How stuff is made, even the food kind of stuff
November 5, 2007
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Techno artist and design engineer Natalie Jeremijenko, in Amsterdam last Friday presenting at the STIFO/Sandberg workshop showed us a wiki site where her NYU students were sharing information about how common products are made. Among the foodstuffs, shrimp, fortune cookies and eau de vie. For extra fun, check out what’s under the Denial of Access button.
debra at 1:52 | Comments (0) | post to del.icio.us
A cellar for your salts
November 1, 2007
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Three in a set in shades of greys,
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For different salts strewn different ways,
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And well aware of shadow play.
Earlier this month at the Design Academy Eindhoven Graduation Show, Liora Rosin showed-off stunning and tactilicious salt cellars in porcelain. No wonder she graduated cum laude.
debra at 0:44 | Comments (3) | post to del.icio.us
Kouba Libre
Supermarket Babylon
October 26, 2007
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Homemade ice kouba in a sponsored freezer
In the grain section there are more than 20 sorts of rice and then there’s a formidable bulgur department. How often does one get to write that, formidable bulgur department, but there is one. Never mind the lack of competition, Babylon is hands down the best Iraqi supermarket in Rotterdam.
In the non-food bits there’s more or less anything you’d want to outfit a home hammam and an extensive henna assortiment for hair, hands and nails. And for the guys there’s every imaginable spare part for a water pipe and an entire shelf filled with myrrh.
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Bags and sacks of cracked wheat dumplings
Of course I’m here for the pickles of the house, with the secret ingredient that isn’t sumac. Totally delicious and made with love. And there’s an entire freezer devoted to homemade dumplings, where rice dukes it out with bulgur. Formidable bulgur.
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The secret ingredient isn’t sumac
In Hashim’s shop stocked with stuff from the Middle East, Central Asia and several countries to the right of the Stans, Supermarket Babylon is tiny but you can lose yourself for hours. I love that this place has been put together in a geo-politically poetic way and that buttinsky fellow customers spout home-sick recipes when you wonder aloud how to spell kouba, (the dumplings made of bulgur or rice).
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debra at 0:59 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
