Blenderized bravery

Collecting some links--A brave subculture of caretaker cooks feed the tube with purees produced from perishable ingredients. Such practices resist empty larders stocked with simulations of sustenance...

http://psychmamma.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/homemade-blenderized-formula-for-g-tube/

http://www.samuelbackus.com/SamuelsDiet.html

and then of course, the first one I found:

http://lucysrealfood.com/

Family tree quest

via Plumpiñon, I have met some of my extended family! I'm thrilled by this--I couldn't think of a better way for the work to have traveled and returned. I'm writing this from London, where I am organizing a symposium for PLOS next week. Tomorrow: Kew Gardens, most fecund & rich edible & postcolonial territory.

Bridal Hunger

How did I miss this??? Bridal Hunger Games and its aftermath via Maria Gould, of Meatpapers and PLOS... I'm in the final stages of scheduling a liquid food tasting event at the Jackman Humanities Institute at University of Toronto...more anon...

Rural Alchemy Workshop covers the Multispecies Meal at Goddard College

R.A.W. wrote up the Multispecies Meal!

Multispecies Picnic-goers also had the opportunity to sample Lindsay Kelley’s Plumpinon, tearing with teeth into one of the bright-colored, recycled plastic bags that contain Kelley’s latest Starvation Seeds recipe. Plumpinon is a nut paste in which the artist employs the traditional “starvation nut” of her native New Mexico as a means to interrogate Nutriset’s patented humanitarian aid food, Plumpy’nut. Many who tasted the Plumpinon were pleasantly surprised to discover that an erudite and thought-provoking microbiopolitical intervention could taste so damn good.

Thanks for being there, eating, and writing, R.A.W.!

http://ruralalchemy.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/multispecies-picnic-at-goddard-colleges-making-meaning-context-festival/

reading list

Two recent recommendations from Boing Boing science blogger Maggie Koerth-Baker have caught my attention:

Paleofuture Magazine has a new (print) issue out about "past visions of future food."

And Sera Young has written Craving Earth: Understanding Pica--the Urge to Eat Clay, Starch, Ice, and Chalk.

feeding objects

I don't know why I find this website compelling, but, it really, weirdly, is. How decadent to have an extra piece of cheese for your cell phone (maybe my favorite picture there), and intriguing that we might relate to objects in terms of feeding.

http://feedingobjects.com/

(via boingboing)

The site also links to the hunger project, suggesting that feeding objects is somehow connected to human hunger.

following my stuff to santa fe

I decided to go to Santa Fe. Realistically, I will only be there for my panel and maybe one other panel/Donna Haraway's talk. But, how often do I have two things to present in one conference? I should be there.

So, see you at La Fonda on Friday, I hope.

Details here.

new plumpiñon bags

I'm sending some plumpiñon to an event in santa fe (multispecies salon at the society for cultural anthropology annual meeting), and am liking the new style of bag:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22485412@N05/sets/72157623808264065/

RISD's Waste for Life work with plastic bags

I'm impressed & inspired by work being done at RISD with their "Kingston Press": "a 'hot-press' to bond the paper and plastic together."


http://www.flickr.com/photos/46334730@N07/
http://risdwasteforlife.wordpress.com/

The plastic looks so much more solid, glossy, and sturdy than what I've been making at home with my iron.

I especially love the bracelets.

chewing on santa fe

Starvation Seeds will be in Santa Fe in May. I'm not sure exactly when yet, but people attending the Society for Cultural Anthropology conference will be contributing a variety of edibles under the banner of a "multispecies meal." Look for my name and for Eben Kirksey, organizer, & see the call for the posted last week.

I'm not sure what I'll make yet. Liquid tamales were very popular at my tasting, but I feel obliged to work with piñon nuts, given our Santa Fe location. Piñon nuts won't be in season then, so I might have to bring some back-up nuts. (Trader Joes imports theirs and offers three or four possible origin locations, I forget where. Here in Australia they mostly come from China, and are almost as expensive as buying "native" seeds in New Mexico.) If anyone has a stash of piñon you're willing to contribute, please let me know. I'll probably end up flying via Albuquerque, as I have to leave directly for London after SCA.

I wonder if Plumpy'nut is on the ground in Haiti. I hope so; mud cookie research indicated that Haitian kids could use some protein even before the earthquake.

Piling up…

I spent a lot of time last spring contemplating the Haitian practice of making, selling, and eating cookies made from mud. Mud cookies make many things clear: Haiti has severe ecological and economic problems. Haitians find the process of harvesting, cultivating, and eating clay compelling enough to develop economies and labor systems to support the industry. I don't have enough knowledge of the situation in Haiti to assert that the mud cookie phenomenon might be related to Haiti's revolutionary tradition and their desire to remain outside of colonial systems, but, I pondered this and other questions. (For a thoughtful, if character-limited, analysis of Haiti's revolution and colonial politics/politics of slavery, see my colleague Greg Caldwell's recent facebook posts on the subject.) I hope that the current climate in Haiti after the earthquake (US control of their airport, apparent US control of the relief effort, Haiti's predicament regarding aid from many countries, few of which have active, viable revolutionary politics) will acquire &/or maintain an attitude of revolutionary solidarity. This is an impossible hope, I'm afraid, but...I hope anyway.

Footage from Port au Prince reminds me again that my grandfather has died. A teacher in high school theorized the process of grieving for the many deaths experienced in any life as "a pile of bodies." Each new death adds to the pile, and it gets bigger, there, in the corner of my mind that takes care of death and dying. Haiti truly has piles. Grandparents and grandchildren and parents and children are piled up, buried alive, buried dead, buried anonymously, buried having been archived by digital cameras, their clothes having been snipped at for identification, or not. I am so grateful for my grandfather's grave, and even for the elaborate coffin and embalming process that I found unnecessary at the time. Why not keep a body safe, if you can?

I gave my grandfather's eulogy. I didn't ask to or especially want to, but I was happy to. He did talk with me a lot, maybe because I'm comfortable with silences and could outlast his own comfort with silence. My cousin Gina offered her adaptation of our grandmother's spaghetti sauce, one of Grandpa's favorites, over on her blog, Gluten-Free Gourmand. And I've decided to post my eulogy here. Grandpa was a huge part of my process with this project, and I'll remember him every time I return to it. He made many valiant efforts to be an internet user; we even got my grandma an e-mail address at the peak of this activity (her handle was oldladykelley). He would surely get a kick out of knowing he lives online, alongside recipes for spaghetti sauce and ruminations about death and eating mud.

Nil by Mouth by Roger Ebert

This is an evocative, insightful piece about what it's like to use a stomach tube.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/01/nil_by_mouth.html

via thaths & mefi--thanks!

Join Starvation Seeds in Santa Fe! Call below.

The Multispecies Meal
@ the Society for Cultural Anthropology meetings in Santa Fe
May 7-8, 2010

Artists, anthropologists, and significant others came together to
break bread at The Multispecies Salon, a special off-site event at the
2008 meetings of AAA in San Francisco. We shared food in an exercise
of being and becoming with Donna Haraway’s companion species. A
bestiary of agencies, kinds of relatings, come together in companion
species. “Companion comes from the Latin cum panis, ‘with bread,’” she
writes. During our meal we ate sourdough bread while Jake Metcalf told
us about a microbial culture that crossed the Oregon Trail and then
propagated itself on the internet. Acorn mush was prepared by Linda
Noel, a Native American poet who told us that she always left some
acorns behind “for the deer.”

Artisanal cheeses from nearby Cowgirl Creamery featuring organic milk
and ambient as well as freeze-dried microbes from earth, air, and lab,
were provided by Heather Paxson. She told us about what she calls
“microbiopolitics”, the ways that human systems of ethics and
governance bear on the doings of microorganisms.

Other items on our table involved small-scale relationships of mutual
care as well as mutual violence. Geographer Jake Kosek had just
collected fresh honey from his own beehive and was sporting a swollen
hand from a fresh sting. While we sipped dandelion root tea,
performance artist Caitlin Berrigan asked that we give blood to a
dandelion plant, providing much needed nutrients. The violence was
asymmetrical to be sure—bee stings and finger pricks are not
equivalent to the large-scale robbery of a hive’s resources, or the
uprooting of a plant. Still, this minor violence to human bodies was a
reminder that the entangled relations among companion species are
often fraught.

Eating a meal in an art gallery turned mundane routine into an
opportunity for rumination and reflection. In trying to swallow the
products of multispecies labor relations and nested ecological
becomings, more than one gallery goer experienced indigestion. The
fermented smell of sourdough yeast lingered on the palate, mixing with
the bitter taste of dandelion tea and acorn mush.

We will host another multispecies meal at the 2010 meetings of the
Society for Cultural Anthropology in Santa Fe. This will be a poster
session, of sorts, where people can informally talk about their work
and break bread together. People who are already participating in
formal paper presentations are welcome to submit their edible
organisms for consideration. Entrants should be prepared to bring
enough food to share with audience members.

To be included in the session proposal, entrants should simply submit
a title for their project by Monday, January 11th, 2010 at noon EST.
Address all entries and queries to S. Eben Kirksey
(skirksey@pitt.edu). Late entrants will be considered up until the
SCA meetings in May.

More information about the Multispecies Salon:
http://www.skyhighway.com/~multispecies/

RPS photos

http://www.flickr.com/photos/22485412@N05/sets/72157621674102871/

Photos of Starvation Seeds at RPS.

Video coming someday! next month?

Closing Reception @ RPS tomorrow

If you are in the mood for a much smaller, more relaxed closing event, please come to our closing reception tomorrow evening, 7-9 pm, RPS (address below). Some of us will most likely be there before 7. First Friday had lots of pluses, including FIRE and lots of galleries open to look at. This event will also have pluses, like the debut of Rupa's newest sound sculpture, and lots more to nosh. & drink! Also, I'll be doing a tasting, so prepare yourself for liquid tamales and mud cookies.

I just spent some time yesterday shooting video and stills of the show. Video will take me a while to post but stills should be up today or tomorrow.

art business has pictures of our show!

Check out the whole article here, and here is a picture of folks looking at my part of the show (on the wall behind the people is Nick Lally's photo series & date visualization mural).

photo: Alan Bamberger

Cookbook!

The cookbook is for sale! At RPS, it costs $15. That is the only place I am selling it until the show is over, and then I might sell more via etsy. I printed a bunch, so I want to sell those before using Lulu's print on demand option.

mice heart soil; RPS closing reception

today on boing boing, Mark Frauenfelder links to a CDC paper on geophagy I have found useful in my research, as well as a new paper connecting the incorporation of soil with happiness, at least in lab mice.

Interesting interspecies possibilities here!

In other news, First Friday at RPS was fantastic, hundreds of people, but we hope folks we actually know will be able to come back on Friday the 24th (next Friday?!?) for our closing reception. In the works are: a tasting of Starvation Seeds recipes, singing and dancing, and the debut of Rupa's sound installation. Please come! The event has a facebook page if that helps in any way.

recipe box! at last!

I finally got a recipe box and I adore it. I can't believe it took me so long to figure out that I could just buy one of those plastic index card containers from Staples. I kept looking at cooking stores/cooking sections and coming up blank, but now I have this great box, with some helpful labels, and, YAY!

Pictures once the RPS show is completely installed.

RPS show

I've been installing at RPS yesterday and today. It's going pretty well!

We have a press release for the show with more details.

Cookbook will be for sale, starting next week.

Opening reception: Oakland's First Friday is July 3, starting at 6 pm.

Closing reception: July 24, 7 pm. The closing reception will feature a Starvation Seeds tasting.