Yes Mr Sykes

Boule 2

Homemade Bombay Mix in Whitechapel: Unbelievable

The week of Boule!

The Big Lunch

Tajine revival!

"Good afternoon tajine sir, splendid to see you again, I'm awfully sorry for neglecting you so, It's been some time since we last bonded, I feel we should at least give it another go".

The tajine surfaced this afternoon for a spot of lunch. It's such a beautifully rustic vessel for cooking and also eating out of, thick earthenware haggled tactlessly haggled from an Arabian last January in Morocco.
No 'meat' (lamb) in sight though for this dish, just mackerel, boiled Cyprus potatoes, a little whipping cream, lemon juice, a handful of shredded winter greens and two eggs cracked on top, seasoned with cracked white pepper and a little sea salt. Baked in the oven for about 15 if the tajine is pre-warmed. A fat slice of toasted French Boule accompanied with a little unnecessary wholegrain mustard (too much acidity, the lemon was citric enough to cut through the cream and mackerel).

Food workshops: Stoke Newington

Food Workshop Journals

The Spence Bakery: Rye baby

Rye Baby! The Spence Bakery in Stoke Newington, just off the high street was delightful to have stumbled across the other day. The bakeries selection of rye breads is by far the largest I've found yet, all home made in the back of the shop each and everyday. Spence allow all of their loafs a generous amount of time to rise  to enhance and develop a fuller flavour and texture. I sliced and toasted up a fat wedge as soon I walked in the door, slathered on a little butter, toasted wholemeal seeds, golden, nutty and delicious, perfect with a little honey.

http://www.thespence.co.uk/#

Southwalk Lido: Reclaimation of public space

http://southwarklido.wordpress.com/

Proper Hamburgers!

Pump up the Gym

Food Pleasure Points!

The Vegetable Orchestra

What a beautiful way of engaging and reconnecting people with vegetables...

Context Report

During the Christmas period we had the task of writing up our 6000 word thesis outlining our proposed area of study for our final projects. My area concerns the role and operation of food within the city, the class inequalities that exist and  it seeks to explore the idea that closer relationships with food across a number of contexts bares the potential to cure many of societies ills. I have included the introduction for the project below.

Contents:

The aims of this report

My motivations as a designer

Introduction

In context

Historical context

The present food phenomenon

The demise/rise of cooking and engagement with food

The future of markets, food and the social

Community growing/futures

Futures scenarios

Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food

Fifteen

School dinners Sensitivity

The social benefits/Abrahams hierarchy of needs

Food, the body and the self

Summary and points for moving forward

Introduction

This project aims to utilise food as its medium, as a process to engage inhabitants of visually barren and malnourished areas of London. One only has to scour London, particularly its denser boroughs to evidence the unprecedented number of fast food outlets that it is plagued by, all allowed to be rolled out virtually unregulated, providing an accurate indication of a particular areas health. Children roam the streets after school with hydrogenated chicken and chips, boxes strewn over city floors, with many parents unable to cook, consequently making uniformed food choices much to the detriment of their lifestyles.

Solutions, on the other hand have materialised in relation to the knowledge void concerning cooking; solutions such as cooking schools, urban growing initiatives, organic foods are all available to those who can participate in them. An integral socio-group is absent from this injection of interest though, the socio-group which would undoubtedly benefit the most. The positive health, behavioural, and mental benefits afforded by a healthy and engaged diet are extraordinary, activities such as engagement in the cooking process, eating with friends and family, to eating healthily would seemingly benefit.

During a short documentary film I made, I interviewed a number of consumers exiting a branch of Sainsbury’s, I asked them if they knew the provenance of two of the items that they had purchased that day and whether or not they had any idea as to how it was made, 70% answered negatively having no clue which stuck me as highly Theoretically and in practice, healthy food and eating practices harbour the potential to remedy social ills on a vast and varied scale as my report will go on to explore, therefore I am making it my task to design within Urban environments interventions that use food and cooking as a medium to alleviate, inspire, educate and promote enterprise.

Mike Meire: Global Street Food

The Serpentine Gallery/Sasparilla Summit/The future of Londons markets

I attended this informal summit at the Serpentine gallery as part of the Skills Exchange programme on the 13.01.10 which was set up by a resident artist Barbey to discuss and explore future of London street markets. I felt that this workshop would be of great use to me as one of markets are a hubbub of all things food related, closely entwined within a multitude of social narratives. The host and guests had laid on a beautiful banquet of food from surrounding street markets which was quite a surprise, pakoras and plantain fritters from Brixton, precarious jellied eels, homemade gingerbread, truffles, locally baked bread, chocolate fudge cakes, Cypriot olives amongst many other treats all beautifully illustrating the culinary and cultural diversity that exists within the area.

The space it self had investigatory maps of various markets, images and text adorning the walls from historical accounts of the markets to present users and inhabitants of the market. Additionally a speculative project was situated on the back wall across the floor, a series of architectural models constructed by a small architecture collective (Architecture Crew), exploring the potentials of what a market in the 21^st century should be and could potentially be, what purposes it should serve etc… as a piece of speculative design is was interesting to see.

The main premise was focused specifically on markets and their roles with society both historically through to the present day, discussing an array of challenges that they face in the 21^st century from the likes of councils, governments and other development initiatives. The exercise was people and society centric, how markets shape peoples lives, how life and communities are situated around these informal yet essential spaces and how time has stood to alter people perceptions. Within the workshop there were people from an varied backgrounds, varied disaplines but with a shared agenda, interest in markets and the maintaining and advocacy of such spaces in the climate of globalization and homgenisation.

Barbeys main area of interest was the East Street Market on the Walworth Rd, her main area of investigative exploration and artistic representation, who had explored the market through a number of different means, ethnographic research. I found most of the people present at the summit interesting due to their fascination with food and the environments in which it is purveyed. I think it would be appropriate for me to highlight in some detail the attendees of the summit abd their current positioning in relation to the debate, I will use bullet points to outline key points otherwise I will waffle on, it is also useful for my purposes to observe some of the strategies employed within their own practices for transference in to my own:

Barbey, artist, East Street Market

-       Decanting of estates

-       Conversations with market residents to discover memories, Salvation army, characters and myths

-       Organised walk around the market, memory guide, illustrated through a huge map on the wall. Families who once lived there, shady pasts, compromised integrity through price reduction

-       How can markets contribute to a community creatively

Alex Rhys Taylor, sociologist- PHD Goldsmiths

-       Alex is writing his PHD on the formation of communities around food, smells and flavors, whether positive of repugnance, beautifully rich, interesting stuff

-       Social relationships that form within this context

-       Market language, evolution and catalysts

Window farms

The farms themselves are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. 


Window Farms. Another interesting design project within the midst of the movement to 'growing your own'. This particular initiative commenced life through helping people to grow some of their own food all year round in the windows of their apartments. The farms themselves are vertical, hydroponic, modular, low-energy, high-yield edible window gardens built using low-impact or recycled local materials. 


The project has two main goals, the first is to start a window farming craze across the states, the second is to give ordinary folks a means to collaborate on research and development through their own site which is www.windowfarms.org.


The project has similar resonances to the plethora of other solutions that are currently evolving across the globe and they state that "growing some of own own food is a simple pleasure that can make a big difference in our relationship with nature. As we choose nutrients to feed plants we hope to eat in turn, we gain experience with a nearly lost fundamental human art, get a microcosmic view of the food system, develop a stake in the conversation, and come up with new ideas for how to take care of ourselves and our planet in troubled times. 


How it works
Each participant in the project makes it easier for the next window farmer to grow some of his/her own food. The system design and instruction sets evolve as each person comes up with ideas for improvements or points out problems we can collectively test solutions proposed by the group.


http://windowfarms.org/
http://our.windowfarms.org/

Loop.ph: Metabolicity

Loop.ph, a London based research and design studio that aims to bridge the gap between design and natural sciences. The project that is titled ‘Metabolicity’ and it focuses on a metabolizing of resources and waste to supply a cities inhabitants with all the nourishment they need. This project involves growing food in the city and they have seeded design projects within an array of environments from housing estates, to restaurants, offices and community centres. The projects aim is

“to raise large-scale awareness about the importance of localised food production and the reconnection with life sustaining practices”

Within the project as illustrated, through design and research they developed a system based on the microscopic connections bubbles make when they link to form adaptable structures that can be implemented within a number of urban environments, both indoor and outdoor, all capable of being utilised to grow food in and around the city.

http://loop.ph/bin/view/Loop/WebHome
http://www.metabolicity.com/

Pat Caplan: Food and Anthropology at Goldsmiths

Working my way through hordes of online material I stumbles across a project called: concepts of healthy eating (Lewisham) which was a series of ethnographic studies into the eating habits of inhabitants of Lewisham. A number of research methods were undertaken to amass a range of data sources, such as opened ended interviews, with a range of people and retail outlets, all ages, classes and ethnicities were considered and informants kept 7-day food diaries.
Some of the research methods employed within this study may in fact be advisable to utilise within my own areas of investigation.
The exercise painted an insightful picture into the varied diets of a boroughs diverse inhabitants, all of which were dictated by culture, social implications, finance, health afflictions, time, age, awareness of health information and that imbued by the mass media.
Anyway, the lady who undertook this research is in fact a professor of anthropology at Goldsmiths, it was she who set up the unit at the college. Pat has written extensively on matters relating to food in a number of global contexts so I have decided to make contact with her and run a few of my ideas past her.

http://www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/pat-caplan/project-uk-phase1/
http://www.gold.ac.uk/anthropology/staff/pat-caplan/food-health-identity/