice cream and sorbet. The crystalline textured dish can be made with liquids such as coffee, fruit juice or alcohol and served for breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert. According to NPR's Kitchen Window, granitas are also "a perfect palate cleanser between courses in a formal meal. "

Ingredients
watermelon flesh, chopped into manageable pieces
1/4 cup sugar
juice of 1 lemon
mint leaves

Go to Writing With My Mouth Full for instructions.

Looks Good: Dropped Carrot Biscuits & Honey Butter

Dropped Carrot Biscuits. Uploaded to Flickr by jazzijava on September 20, 2008.

At the end of my last Pollinator Week post, I promised to report back on a batch of Dropped Carrot Biscuits and my first attempt at Honey Butter.

I made adjustments to both recipes, which I've noted below in parentheses. Most importantly, I swapped one cup of white flour for 100% whole wheat flour in an effort to make my biscuits more nutritious. As a result, they were more opaque and not as visually exciting as the biscuits pictured above. Yet they smelled wonderful and tasted a lot like vegan carrot cake.

Alton Brown's Honey Butter recipe is absolutely marvelous. I cut the recipe in half and still have quite a bit in my fridge; it has been a challenge not to dip my finger in the golden glob every day. I used (and recommend) Stiles Apiaries Cream Honey, a velvety and naturally sweet specialty made in New Jersey and sold at Whole Foods.

Dropped Carrot Biscuits
2 cups flour (1 cup all-purpose flour + 1 cup whole wheat four)
1/2 cup psyllium fibre (did not add)
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
1/2 tbsp vanilla
1/2 tsp orange extract
1 1/2 cups shredded carrots (used 2 cups)
1/2 cup raisins (did not add)

Go to What Smells So Good for instructions.

Alton Brown's Honey Butter
1 pound butter
1/4 cup honey
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Go to Food Network for instructions.

Becoming a Community Chef (Post 5)

Irene's Apple, Carrot and Red Beet Salad.

This morning I assisted Community Chef Irene Plax with a cooking demo at the Weeksville Farmers Market in the Bedford-Stuyvesant area of Brooklyn.

In 2006, Weeksville Heritage Center created the market to address the lack of affordable fresh, local produce in the surrounding area, which is predominantly African American. The market offers affordable produce, honey, jams and baked goods from Rogowski Farm, Red Jacket Orchards and Alex's Tomato Farm. Today's stock included chocolate mint, thyme, strawberries, curly collard greens, garlic scapes, apples and more.

Irene prepared a no fuss Apple, Carrot and Red Beet Salad with an olive oil and apple cider vinegar dressing. This colorful and crunchy medley is mildly sweet and offers a ton of fiber. Ginger (which is optional) not only adds spice to this dish, but also increases its digestive benefits. If you're in need of protein, you can top this salad with a dollop or two of low-fat Greek yogurt.

Now, I've never been a fan of beets. In fact, I hated them until today. Aware of my dislike, Irene suggested that I try the root vegetable raw. (Apparently, it's a little known fact that beets can be eaten uncooked.) As I raised a piece to my mouth, I prepared for what one of the market volunteers called "the yuck factor," the taste of dirt that makes me abhor them so. But it wasn't an issue--the beets were surprisingly sweet. I guess I'll have to stop making sounds of disgust every time I see them at the market. Irene's recipe:

Ingredients
Carrots (about one per person)
Apples (about one per person; green or yellow green colored peels are best)
Beets (about 1/2 beet per person; set aside green tops for a separate dish*)
Olive oil (enough to lightly coat the veggies)
Apple Cider Vinegar (equal to the amount of oil used)

Optional:
Salt and pepper
Parsley (or use chopped carrot tops)
Ginger (powdered, grated or minced)
Pineapple (fresh or canned chunks and/or add the juice)

Instructions
Scrub/wash vegetables then slice, dice or grate as per your preference. Place all ingredients in a bowl. Add olive oil and vinegar, stirring thoroughly to see how much liquid you are working with (you want to avoid forming a soup at the bottom of the bowl). Add your choice of optional ingredients. Best served cold. *Wash and de-stem beet greens; boil until tender or sauté with garlic and red pepper flakes in a little olive oil.

The Weeksville Farmers Market continues through late October/early November. I'll be there whipping up something delicious and good for you on August 29, September 5 & 26, and October 24 (10am-noon). Come on by.

See all of my pictures from today's demo on Flickr.

Candy Bars and Cupcakes: Christine Sun Kim

Earlier this year, I was introduced to the work of Christine Sun Kim at Harvestworks Digital Media Art Center. The organization, which is located in Soho, granted the artist a 2009 Educational Scholarship to further her experiments in "seismic calligraphy," an innovative form of painting that employs sounds waves and physical vibrations. In the above video, for instance, Kim has applied ink to a metal washer and placed it on a sheet of paper that rests atop a subwoofer.* As sound comes through the device (regulated by the artist), the washer dances and skips across the surface in response to the vibrations, leaving behind trails of color. Each piece in this new body of work is thus a product of control as well as chance. This approach to painting reflects, to a degree, the artist's own relationship to sound--Kim has been deaf since infancy.

Born in Orange County, California, Kim received her MFA in Studio Arts from the School of Visual Arts in 2006. Her work has been featured in group shows at The Guild, New York; Takt Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany; Michael Steinberg Fine Art, New York; David Zwirner Gallery, New York; and Studio Place Arts Gallery, Vermont. This year, she participated in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Swing Space program, a grant that connects artists and arts organizations with vacant commercial space in downtown New York City. Below, Kim answers a few questions about her seismic calligraphy experiments and, near the end, explains the daily role of sweets in her life as an artist.

______________________________________________

Work in progress.

Contemporary Confections: What have you been working on at Harvestworks and Swing Space these past several months?

Christine Sun Kim: I have been working on finding several ways to create visual and tactile, interpretative representations of sound, which my friend coined “seismic calligraphy.” I use my own sources of sounds and transform them from one state of information into another.

With an emergency grant from Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and help from a tutor at Harvestworks, I was able to purchase [new] sound equipment. I had no idea what an amplifier nor subwoofer was, so it was difficult trying to select the right ones for my project. Me and the tutor spent two months researching and buying the appropriate equipment. It has been an amazing experience, because it felt like discovering a completely new realm which had [actually] been right at my fingertips most of my life. After the equipment was set up, I produced experimental physical manifestations with ink, pigment powders, sponges, buttons, alarm bed shakers and video. The whole thing has pushed my relationship with sound to a new level.

Untitled, 2009.

CC: Are your seismic works a shift away from what you were making earlier, at the School of the Visual Arts (SVA), for instance, or do you see them as a continuation?

CSK: A big shift. I struggled with drawing and painting for a long time and felt I hadn’t found my own style nor voice at SVA. I stopped making new art for two years after graduation. I thought I was done with it, but after my first residency in Berlin last year, I had a huge epiphany (and a dream about abandoning my old life, meaning old art) that led me to embrace a medium that’s completely inaccessible: sound. [Because] I was born deaf and I have never developed a relationship with sound, my understanding of it comes from tactile experience and years of speech therapy. The process [of making these works] is slowly becoming synthetic and metaphorical, translating sounds with an ephemeral nature. I translate from movement to sound to visual, or sometimes the other way around. Each step can be either accessible or not, which is relevant to my education and upbringing. I did most of learning through sign language interpreters in classrooms. I speak in my own language, which is naturally accessible to me, and I regularly place my trust into someone in between to properly translate (or filter even) my language into one that is inaccessible to me. In my work, like an interpreter, I restate a substance from a language into another language; a medium to another; movement to sound, sound to visual, and so on.

Work in progress.

CC: Now that you've been experimenting with the seismic pieces for a while, do you look for something in particular to happen when the vibrations begin and color begins to move across the paper? Or do you follow a set process?

CSK: I’m loosely translating by asking myself questions: Which sounds? Which materials? Does it have to leave an imprint? For now, I'm holding onto my paints and ink until I’m ready to go back to them, and investigating plastic lids and pinwheel toys instead. For example, I blow into a microphone and my breath is translated into a sound and the sound becomes physical by “blowing” the pinwheel fans on the top of subwoofers. I use the sound of blowing to actually blow instead of my actual breath. This specific process is ironic, yet scientific because the sound is made out of air vibrating. Another example is I can also “draw” with a microphone upside down on the floor and the sound makes an ink-dipped object move, leaving an imprint, thus I “draw” the imprints. I am still experimenting, but I try to translate my experience through the everyday or ready made objects I find in my neighborhood or during my travels. I I bought the pinwheel toys in Chinatown and I found a bag of plastic lids while hiking in upstate New York. So, my process is to pinpoint a sound and interpret it with the materials I possess.

Untitled, 2009.

CC: What lead you to video record your process?

CSK: I felt that the end result of my seismic paintings did not capture the whole idea of sounds. I realized that the movement of paint or ink is probably more revealing than the final imprint itself. So, I used my digital camera to record the action...My project has a lot of potential directions: filming, performance art and painting. I’m still playing around to see which formula works the best for me.

"The Perfect Storm" (still), 2009.

CC: What do you have planned going forward?

CSK: I have several ideas and projects on the horizon involving inverted subwoofers, sound archaeology, extra pinwheels on speakers, and Zen sand garden with bed shakers. I'm currently looking for a place to exhibit my work. Stay tuned!

Pinwheel experiment in progress.

CC: And now for the million dollar questions: What's your favorite sweet treat? How often do you indulge? Do you have a special place for sweets in New York City?

CSK: I usually don’t like vegan sweets, but I’m hooked on BabyCakes on Broome Street; they use agave nectar as a main substitute. I can’t get enough of their Chocolate Chip Cookies and Vanilla cupcakes. I used to frequent Magnolia Bakery, but just half of a cupcake is enough to make my teeth fall out! I need a glass of milk to wash it down, but unfortunately I’m lactose intolerant. I also like Cupcake Café, because I love their buttery frosting--very delicate. I indulge in them every two weeks or so. Other than those cupcakes, I eat a Nutrageous or Snickers bar almost every day after work.

CC: Have sweets ever played in role in art making for you?

CSK: You know, I go through a lot of ups and downs with my art (artist’s block, opening downers, letters of rejection, etc), so I turn to sweets and wine for therapy.

* See more videos by Christine Sun Kim here.

This interview was conducted via e-mail.

Looks Good: Buttermilk Ice Cream

Homemade Buttermilk Ice Cream.

It's National Ice Cream Month, and I've been whipping up cold creamy confections with my new ice cream and sorbet maker. I tried it out for the first time with this super simple recipe by food writer and chef Molly Watson. The result was, as Watson described, a rich, lemony, cheesecake-like treat. I topped mine with bits of Scharffen Berger's Milk Chocolate Almond Bar with Sea Salt, but fresh berries or dark chocolate shavings might be a better way to go.

Ingredients
1 cup heavy cream
6 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar
2 cups buttermilk

Go to About.com-Local Foods for instructions.

Becoming a Community Chef (Post 4)

What's on Your Plate? trailer. Courtesy of Aubin Pictures.

Ever since I decided to embark on a cooking program for kids, I've been thinking more and more about food and eating experiences in my own childhood, especially as they relate to my mother. This, perhaps, lead me to attend the recent screening of What's on Your Plate?, a new documentary by Catherine Gund, in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene Park.

Mom raised me, for the most part, on whole foods and grains. She didn't like to cook, yet she had little tolerance for packaged foodstuffs, and candy, she said, would lead to cavities she couldn't afford to have filled. When I asked for money for fruit-flavored Mambas or Jolly Ranchers, she taught me to make desserts like fruit salad ambrosia. She showed me the tortures of dieting too—I witnessed her bouts with the cottage cheese, and grapefruit regimens of the 1980s, and watched her sweat on a nearly empty stomach with Jane Fonda. I moved in with my father during my teens and soon gained 30 pounds on a diet of pizza, chips, soda and licorice. Mom was horrified. It took years for me to realize that mom's rules were not about denial, but genuine concern for my health. Today, she is a diabetic and, unfortunately, in complete denial about her condition. Now it is me that tells mom how to eat.

What's on Your Plate? reveals that the number of people with diabetes is expected to grow, one day afflicting 50 percent of the adult population; 1 of every 3 children; and 2 of every 3 Black or Latino kids. I was shocked by these statistics, but given that diabetes is already the fourth leading cause of global death by disease; diagnoses in the U.S. increased by more than 13 percent in just two years; and type 2 diabetes (formerly known as "adult-onset") has more than doubled among the nation's child and adolescent groups since the 1970s, it is quite logical to predict that this situation will worsen. Though, the subject of diabetes is rather marginal in What's on Your Plate?, Gund is clearly interested in showing the link between food challenges in urban and low-income communities, specifically in New York City, and current health epidemics. According to an article by Peter Daniels for the World Socialist Website (2006), the incidence of diabetes (usually type 2) is significantly worse in New York than it is in other cities. He writes:

Type 2 diabetes is in many important respects a disease of poverty...The better-off neighborhoods of New York have rates of diabetes of less than 3 percent. In the wealthiest area, Manhattan’s Upper East Side, with a population of about 206,000, the rate is 1 percent or less. In East Harlem, directly north of the East Side, the rate among the neighborhood’s 106,000 residents is a whopping 16 percent, the highest in the city...A survey showed that food stores in the Upper East Side were more than three times as likely to carry healthier foods like fresh fruit, low-fat diary products and high-fiber bread as their counterparts in East Harlem.

Having grown up in the suburbs of the California Bay Area, I once thought (naively) that the “food deserts” of big cities were myth. But after working in one of San Francisco’s largest government housing communities, living in the South Bronx, Harlem and, today, Brooklyn, I see that food inequality is very real. This certainly plays a role in economically and racially disproportionate health statistics.

Safiyah (left); Sadie (center); and Bryant Terry (right). Courtesy of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

While films like The Future of Food, and the more recent Food, Inc. get down to the nitty gritty of American food politics (and make you want to slap someone), What's on Your Plate? is a more palatable, positive approach. Cute animations interspersed throughout the documentary remind me of early PBS commercials that told us to eat our vegetables; children and families are obviously Gund's target audience. Her daughter, Sadie Rain Hope-Gund, and her best friend Safiyah Kai Russell Riddle, lead and narrate the film. These two seventh graders impress me with their astute questions and seemingly sincere interest in the nutritional well being of their families, friends and the city at large. They take their audience from farm to farmers market, science class to cafeteria, home kitchen to Chipotle, as they investigate the urban food system. Along their way, they stop at Downtown Yarns on the Lower East Side where they talk to Roger Schulte and Maureen Cooke. Cooke’s father died from complications of diabetes; Schulte, like many people, didn’t even know he had the disease. But thinking back to all of Sadie and Safiyah's adventures, meeting with people such as Amy and Kevin Miceli of Ciao for Now, Chef Jorge Collazo of the NYC Dept. of Ed, Richard Ball of Schoharie Valley Farms, and eco-Chef Bryant Terry, what stuck with me most were the words of Chicago-based poet and teacher, Idris Goodwin: "In this day and age, [good] food shouldn't be a luxury.”

If the Obama Administration's goal is to ensure a generation of healthy, productive, nutritionally-aware children, it seems to me that films like What’s On Your Plate? should be part of the larger plan.

Nutty Chocolate Chip Cookies (a recipe for children with diabetes):

Ingredients
2/3 c. light margarine, softened
2/3 c. brown sugar, firmly packed
2/3 c. sucralose
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/4 c. pecans, chopped

Go to Kids Health.Org for instructions.

Note: Contrary to widespread belief, sugar does not cause diabetes. According to the American Diabetes Association, sweets and desserts are "no more 'off limits' to people with diabetes, than they are to people without diabetes."

Looks Good: Chocolate Sea Salt Cookie Ice Cream Sandwich

Photo: Courtesy Los Angeles Times.

Ingredients
1 1/4 sticks butter, at room temperature, plus extra for greasing the baking sheets
1/2 cup sugar, plus 1/3 cup for rolling, divided
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup flour
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons standard cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon coarse sea salt for sprinkling
About 1 1/2 quarts premium ice cream, such as vanilla or chocolate

Go to LA Times Food for instructions.