Tag: food

Korean Kimchi

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Kimchi (Hangul: 김치; Korean pronunciation: [kimtɕʰi]; English pronunciation: /ˈkɪmtʃi/), also spelled kimchee or gimchi, is a traditional fermentedKorean side dish made of vegetables with a variety of seasonings. It is often described as spicy and sour. In traditional preparation, kimchi is often allowed to ferment underground in jars for months. There are hundreds of varieties of kimchi made from napa cabbage, radish, scallion, or cucumber as a main ingredient.

I had never had kimchi until I got to high school where a very large percentage of the student body was made up of Koreans.  To help make these international students feel more at home, every meal served up at school had the option of rice from the cafeteria line and kimchi from the salad bar.  This is where I first tried the delicious pickled “condiment”:

JONAH KESSEL

I’m a big fan of any kind of Asian food (although I tend to favor Japanese) and kimchi is somewhat of a staple in my kitchen.  Now after watching this film, I’m very curious to know if I have Chinese or Korean kimchi sitting in my fridge at home.  I’m pretty sure it’s Korean, but now I’m not sure…

I love the journalistic style of this film, it is after all, how I started out working in film.  All the various piles of ingredients add such a beautiful array of color and watching the women work just makes me want to run home and enjoy a bowl of rice and kimchi.  Perhaps that will be my dinner tonight…

Grilling everything in site

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With Summer officially here – and having been here for a while, it seems that grilling every food in site seems to be the thing to do.  For one thing, it keeps the heat out of the kitchen and it means more time outside and soaking up every last summer ray possible.

To get us all into the mood for this weekend, the Grilling Everything Burger:

Claire Thomas

Happy Weekend!

Goodwill :: Feed the World

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If you live in the U.S. or are an American expatriate, or just happen to like celebrating  the American holiday Thanksgiving, you are probably recovering from your turkey coma and now gearing up for the December holidays.  Then there are those of you who have been up since all night to sit in line for all the Black Friday sales.  All I can say is that: You. Are. Brave.

Me?  Well I’m recovering from making dinner for 15 people and will probably catch a movie or some other activity with the family members who are still in town.  To put it lightly, I’m rather exhausted.  I am feeling grateful for all that has happened this year- the good and the bad and not just because this is the time of year when we are supposed to remember to

thanksgiving14But mostly because it really has been a good year, even with the lulls in my work schedule.  Now it seems like I’m going to end the year with plenty to do and I’m trying to psych myself up for it.  December, here I come!

One last thought on this month’s theme of “goodwill”: It’s so easy to forget about the less fortunate at this time of year.  We get caught up in the hubbub of buying gifts and magnificent feasts – all with the people we love, or don’t love in some cases.  But we don’t always remember the people in the rest of the world that are stuck in terrible circumstances and that have no way out of it unless we help them from wherever we are.

The New York Times – Video

So thank you to people like Bob and other celebrities who yield their fame for the greater good and not just to make themselves wealthier.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone – wherever you are, and may we always be grateful for what we have.

Goodwill :: No Scraps Left Behind

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As the many food centered holidays creep nearer, I find myself thinking about food – again.   It seems to be on my mind a lot this year but then again we all obsess about food in some way.

I wouldn’t necessarily consider this video a work of art – what I mean is that I don’t find anything extraordinary about the film itself.  However, I love the concept that this company has come up with and it makes me wonder why more people haven’t started doing something as fantastic with our waste food as Rubies in the Rubble:

Rubies in the Rubble

Funny enough, I have never seen these products at markets or in gourmet grocery stores in England – I probably haven’t been looking hard enough and it’s been ages since I was last at Borough Market.  I will definitely look for them next time in the country later this year.  We throw away an incredible amount of food each year and it’s so nice to see that someone is doing something useful with this excess of food.

Something by me… & ChefSteps

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Finally, I get to share something that I had a hand in this year.

One of my film adventures this year included working with a company called ChefSteps, a high-tech cooking company committed to changing the way people cook.  This was probably the most fun that I’ve ever had on a film shoot and probably the most delicious too.  BBQ with all the fixin’s yum! Oh, and I happen to love all the people that I got to work with.

So without further ado, I present Wall of Fire : A ChefSteps Story

Intrigued? Go here for the full blog post on the ChefSteps website and while you’re there, check out some of their other amazing recipes.  Believe me.  You’ll be glad you did!

For the Foodie :: Feed Supper

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I realize that I’m a little late to talk about this campaign as it has already started, but I thought it was a good thing to at least mention it.

It seems that there a whole slew of cause awareness events going on at the moment.  We seem to be easing off of the ice bucket challenge and are moving on to other challenges – probably a good thing now that the weather is finally cooling off.  For instance, there’s the SNAP Challenge where you eat off a tiny budget of $3.40 a day to understand how millions of others live everyday.  There are the usual walks and runs and other physical exertions that we seen to do annually and then there’s the FEED Supper campaign:

Jenner Brown

I love the idea of this campaign because it brings people together to enjoy each other’s company and nourish their bodies.  I feel like I’m always on the run right now and rarely have the time to sit down with people that I love to do the most basic thing of feeding myself.  When I was still living at home, we ate as a family every night (as long as we were all in town) and it was a time for us to all catch up on the days events.  Food, at the moment, is something consumed on the move and I long for the ‘old days’ of sitting down with my family to eat together each night.

This campaign encourages bringing back that old family tradition while helping a good cause.  Food desert is a relatively new term, but it’s an old problem and it’s good that we are finally addressing it for what it is an trying to bring and end to this all too common issue.

For the Foodie :: Coffee, Coffee, Coffee

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What is a day without caffeine?  I know very few people who can make it through 24 hours without with the addictive substance and what better way to get that shot of energy than from coffee?  I don’t mean any cup of coffee, I mean a tried and true, carefully analyzed cup of coffee to give you that jolt that so many of us feel we need at various times of the day:

Echoic : Music and Sound Design

Even though I don’t drink the stuff, I find this video fascinating.  It’s the one shot method that I find so interesting as its practically a lost art – it’s just too easy to shoot everything separately and edit it together in post-production.  What I want to know is how long that table had to have been to make this all possible.  By using this method the company made what could have been a fairly dry story into something dynamic and attention grabbing.

It gives me a few ideas for future projects… Now to find some caffeine of my own.  It’s Friday and boy am I looking forward to the weekend!

For the Foodie :: The Carrot

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Growing your own garden from a seed is always seems like a miracle to me.  I’m always in awe of how nature can create something so amazing and complex with a seed, some soil and regular sprinklings of water.  It’s even more miraculous when the thing growing is more than a common weed- those things don’t seem to have any problem growing and taking over huge spans of land.

This summer I helped my friends clear out part of their yard and re-landscape parts of it, including a patch of weeds that we planted with wildflower seeds.  Now I know that wildflowers are just another variety of weed, but at least they flower and look a bit more exciting than the common grass.

After spending six hours pulling grass, roots and all, from an 8 by 8 patch of ground, I sprinkled the area with wildflower seeds.  The watering was probably the best part after working in the sun for that long.  After that, all I could do was wait.  Wait for the seeds to start sprouting and hope that I didn’t leave too many grass roots in the ground for them to overtake the patch again.  When I returned about a week later, I found that I had several sprouts of various shapes pushing their way up through the soil and I was beyond thrilled that they had taken root.  I felt like a genius for making it happen when all I really did was mix seeds into the damp ground.  Big whoop.  But I still felt amazing.  I can only guess how this little boy felt when his carrot was served for dinner:

Steve Annis

 

I think this advertisement is extremely clever because it gives emotional connection to all ages- the young gardner, the over looking father, the exasperated mother (when she can’t get her son to come in out of the rain) and the onlooking sister.  We’ve all had some sort of project that provide that range of emotion and it brings back those childhood memories of when something that now seems so small and insignificant, seemed so overpoweringly important.

There’s something about growing your own food that brings great satisfaction to people of every age.  I can see how farmers must feel when they bring in their harvest and know that their hard work is going to feed people far and wide.

For the Foodie :: BBQ Bible

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As the days grow shorter we lose our precious after hours time out in the sunshine and with that, our ability to barbecue without a trusty assistant holding a flashlight.  For those with the right set up, with a nice well ventilated covered area with outdoor lighting to prolong the outdoor grilling season, there are couple months ahead before it will be too cold for parts of the Northern Hemisphere to cook their food outside.

Whether we are heading slowly towards winter or entering the summer season, this video can only make you want to start warming the coals:

Antfood

 

Books have many wonderful features but I believe this one beats them all.  It’s probably the most interactive book that I’ve seen and it doesn’t even sing, light up or have moving images.  It literally creates an event to remember!

The filmmaking is very nice, but I don’t know if there is anything extraordinary about it.  I am going to take a moment to say that I really like the graphics and that the lighting is beautiful.  Food is deceptively harder to light when photographing than one would think.  What really steals the show is the book and trying to figure out as a viewer how the book is going to provide an essential barbecue tool with the next turn of the page.

This video just proves that books can not only share ideas, but be interactive as well.  Who knew that food could interact so well with a volume of pages.

It’s that time of year again….

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It’s that time of year again.  It’s time for kids to head back to school, the weather is cooling off and it’s time to bring in the food harvest.  How did that happen?  I’m not sure where this summer has gone, but it’s practically gone.  Yikes!

A year ago, I went with a food theme for the month of September, and once again, I’m returning to that theme- I suppose my last post should have been a heads up.  I mean, who can resist food?  It’s beautiful, something that we all need to survive and it’s something that everyone enjoys on some level.  For me, it’s one of my favorite ways to explore new culture. Food speaks volumes about a culture. It’s also a way that I like to unwind after a long day in front of my computer because it uses all of my senses and challenges my creative muscles that I don’t always get to exercise depending on what part of a project I’m working on.

Now several months ago I mentioned that I had been working with a company called ChefSteps.  I loved working with them because not only are the people amazing, but they combine my two passions- film and food:

chefsteps

This isn’t the piece that I worked on while working there, but I hope that I will be able to share that with you soon.

Food is actually how I got into reading blogs in the first place.  I was looking for a cupcake recipe for my friend’s birthday and came across Hummingbird on High.  It was a complete fluke that I found it and now I look forward to Michelle’s posts each week, not to mention updates on several other blogs.

If you have any interest in food blogs, I would recommend the following:

  • Hummingbird on High:  I always find great dessert ideas here.
  • Food52: I use this as an online reference for basic recipes that I would like to find original twists on and just good ole’ trusty favorites that I don’t already have in my collection.
  • Two Red Bowls: I love this blog for the original twists on recipes.
  • The First Mess: I love the photography on this blog- even if I’m not vegan.
  • Adventures in Cooking: I can always find recipes that I would never have thought of trying myself.

So now that I’ve shared my fairly new love for food blogs, I’m signing off for today.  Stay tuned for a slew of food related films.