This short documentary by Patrick Johnson focuses on a collective of young dudes who go by the name Orchitecture (orchard + architecture). They brought a thousand Pink Lady apples from Patagonia to Bumpkin Island in Boston Harbor. While on the island, their diet solely consisted of apples, and they made various three-dimensional structures centered around the Pink Ladies. The whole thing feels a little Lord-of-the-Flies-meets-design-school, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. Plus it’s beautifully filmed, but bonus points if you actually understand the last shot.
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Your Lunch Looks Like a Winner
The Let’s Do Lunch photo contest is on. There was a time when photographing food in a restaurant was something people debated. Whether it was rude, whether staff would assume the photographer was a blogger or reviewer, whether it was anti-social behavior sure to drive civilization into the ground.
As it turns out, people like to document what they’re eating. And photographing the plate in front of you has almost become a standard step between ordering and eating. Do the right thing with those photos: win with them, and win big. The Let’s Do Lunch photo contest will outfit one winner with a fantastic suite of prizes, including a Nikon D5000 Digital SLR camera. And beyond the first prize, other winners will receive things like printers and software.
Yes, there is an entry fee. But 20 percent of it goes to food banks, and a $2 taco or a $50 steak are equally worthy. CHOW is helping judge the contest, and we want to see delicious things. So shoot, shoot, and win.
London’s Fruity Skyline
The Telegraph has put together a lovely video detailing the depiction of London’s skyline using produce, which, as it turns out, is an eerily expressive medium. See also: the Daily Mail’s story last year on recreating the London skyline using tubes of Smarties. Why this is becoming a slowly building mini-fad is not entirely clear.
New Finds: Hotlips Fruit Sodas
We’ve blogged in the past about the delicious blackberry soda from Hotlips Pizza in Portland, Oregon. It’s got real pulp in it, and you feel like you’re actually drinking something made from fruit, not chemicals. Now, that drink and a bevvy of other Hotlips flavors, including apple, pear, raspberry, and boysenberry, are spreading into more locations. Besides Oregon, you can now buy the sodas online for the first time, including in a mixed variety pack. We’re hoping this is a sign that Hotlips will go nationwide soon, so we can pick it up at gas stations and janky corner stores everywhere. That’d sure be nice.
New Finds: Wisconsin Cheese Guide
Yes, cheese from Wisconsin really is that good. So I was excited to read the new book The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin by CHOW.com’s own Supertaster columnist, Jim Norton, and his wife, photographer Becca Dilley.
The layout is really fun if you have an interest in the personalities behind the products: Each gorgeous picture of a particular cheese, like, say, the Cinnamon-rubbed butter jack from Bass Lake Cheese Factor, is paired with a mini-profile of the cheesemaker. In the case of the butter Jack, for instance, we learn that Bass Lake’s Scott Erickson looks really artsy, and once made gelatinous lutefisk (a Norwegian holiday dish of lye-cured codfish) for a living. It’s interesting to know just who goes into the old-fashioned business of making small-batch cheeses and how each cheesemaker got there, because who hasn’t fantasized about joining them?
New Finds: Pomegranate Tootsie Pops
The ultimate sign that pomegranate has reached critical mass: There is now a pomegranate Tootsie Pop. Introduced in 2008, pomegranate is one of a bunch of new flavors launched in recent years: watermelon, blue raspberry (yuck), and banana (double yuck). But the pomegranate flavor is wonderful, reminiscent of classic cherry but more fruity and puckery. It actually tastes like pomegranate, which is more than I can say for the center, which tastes less like chocolate than choco-scented crayon.
Tootsie would love for consumers to weigh in on the new flavors and suggest others. Peppermint, maybe? Oh, and by the way, according to the Tootsie Roll FAQ, the company has received tens of thousands of letters from children claiming to know how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop. Estimates generally run in the 600–800 licks range, but your own personal best “depends on a variety of factors such as the size of your mouth, the amount of saliva, etc.”
Walmart Presents: Feasting on the Cheap
Sharp news commentary blog the Awl breaks down Walmart’s $20 Thanksgiving feast, which actually includes a disturbingly long list of edible features for a disturbingly low price. Prices vary a bit from state to state, but in general your Jackson gets you:
• One 12-pound Grade A turkey
• Three 11- to 15.5-ounce cans Green Giant vegetables
• Two 14-ounce cans Ocean Spray cranberry sauce
• Three 6-ounce boxes of Stove Top stuffing
• One 5-pound bag of red potatoes
• One 12-count package of Sara Lee dinner rolls
• One 22-ounce pumpkin roll cake
This is both inspiring and terrifying.
Waiter, Get Your Hands Off Me!
Bruce Buschel is opening a restaurant. And he has some ideas about what he’d like his staff to do and not do. So many ideas, in fact, that he was able to supply the New York Times with a list of “100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do.” Buschel is on the ball; witness some of the picks of his list:
“8. Do not interrupt a conversation. For any reason. Especially not to recite specials. Wait for the right moment.”
“20. Never refuse to substitute one vegetable for another.”
“32. Never touch a customer. No excuses. Do not do it. Do not brush them, move them, wipe them or dust them.”
Buschel was on NPR a few days later, and he had more to say. Here he is on servers touching customers:
“I think it’s not a polite thing to do. I think a lot of people can take it the wrong way. The study that’s being quoted doesn’t mention genders. I’m sure a lot of women think that if they touch a customer on the shoulder, their tip goes up. It may or may not be true. I just think that, again, you’re invading somebody’s space. I know recently, I was standing in a restaurant waiting at the bar and somebody came over from behind and actually physically moved me, grabbed my two shoulders and moved me. And I turned around and he said, the waiter has to get past. So there are all degrees of touching. And some people may get excited and some people may be offended. So I think the best thing is just to not do it.”
Yeah, keep your paws off me!
