Food, food culture, food as culture and the cultures that grow our food

Kids loved us,
loved our food

July 8, 2008

Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking - Chef Paul at the Kwakoe Festival in Amsterdam Zuidoost!, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
Chef Paul says ‘Eat your pumpkin RotiRol’

Lucky Mi, purveyor of in-situ snacks, enjoyed its new-kid-on-the-block status and dished up some Surinamese fusion food in our spanking new snack laboratory at the Zuidoost Kwakoe Festival this weekend. We dodged tropical size raindrops, gave the lab its first ever test-run, and were ultimately quite popular amongst the under-sevens.

Child-culinary advisors developing the Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking's child's menu called the Lucky PiKind, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
Raoul and Paul wait for the rain to subside while the gameboyz get physical discussing the children’s menu.

Not wanting to waste one drop of local expertise, we put the gaggle of charming chilluns straight to work advising us on our Kinder Menu for next week. It will be called the Lucky PiKind and will likely consist of a tiny pom croquette, a teensie pakora-tje, & a banana beignet called bakabanaantje. Pikin means small or pequeño in Surinamese. The kids think the menu should cost € 1. We don’t agree.

Jeevan the Lucky Mi mouth model, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
Lucky mouth model Jeevan tucks into a pumpkin Hofwijkse Roti Rol, his first taste of pumpkin ever.

Lucky PiKinderen working hard at playing with balloons, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org
and Daniele moderates the discussion of the child’s menu

The Lucky Mi Fortune Cooking Snacklab will be at the Kwakoe Festival each weekend until the 10th of August. The Kwakoe Festival is a perfect family activity where happily playing children will amuse themselves into the wee hours of the night whilst adults enjoy adult things.

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Butternut Brutalism

July 1, 2008

Planting butternut squash in brutalist raised beds at 't Reservaat, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org

Upon returning to the new kitchen garden the next day, I felt that the parcel along the fence just wasn’t speaking to me and I traded her in for the plot next door. Giddy with the even newer digs, I noticed what I had failed to see the day before, namely, useful in-situ building materials, in the form of cement curbing at the entrance to the drive. Imagining them to be perfect for fashioning raised beds, I started moving the blocks to the newer, sunnier allotment with the intention of quickly lego-ing some brutalism for my utopian permaculture kitchen garden.

Building brutalist raised beds at 't Reservaat, Young Designers & Industry, Amsterdam Noord, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org

Turns out these blocks of béton brut were filled with a gooey, dark-matter centre and weighed in just a few grams shy of 75 kilos a piece. I was able to teeter-walk 18 of the gravity absorption buzz-killers over to the parcel, trying to experience the exercise as a meditation. I failed miserably in this endeavour. The entire raison d’être of raised beds is that they’re supposedly physically easier to deal with, but at this stage of the design and realisation, the pain-in-the-ass factor was dipping deeply into the negative. It was time to suck up and summon up some friendly muscle for the positioning of the blocks.

Planting butternut squash in brutalist raised beds at 't Reservaat, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org

It took Oumar and me all of the next day to raise the beds, but the job was so absorbing and transformative that we neglected to go to two art & design exam shows and two separate adult birthday parties! Landscaping and gardening are easily as addictive as crack, watching television and urban planning. Just let’s do another block.

Planted and watered brutalist raised beds at 't Reservaat, Young Designers & Industry, Amsterdam Noord, Debra Solomon, culiblog.org

debra at 13:19 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us

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