Category archive for: Fasting
Back homeSlim Pickins
restaurant review
Ground-elder ravioli & goutweed pesto with locally foraged kale flower, spinach and mint Within hours of the posting Slim Pickins was already fully booked. Plagued at its very inception with limited seating, the urban kitchen garden restaurant located on the edge of a raised bed was forced to d... Read more
Posted on May 5, 2009 14:03
Slim Pickins,
the occasional garden restaurant
Slim Pickins garden staff help with the weeding Studio Culiblog is proud to announce the opening this Sunday of it's new minimalist concept restaurant in Amsterdam Noord. Slim Pickins is an outdoor micro-eatery situated on the edge of a raised bed, in an urban kitchen garden, serving up the occ... Read more
Posted on April 21, 2009 23:49
A happy new year
for the fruit trees
Woodcut for the Jewish arbor day Tu b'Shvat, from the Minhogimbukh Amsterdam 1722, recently adapted by Scott-Martin Kosofsky, image used entirely without permission. There's nothing like a religious calendar sporting multiple 'new years' to remind us that we were once deeply connected to our fo... Read more
Posted on February 10, 2009 15:58
Water kefir is like
Fresca for hippies
Water kefir brewing in the weak, mid-winter sun. Maybe it started because all this New Austerity had me peaked to produce bubbles outta thin air. Maybe it's because I just kick on growing stuff, even if that stuff is only a colony of yeast and bacteria. As a whole foods enthusiast and professio... Read more
Posted on January 27, 2009 15:58
Survival through dehydration
Looks like rat tails and bones. Guess I'm just getting visually prepared for the future! Well if the whole world goes to pot (and not in the good way) at least I will have dehydrated exactly 2 days worth of essential parsley root. And if I keep at it, soon I'll have saved enough celeriac chips ... Read more
Posted on November 4, 2008 20:39
Cinnamon & cardamom meringues
kosher for Pesach
I heart pareve desserts. One of this year's Pesach innovations was a sephardic-style seder dinner which more or less cancelled out last year's innovation, the Pesach Ultra-lite. Whatevs, now that we've made these recipes our own, we can teach ourselves to make light of them. It's about liberati... Read more
Posted on April 22, 2008 14:52
One little kid
Chad Gadya
Happy Pesach! Are you 6 kilos? Although we had sworn to recreate Pesach Ultra-Lite, Superior Powers and my own stubborn determination to not sit on the floor like my ancestors in the desert, dictated that we drop everything and become a trans-regional trucking company. We had a truck all right,... Read more
Posted on April 19, 2008 11:12
The Knödelist
Son of a bakerman, keeping up the family tradition I am blessed with a goodly many friends who, feeling my temporary loss of Heim, have been inviting me over to dinner nearly every night of the week. Dear Friends, please pace yourselves but keep up the good work and continue to rock the kitchen... Read more
Posted on September 1, 2007 13:28
Birthday Cake ultra-lite
When you've inhaled enough buttercream for one life... So would your life be any less fab if you never ate birthday cake again? What is worth more, satisfying 1000 desires or learning to control just one? Birthday boy John B. & buddy Betty D. & basking cake In lieu of the same 'ol same... Read more
Posted on August 9, 2007 15:15
Where Nina Planck and I agree to disagree about vegans
Image barely related to entry: Tarama and full-fat kwark on wholewheat bread strewn with chive flowers The following is the correspondence between Nina Planck and I on whether or not veganism is natural for humans. I wrote Nina in regard to her newsletter and Nina's article in the NYTimes Li... Read more
Posted on June 17, 2007 9:35
Glutinous Maximus,
Grow yer own dang protein!
It may be beige, but it sure is some good eatin'... There are days when in one go, we can be inspired enough to shrug off one hella lotta ballast of preconceived notion. Last night was one of those days, when in an ad hoc workshop at the cooking studio of Marlein and Inez, Tomoko taught us to e... Read more
Posted on June 2, 2007 13:12
A yogic diet is not for me
My Aunties preparing an oddly sattvic picnic for our family in Paris' Jardin de Luxembourg It's slightly troubling to learn that my ancestral diet and a yogic or sattvic diet have little in common. I'm a lover of leafy greens, an initator of a sprout restaurant and I've been known to be inordin... Read more
Posted on May 18, 2007 19:17
Passover ultra-lite,
ultra-late,
ultra authentic
Our first matza ball ever. Don't believe the hype. More than half of us had to be at Schiphol Airport the next morning on planes boarding well before 7. We should've blown the whole thing off. I mean, isn't Pesach synonymous with multi-day preparation? To make matters worse, an unfortuitous div... Read more
Posted on April 14, 2007 13:06
So, uh,
what are you doing?
M: mostly alcohol, occasionally a teensy bit of coke. T: weed, coffee and cigarettes, definitely no coke, recently recovered from a Tony's Chocolonely addiction but now I'm into the Euroshopper alternative. It tastes just like slave-free. P: I don't normally do chocolate, but I went throug... Read more
Posted on March 19, 2007 20:56
Liquid chauvinism,
drinking with Muslims
Buzzkill's throwin' a wrench in my terroir-ism. From time to time a girlfriend coming over to dinner will burst in the door, plop down her big 'ol handbag and announce with a performative voice loud enough for all to hear, 'Oh, and I've stopped drinking!' Pretty much always this means that ... Read more
Posted on January 22, 2007 14:26
Got confusion about the nature of natural food?
This block print from Masanobu Fukuoka's 'One Straw Revolution' is used entirely without permission. This is what I'm re-reading right now and I'd like to share it. Here is a short quote from Masanobu Fukuoka's One Straw Revolution. It should definitely be on the reading list for anyone interes... Read more
Posted on October 1, 2006 3:33
Come to your senses, and fast
The Ramadan Festival logo Loving the lunar calendar convergence this year. Since Friday, I have celebrated the beginning of no less than 3 religious holidays, 2 of which are devoted to forms of fasting. It was a veritable autumnal fasting kickoff weekend as the new moon signaled the start of th... Read more
Posted on September 24, 2006 23:09
Master cleanser, for juice fasters and thirsty people
If you just think of this as lemonade, you might actually drink it. Master cleanser is the unfortunate name for a cayenne-spiked ginger lemonade, sweetened with maple syrup and sprinkled with sea salt. When you fast or do sports or simply exist in warm weather, it's wise to drink liquids that don'... Read more
Posted on June 14, 2006 16:49
Juice fasting recipes, start with forgotten vegetables and then forget them again
I'm the kind of gal that likes to pad her New Year's resolutions with seemingly achievable ambitions like, 'Improve handwriting' and 'Find ways to enjoy ancient root vegetables', but 5 months into the year, I haven't exactly achieved success in integrating parsnips and burdock into my winter diet ... Read more
Posted on June 13, 2006 11:08
Here as the Centre of the World, in terms of food
Here as the Centre of the World banquet with local food from Twente and Overijssel. Guests getting giggly on the bubbly. A week and a half ago, my colleagues and I at the Dutch Art Institute (DAI), were in the throes of an international symposium on 'all things periferal' for artists and mediat... Read more
Posted on June 3, 2006 14:35
If you like fresh leafy greens and pork, you’re going to love kruudmoes
First impression: I may have taken an overly Californian approach to making kruudmoes this time, but although I should probably increase the gooeyness to make it just the way the natives do, kruudmoes is just crazy delicious. If you're like me and: - love to chomp away on all sorts of lea... Read more
Posted on May 14, 2006 22:31
Dead nettle
crude mousse for dinner
Kruudmoes leafy green selection from 9 o'clock: white deadnettle (dovenetel), kohlrabi leaves, spring onions, curly leaf parsley, chicory and ground elder (zevenblad). Ten days before the Here as the Centre of the World dinner and I'm busy testing traditional recipes from Overijssel for the mai... Read more
Posted on 19:29
The Hunger Artist
Here's one for the archives: Google (images) 'Hunger Artist' Happy Thanksgiving, by the way. (more...) Read more
Posted on November 24, 2005 8:04
Beets in hibiscus salt crust
Preheat oven to 220°c/475°F. Mix in just enough water with the salt to make sandcastle-style sand. Add dried hibiscus flowers to the mixture in a few swift turns of the fork. On a baking sheet covered wtih baker's parchment, pack the beats in the salt. Bake for 20 minutes. Crack open and serve t... Read more
Posted on November 22, 2005 19:10
Eat while you can, in a few minutes it will be Yom Kippur, the chaotic humanistic Day of Atonement
And on Yom Kippur, you fast by eating and drinking absolutely *bubkis. In my search for all things concerning fasting, I came upon this article by the Chabad Folks, titled Laws and Lore: Eating Before Yom Kippur. Apparently, It is a **mitzvah to eat and drink heartily on Erev Yom Kippur... ... Read more
Posted on October 12, 2005 14:11
Ramadan
The Dutch text on this poster inivtes non-muslims to join in a post-sunset dinner with their muslim neighbours during the month of Ramadan. Someone was absolutely using their noggin and Amsterdam is now host to this wonderful initiative called the Ramadan Festival. Muslim families have generously ... Read more
Posted on October 11, 2005 20:20
Recipes without words
Image: olive oil, green tea powder, ume boshi vinegar, © Debra Solomon 2004 The images above and below are from a cookbook of mine in-the-making titled Recipes without words. Or rather, with very few words. More later. I’m about to do a presentation about culiblog in the ‘s Hertogenbosch ... Read more
Posted on June 5, 2005 15:19
Restaurant for anorexics
Sehnsucht, (means longing in German) is the name of a Berlin restaurant for anorexics. Owner Katja Eichbaum, formely anorexic, started this project with private funding (only her father would lend her money) as a therapy for her own condition. The chef is anorexic as are several members of staff.... Read more
Posted on May 5, 2005 8:38
Hors d’oeuvre of affliction
Some years ago a friend of mine waxing rabbinic told me that during Pesach week, whilst eating charoset one must never say, 'Mmmmm, I love charoset!", because charoset, a delicious mixture of apples, honey, and/or nuts, dates figs, symbolises the mortar used by slaves to build the buildings of t... Read more
Posted on April 27, 2005 9:42
For the Luv of Gawd, Whip Me!
Patrick Faas fastens his kipa I guess I should have known that something like this would happen when Reb Noam, the leader of our pesach seder appeared sporting a self-styled kipa with the words, 'Next year in Miami' written on it. But even my inner-fagele couldn't have predicted that during thi... Read more
Posted on April 25, 2005 10:49
Passover cleaning
In December 2004, a Spanish Talmudic scholar named Sinterklaas was cited translating the Torah, 'Passover is the holiday when it behooves us to clean the barnacles out of our grooves'. If you don't have anything in the fridge, it's easier to clean it. Smetvrees, the fear of contamina... Read more
Posted on April 22, 2005 10:20
Delhi Water Bar
A water bar on a sidestreet off Janpath in Delhi. Twenty metres down the street is a pump and a well. This water bar is actually a service on offer to draw customers into a shop selling Kashmiri handicrafts and into an alley with other small shops hidden from the street. I love this tented pavilli... Read more
Posted on April 2, 2005 23:51
Juicing, but not frothing, and you?
So far this juice fast has yielded quite a number of discoveries, the usefullness of oat milk being one of them. In my opinion grain and nut milks qualify for a juice fast because they are simply the wrung out water in which grain or nut meal has been soaking. These 'milks' don't give the gut flor... Read more
Posted on January 6, 2005 22:46
Milk tasting, and you?
As I said, not eating solid foods affords you a chance to try new things. Tonight we did a little experimental milk tasting. Because we're on a juice fast and generally behaving as self-righteously as we can we decided to bypass the locally produced cow, sheep and goat varieties and test the local... Read more
Posted on January 5, 2005 22:19
Juice fasting, and you?
It may look like a *beer but it's just fresh-squeezed pineapple juice. We're fasting, remember? After the holiday gorging, after the guests have gone, we decided that it was high time to do a little juice fast, just a short 3-day holiday gift to our gut flora for putting up with the over-indulgen... Read more
Posted on 11:51
Poppyseed Mustard
It tastes just like it looks, dark and musty. Even though I mixed this batch with a roasted garlic clove I still think it would taste great with chocolate! Poppyseed 'mustard' makes me long for strudel and as soon as I am done with this juice fast I'll develop a savoury strudel with poppy seeds a... Read more
Posted on October 26, 2004 22:46
Autumnal fasting has begun
Today I started the Autumnal Fast. I'll be recording my menus and recipes (!) here. If you always thought fasting was a torture read here to see that the opposite is the case. SO far it is the first day and I'm not interested in juicing, very interested in cooking - so I made some cashew cheese an... Read more
Posted on 21:58
Autumnal Juice Fast Experiments
On top, a mixture of opal basil, spearmint, and apple juices. On the bottom, beet and red pepper juices. I'm getting ready for a culinary juice fast in three weeks time: apple + mint = great apple + opal basil = great apple + beet = great apple alone = great apple + red pepper = yuck, (hollow, wo... Read more
Posted on September 28, 2004 10:41
A Single Grain of Rice
Yi Li Mi = A Single Grain of Rice in mandarin neon. A Single Grain of Rice is a project for a culinarily oriented fasting restaurant that I am initiating. Future entries in 2006 will explain this project in greater depth, but at least I've got the neon sign. technorati tags: fasting, China, neo... Read more
Posted on April 25, 2004 12:49
Juice fasting, Soup fasting
In preparation of my trip to PRChina I am fasting this week. Liquids only� primarily fruit and vegetable juices, but also broths and froths. It is exciting to present myself with the opportunity of creating new juice and soup recipes as well doing a survey on rice, soy, and barley 'milks'. I ha... Read more
Posted on March 20, 2004 22:32
