Dimly Lit Meals for One:
Merry Lukewarm Christmas
Ralph had spent his two weeks off over Christmas 2015 sitting in a lukewarm bath, drinking cream based cocktails, chain-eating cheese and crisp sandwiches…
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Ralph had spent his two weeks off over Christmas 2015 sitting in a lukewarm bath, drinking cream based cocktails, chain-eating cheese and crisp sandwiches…
For centuries, spices were extremely valuable items that drove global commerce and determined the fate of millions. Now they sit on our shelves, largely anonymous, for months or even years. How did spices fall so far?
Aquaculture started in good faith but it’s unintended development has led to arguably even worse consequences…
“It was food during the day and performance at night, I now have found a way to bring them together.”
We have lost 75% of our agricultural biodiversity worldwide since 1950. However, all is not lost, and some people are optimistic and enthusiastic about a better future. They are fighting extinction with seed banks. Heros.
It’s black. It’s hairy. Its slow. It’s an outcast. And if we don’t kill and eat it, it might disappear forever. It’s Georgia’s ancient Kakhetian pig.
Surreal: a historic windmill in East Berlin surrounded by prefabricated slab buildings of the GDR, that give one the mild impression of socialist ocean liners… We met the miller and talked history, politics and flour with him.
For a fresh view on shrimps. Or prawns. Or… what’s the real name again?
Why do we eat cows and cuddle horses? We went deep down into the horse-or-cow debate.
Shaken, not stirred. Nobody knows for sure why olives became the quintessential garnish for a martini.
The product is not an imitation of an animal product made from plants. It is meat. It’s just produced in a way we’re not used to.
The ladies from Steinecke seem to be from stone. But inside they are tender like a currant bun.
Your take on them will stem from political attitudes, personal experience, spiritual narratives and mythological, mycological and medical knowledge. Let’s tell their story. Again.
Morocco. Under pretext of wanting to learn how to make couscous comme il faut I searched for someone who would be willing to let me into their home and around their dining table.
FareShare’s mission is simple: to rescue food that would otherwise be thrown away for people who need it. However, the scale on which they do this makes them quite exceptional.
The meal is an active space of exchange that offers us a common language when we have none. It is where we are most human, and most similar.
It is in the nature of food that it begins to spoil at the moment it is harvested. This process of decay is both the beauty and the diffculty of our daily nutrition.
The Dutch processing almost transforms the cocoa into a shadow, a soft shaped colourful shadow inviting through its roasted delicious smell to snuggle into its surrounding.
Posting up recipes for vegan fudge and sharing pictures of pumpkin spice cupcakes used to a purely hobbyist pursuit particularly enjoyed by people with an abundance of spare time and cats. Times have changed.
Bananas are considered the most popular fruit in the world, with over 100 billion units eaten every year. Five billions of them are consumed in the UK, where one in three bananas sold carries the Fairtrade mark, according to the Fairtrade Association.
Full disclosure: mushrooms also have partnerships. They can be both sexual and asexual.
Without more research into the bees and their dance, the world of food production is going to be ‘retired’ soon.
Kaffee Bankrott is a very warm establishment. It is open all day long for the homeless and other guests. The food is highly affordable and the place is a crucial meeting point.
Since the early 2000s, New Zealand company Earthpac has been manufacturing plates made of potato starch, a leftover waste product from potato chip factories
You swore it was an accident. That the letters arranged themselves, that they had just appeared that way, that you had no idea what you were spelling out.
When you’re alone, the refrigerator can get extremely loud. This story is about what longing and hunger have in common.
Curiously dancing, life shows itself beautiful in all its amplitudes. This article invests the thrill of eating deadly food.
I had been smoking for twelve years. Then I stopped. Nothing managed to lesson this unsettling feeling of starvation. Until I started baking.
For a fresh view on chicken. Inspired by Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of looking at a Blackbird.
In many parts of the world, millions of children go to bed hungry. Yet in advanced countries, inconceivable amounts of edible food are thrown away.
The diversity of foods is in fact one of Israel’s strongest cultural symbols. Little restaurants express the human mosaic of flavors and homes brought by Jews from all over the world.
John Holten finds himself killing an animal for the first time in order to eat it. He gets to taste the inevitable questions that come with it.
This is not the story of a lost food. Bere is very much alive and well in Orkney today. This is largely thanks to the Barony Mill in Birsay, a water-powered, totally self-sufficient and sustainable Victorian-era mill.
My mind was caught in-between the simple tendency of buying my meat of the day and the sudden realization of being a hungry omnivore catching his prey in rather strange laziness.
When it comes to water in our cities we mostly think of clear and dirty water. But we tend to forget all the tones of grey water in between that are very precious.
You can relax, this isn’t about Donald Trump. It’s about wrestling. And food.
At the heart of French cassoulet and Mexican fajitas, Ethiopian ful medames and Tuscan bean stew, yet it struggles to find a taxonomic home.
Phil’s cheese had a wrinkle problem. Everything he loved that he touched withered away: his dear old nan, his cheese, his balls.
John Holten finds himself cooking filled peppers with a wooden spoon as a result of the German election campaign.
For a fresh view on onions. Inspired by Wallace Stevens’ Thirteen Ways of looking at a Blackbird.
We all know the creamy pink trashy shrimp rings offered during suburban summer parties. And we wondered: What could other versions of a considered shrimp cocktail actually look like?
The sea was beautiful. It was calm and ambiguous. As if the island had no other owner but the sea.
Akis Liokatis is a professional biochemist. He works in a scientific institute developing compounds for the treatment of human diseases. At the CFL Academy, though, he was talking about food.
You try and be a good visitor and appreciate the food when you reach a new place, only what you order, as we all know, is not always what we get. Here John Holten recounts a personal experience of displacement on a recent day trip that branches out into the nature of travel, Netflix shows and unexpected doublings.
Gracefully eating with the fingers is an art. Often overlooked, the outwardly raw-looking act comes with its own etiquette in cultures that are home to it. In this article, the Indian designer Sarmishta Pantham discusses cutlery.
Desert explorer Wilfred Thesiger once called it a “land of death”; yet tens of thousands of families have earned their income and livelihoods from mining salt in the Danakil Depression in Ethiopia.
Tropez is a space for art inside a public pool in Berlin and the place to be this summer. Novellist John Holten tells us of his first experiences in making Pommes there, the German version of french fries.
We picked the darkest day of the week to drive out to the Nazis in the countryside. The thought that Nazis had become foodies, that they transmit their ideologies to their fellow citizens with regional eats, excited me.
A wave of warmth took over my body. I didn’t know what it was or where it came from but this bite of warm, buttery and flaky pain au chocolat was bringing me a joy so immense that nothing at this moment could’ve disturbed this feeling.
Behind the unforgiving iron bars, metal grilled doors and limited freedom at Nairobi’s maximum correctional facility, Kamiti Maximum Prison, is the heartwarming story of a group of prisoners who are not only reforming their characters but Kenya’s food security situation with a new transformatory innovation.
More than 100 years ago August Engelhardt decided to live only from coconuts and sunshine. He died with 44. But he initiated quite a big movement.
Picking potatoes made me want to eat potatoes. Picking stones made me just to eat ice cream.
The ocean blue sky and warm rays of spring sun try to caress me after a few, what now feels like too few days of emotional eating.
Top brands can afford to be good at social media. But where’s the humanity in this? Where’s the realness?
Corn in Mexico used to have hundreds of different colors. The farmers didn’t even have a name for all of the varieties.
The fetishization of cooking as art is, historically speaking, a very new phenomenon. Well, it’s trending.
“Natural wine is very in right now. A lot of people are talking about it, few people understand it and even less drink it.” What is it, actually?
Fat is energy and energy means power and the subject of fat and feminism is most definitely a juicy one.
Why would one want to seek out images of their fellow human going hungry? What will we gain from regarding the starvation of others? What indeed, does hunger look like?
As of late, hardly a product has come under fire more than milk. Good old milk.
There are so many sides to sourdough. Berlin-based fermentation fiend Kathe Kaczmarzyk delved into many of them during her workshop at the CFL Academy.
“Manly Health! Is there not a kind of charm—a fascinating magic in the words?” Walt Whitman’s health guide is absolutely bonkers and unabashedly American.
There is a creature amongst us, which has the name of a friendly animal, but which truly is a monster once it enters the personal circles of one’s life. Moreover, it seems to be an epidemic infestation whose only goal is to rot away humanity.
In space nobody can hear you grow vegetables. That is probably because it is hard to grow vegetables in space. But that hasn’t stopped anyone from trying, either in real life or in their imagination.
From time immemorial humans have sacrificed for the gods. We flatter them with presents and can thereby influence them to our benefit. And anyway, who can resist good food?
In reality, one minute is just enough time to peel an apple. On the Internet, one minute is enough time to watch a video of someone making an apple pie from start to finish.
Buildings would take on the feel of hills, knolls, skyscrapers become mountains, the city itself breathe and produce the food and energy that currently is resigned to the faraway nowhere of the non-city…
On occasion of the first Trumpian Thanksgiving we are asking: Just how American is apple pie?
When I first saw Stichelton cheese I was weary of being punked. It was like seeing a bottle of sparkling wine labelled ‘Shampayne’. Quite the opposite. Not only is Stichelton Stilton, it’s the best Stilton I’ve ever tasted.
Kastanitsa, built at an altitude of 850 metres, is a traditional village of unique architectural beauty. The women of Kastanista know many secrets, make exceptional dishes and share these with tourists and travelers. A dream.
It’s so fucking weird that people are still allowed to smoke at hospitals. What people don’t seem to look at with the same irony, though, is hospital food.
The Portuguese love cod. They also love to eat out in restaurants and cafes and do so with a waited-upon, daily-menu élan that frankly eludes their counterparts in many other countries.
In a world where the difference between virtual and physical space is increasingly hard to pin down it makes sense that our food will soon be coming served in binary.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is often mystified as the Noah’s Ark of a doomed world agriculture. But do we really need a new Ark already? Or should we rather invest in the practices that have fed the world for millennia?
There is a fish that connects a large part of the world, an acquired taste for some, a delicacy and national cuisine to others – salted codfish connects two seemingly unrelated trips to Iceland and Portugal.
All that remained were pictures of Clint’s dinner. A vegan fish, bought to impress the nice young woman with the nose ring who worked in the health food shop and who sometimes smiled absently at Clint.
It’s everywhere, in the high mountains and in the green valleys. It’s a powdered condiment with a strange mix of vegetarian flavours, a little bit too flat and aggressively salty to be called umami.
A group of Catholic nuns in Uganda are growing grapes and making their own wine, a forte they have perfected since missionaries first planted the vines at their compound in the 1970s.
Germans season with salt and pepper. This seems rather boring at first, unless we’re talking about the best pepper in the world: Kampot pepper from Cambodia.
If you were born after the mid-eighties in the archetypical American suburb and your parents were less than tyrannical, chances are you’ve tried at least one glorious yellow box of Lunchables.
The process of hand-pulled noodles is easy, as long as you listen carefully and watch closely – but just because an illusionist explains his tricks doesn’t mean you’re able to perform them.
I wanted to put some recent thoughts to a kind of random test and decided to have a dinner and try and record the recipe by way of Snapchat and create a ‘story’ out of it. My Story, as the app would have it.
The lifetime ban from his local takeaway was hitting Philip hard. He hadn’t been allowed back since he had drunkenly taken a swing at his best friend Gary while queuing for a post pub kebab.
The time underwater is called “the 50 minute battle” during which they perform a persistent search for their catch; sea urchin, octopus, spiny lobster… In an ideal world their methods would be one of the only permitted forms of fishing.
What plastics are recyclable and which aren’t? Is it ok to collect my food waste in a plastic bag and then put the plastic bag into the bio bin? But also, Germany. My choice to live here: did it have to do with recycling?
Octopuses have three hearts and eight arms. We accompanied an octopus through his last hours of life.
Is stealing food wrong when you’re hungry? This is one of the oldest questions of moral relativism, which in turn is one of the oldest critiques of the law.
Thirteen things you didn’t know about potatoes. For sure.
Insects are in vogue lately. As the ‘food of the future’ they appear in numerous publications and summits. Having a closer look, the narrative of insects as our saviors is more complex and problematic than what it seems.
Lasagne. Would they end up taking that away too? No, no need to worry. Keith knew it was only a protest vote. Nothing ever came of voting, no real harm done.
Eating alone, meals to-go, take-out, all of these make one thing impossible: food envy, something we need in order to be nice to one another.
Expensive Bananas in East Berlin after the Berlin Wall came down ‘Hold our hands and take us to Banana Land!’…
Inspired by the Berlin Airlift of 1948, a group of engineers from Standford University started the Syria Airlift Project in 2015. The mobility of food, it seems, is much higher than the mobility of people.
This article is about hospitality and getting lost. Or rather, it’s about these things but also about forgetting where you’ve been and where you want to go.
Jermaine hadn’t been able to face real cooking for weeks. He had been too busy using Spotify to make playlists for imaginary women. It felt safer and happier than falling for a real person only to discover they did not share his fondness for Dire Straits.
The disease of Kuru is transmitted from human to human, by the practice of cannibalism. Might there be a connection to BSE, the “mad cow disease”?
We can love the ever present choice of chocolate bars, bunnies, ice cream and cake all we want – the industrialisation process took more than it gave us in the last 100 years of chocolate. Will we suffer from a chocolate bottleneck soon?
The sun is shining through the window and in our beaming faces: the Fatty Seven. For a moment I stare at my plate of spreadable fat and try to reconstruct what in God’s name brought me here.
An ex-lover once cruelly compared Kevin’s sex organ to a prawn. He ate them now only to feel a sense of superiority over the damnable crustacean.
Tony the Tiger would be eligible for a state pension if he lived in UK and was real. There aren’t many famous pensioners left in circulation that parents would trust alone with their kids nowadays. Tony, however, is a safe pair of paws.
Plants and humans are having some major relationship issues: neglect, avoidance behaviour, violence, general misunderstanding and miscommunication, all tell-tale signs of crisis.
Long before the age of the internets, there were “Aunty’s” we’d find through a friend, or a friend of a friend. We’d call Aunty and negotiate a lunch or dinner deal. Not a thing amiss. An everyday home-cooked meal, business as usual. The tiffin service.
We met up with Thilo Bode, founder of Food Watch and former Executive Director of Greenpeace, to discuss his main criticism: endangering democratic processes.
If you look it up at a map it would appear to be one of the most southern cities of the US. In fact, it is the most northern Caribbean city. Its aura and its colours match more an exotic central-American temperament.
The love we impose on dogs is unending. And the list of what dogs are to us is long, gathering a lot of attributes – of us. Following certain theories dogs didn’t even exist without us. Like ghosts. Or poetry.
Refugee Street Food is homegrown – the effort of ordinary, hard working volunteers all with their own daytime jobs and full time lives. They will have their fourth event soon!
Adopting western agribusiness practices in India harmed much more than just income. Since 1995 to the current day more than 38,000 farmers have committed suicide due to crop failure and bankruptcy.
There is a phenomena that highlights the immense work still left to be done to eradicate hunger: Geophagia refers to the practice of eating earth, soil, or clay based substances.
When did it all begin? When did we humans first have the strange idea that you can eat and drink while walking?
When author John Holten waits with his groceries in the checkout queue of Lidl it happens that he contemplates about his fellow shoppers’ sex lives.
I went to Kivalina with the intent of making a climate change film. But it ended up all being about food.
A start up company in Kenya is making human hair extensions from banana stalks, sating growing local demand and giving banana farmers an avenue to dispose their stalks.
It started with nothing really. They began meeting for tea. Several friends of the same village, talking, and sharing life’s difficulties.
Does the pastoral still have a pulse? As the rise of celebrity shepherds, high-end rustic-natural food cultures and Cabin Porn suggest the pastoral mode is alive and kicking.
As of this week they’re not only a must at the baseball game or Ikea, nope, Burger King has the best hot dogs! But their story is much more exciting than anything Snoop Dogg dressed as a Burger King employee says in the commercial.
Take a look behind the scenes of Berlinale in this last entry of our festival diary.
When suddenly some pigs appeared on screen I was attentive. Was this an instinctive connection to these animals, or perhaps a desire to eat them?
I hadn’t realised just how central to the action the food stalls were until I heard the screams. George Clooney had arrived.
Under the banner of its idealistic motto, ‘Make Food Not War,’ Berlinale’s Culinary Cinema celebrates its 10th anniversary! David McKenzie guides us through the festival.
Who are these people, Germany’s newcomers? I went to the LaGeSo to find some answers. Since then, I’ve found myself sharing stories and breaking bread in three different newcomer kitchens all over Berlin.
The extremely psychedelic paintings of Hieronymus Bosch reveal a lot about the suffering of the medieval ergotism, which became an important factor for the invention of LSD.
Hypnosis is culturally known as a form of entertainment. Its lesser-known, more serious sister is hypnotherapy and this has much bigger ambitions than making an audience laugh.
Take five and imagine you are an Eskimo. When you look out the window of your wooden house on stilts you see a seemingly endless white landscape, permafrost.
There are many online food websites in every city, but usually one beats the rest and becomes an eponym for the action. In New York, one doesn’t order food out, one gets seamless.
It was all a bit surreal – as every first time should be. Later, an iced coffee with two teaspoons of this white sticky stuff, that I had never before took pleasure in consuming, became my summer addiction.
Essentially, the fact that pork is not allowed in orthodox lives of Muslims and Jews, is clear. However, both the Jewish and the Islamic explanations for why exactly the pig is not allowed are a bit unsatisfying.
At the International Conference on Ayurveda in India people have many questions: Why do people skip meals? Why? Do people over in Europe earn so little?
“Social Kitchen – The Other Human” is an initiative for collective cooking in the street. Homeless, immigrants, and the “new poor” accept with mixed feelings of timidity and gratitude.
Crop production and feed conversion efficiency are the keys to understanding water usage in meat production.
Things usually aren’t about fish but about the system. The thought of being able to take the fishes’ side for once was thrilling, libertarian.
Just before I left for NYC this September I was visiting some Berlin friends as they were preparing to go on a fast together, a deep cleanse is what they called it.
Something about the sturdiness of its form, the nobility of its ways, always remind me of an old fashioned gentleman, one that gracefully hides all his pain in times of distress.
You really want to sleep but you can’t. Something is missing. You think a piece of chocolate would hit the spot. Or cheese. Or watching some porn?
“So many tons of food circulating close to you and you spend entire days without any food at all.”
Gadgets may sound sexy, but behavioral changes have to come first.
“You humans don’t have to care about where your next blood comes from.” Photographer Sima Ebrahimi met Lilith Bernstein, a vampire in Berlin.
Alchemy. From butter we have made gold. From spreadable fat a medicinal product in the Ayurvedic way. Medicating ghee.
At the University of Gastronomic Sciences, learning about food involves much more than just, well, food.
Yesterday we ate at Heno Heno, a small Japanese diner in Charlottenburg that reopened after e few years of break as a restaurant.
It is no secret that we have fallen out of love with white flour. But a divorce now, after a century and a half together, would be a very messy affair.
While things are largely improving for a lot of us food and its shortage becomes the enduring, everyday consequence for general populations afflicted by conflict.
More often than not, we polish rice to make it white but nutritionally deficient, and we strip the goodness out of wheat to produce white flour. What is it about whiteness?
Google knows everything? You won’t find your grandmother’s favorite recipe there!
Fermented fish sauce is “in,” right? But MSG is bad for you, right? Read on to learn what the Romans have to do with Chinese takeout.
Sauerkraut doesn’t really evoke an image you could call sexy: potatoes, slippers, punctuality, sausage. But there is something quite hot about it we tend to ignore.
Similar to Portuguese donkey penis soup, super food bone broth is enjoyed in the hope that what one eats will find its way to the right spot. We had a closer look.
Butter makes everything better, right? On this front, one Silicon Valley entrepreneur and some nomadic Tibetans tend to agree. The end goal, however, is quite different.
These mineral-shaped edible sculptures by Enea Palmeto are made of solid cocktail liquors.
Sergey Balovin lives from exchanging his artworks, in particular portraits in black and white watercolour, of food.
During Raya time stands still for one week and life circles around the kitchen and the dining table.
Brews without hops once reigned supreme over the bitter IPAs of today.
Eating durian is like eating delicious baby feces. To many the fruit delicacy from southeast Asia smells like old tennis socks or bad breath.
The attempt to explain the taste of a tomato is just as destined to fail as trying to explain the color “red” to a born blind person.
With a wild Asparagus feast, we were celebrating cultural diversity and immigration under Berlin’s sky. It was delicious.
Summer is here! The first guests are approaching: fruit-flies, grain moths and mites. When I tell friends in Berlin about this, they nod knowingly, somewhat embarrassed.
I love you as much as I love salt, said the Princess. Not knowing better, the king then expelled her.
To some, the idea of sipping a fizzy, fermented drink with bits of yeast straggling at the bottom of the jar just seems downright weird.
Whoever thought fish could only be good fresh, has something to learn at “Loja das Conservas”.
As usual, what seems like a new supertrend already has a definite history – a history linked to questions regarding the relationship of art and food, aesthetic and sensual pleasure, exclusivity and the attempt at a convergence of art and life.
On Sonnenalle, Berlin’s own Las Vegas Strip, casinos are lined up one after the other, and as of recently, the Industry Standard. We tried pork tongue, grey mullet and balsamic strawberries with mascarpone – and were partially persuaded.
The original plan was to create an intimate week of exchange and exhibitions. Currently the program of the Berlin Food Art Week includes over 60 events at 30 sites.
Studies in recent years have shown that some of our favorite treats contain substances that create dependencies similar to cocaine and other drugs.
Milk. Yay? Nay? On the fence? A few thoughts about our milk consumption on the occasion of World Milk Day.
What can a sustainable food supply look like in the Berlin of the future? We joined the professional discussion in the Berlin House of Representatives. After hearing many positions and we learned that it’s on us to set change in motion.
When we talk about the 2015 Expo “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life,” it would appear we don’t actually need to discuss the issues of global food supply and sustainability. Nevertheless there is still a lot to discover.
Green tea is a magic potion for the health conscious. It’s no surprise that it’s a current food trend. The first tea parlor in Berlin has officially opened!
Spicy food hurts. Spicy food is addictive. In fact, it works like a drug… watch out!
How big is the influence of food bloggers on the food industry? We were at the re:publica 15 to discuss this and other topics.
The refrigerator has changed us and our eating habits. It’s time that we approach it more consciously, with more love.
A half acre is the amount of land every person would be entitled to when you divided the earth’s arable land evenly. On a field with a lake view in Berlin – Spandau, a group of people have devoted themselves to an experiment.
At the last Kakao Akademy event, we understood that we need to wean our taste buds for cacao to reveal its true flavour to us.
While bánh mì in Vietnam fills the tummies of those who can’t afford more, its Western version is more on par with pricey gourmet burgers promising good taste and a clean conscience.
Temperatures rose by almost 4% in recent years. This is not only a danger for chocolate bunnies.
Neurotransmitter serotonin brings us into the state of ecstasy. Its release is triggered by intoxicants such as LSD or MDMA – or by fasting.
If you love watching stars in your sleeping bag while listening to croaking frogs, there is just one place to go to: the Narköy farm in Kandıra. We spoke with founder Nardane Kuscu.
We should more often come to the realisation that in many cases, less is more – even when it comes to vitamins.
It is reported that a poisonous mushroom has killed the Buddha. Nonetheless, scientists believe that mushrooms can save the world.
Instead of likes, we will soon be able to send New York cheesecakes with strawberry topping through the web: Scientists are currently working on digitalizing taste.
In 1886 the novelist went to the countryside to live amongst french farmers. Today the romantic dream of the countryside is bigger than ever before. Is the motivation still the same?
Julie Cohen tells the story of the fish store Russ & Daughters in Manhattan. A magical place, loaded with stories, history and carried on by tradition. Nowadays visited by the hippest New Yorkers in town. An Interview.
The opening film of the Culinary Cinema at this year’s Berlinale Good Things Await, takes the audience on a journey to the Thor Højgård farm north of Copenhagen. An interview with director Phie Ambo.
The modern farmer has less and less dirt under his finger nails. As part of the technological evolution of agriculture, en route to the fully automatized farm, his fields are being tilled by swarms of little autonomous robots.
I’d never had a Po’boy, but visions of New Orleans and the sounds of Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess danced in my head.
In China, guests stay at the host’s for as long as it takes to relieve himself – a gesture of giving and receiving. It is also time for us to take a deep look at shit.
The alkaline diet sounds like a simple solution. But perhaps it is too simple for our complex human system.
Darwin was not only a lifelong meat-eater, but his early eating habits would make him more villain than hero for animal conservationists today.
Interestingly, a good 500 years ago, meat and its representation were strongly linked in a moral debate – and it still is.
Food Loop is an app that informs consumers of the availability of groceries with a short remaining shelf-life.
The human nose, without which we wouldn’t taste anything, has a synthetic counterpart: the electronic nose.
Benito Mussolini is not known as a food-lover. But if he did not want food to be a big deal, perhaps he should have picked a different country of which to be a dictator than pasta-loving Italy.
It is often through the foods we choose to eat (or not) that our pain of loss manifests itself.
Marco Polo is known for having introduced pasta to Italy. Myth or truth?
Think about crème brûlée. Now. What happened first? Did you see the flambéed crème or rather taste it on your tongue? The question of separating taste from its visual representation is almost as tricky as the question of the chicken and the egg.
When a king in the Middle Ages feared falling prey to a competing heir to the throne he would have a taster taste his food before eating to be sure it wasn’t poisoned. Nowadays an electrical tongue can take care of such dirty work.
We are a generation on a quest for true significance; true encounters; inner peace and inspiration. Permaculture seems to be one answer.
I have been a lover of lamb ever since my father roasted one on a spit for my 12th birthday. Reading about food before my trip to Morocco, I learned that there is a Marrakech alley where lamb is slow-roasted daily. I couldn’t wait to try it.
Potentially, our caffeine dependence could help feed a growing world population.
What becomes of all those coffee grounds is a question beginning to concern more and more people. Julian Lechner’s idea is simple, well-meaning and tasteful: coffee cups made of coffee grounds and sugar.
Still no christmas presents? CFL recommends: Top 5 Foodie Christmas presents
More nature, less humans. Sustainable Condoms could safe the world in several ways.
With the new app “Food Scores” you can scan your groceries and be informed before getting to the till.
Nature is the highest form of technology – and Jan Wurms partner. 6 CFL questions for him.
Saving food welds us together: During the European Week of Waste Reduction, we show solidarity with a lettuce leaf.
During the dry season we were working on the weed problem. As the wet season starts raining on our cacao parade, we have ‘a bug to bear’. Bugs are literally everywhere. We love them!
Whenever possible, we avoid fat. Fat makes us fat. And yet, we need fats! Manuela Heider de Jahnsen fills us in.
I had heard that it was a bit of a hole-in-the-wall place, but was still surprised to see that it was actually more of a hole-under-the-S-Bahn-tracks.
The advice is often “be yourself” when going on a first date. For food-allergic singles “being yourself” isn’t always the easiest option.
20 years, 7 relocations. Cookie stuck to his guns, and he did just the right thing.
Being ‘chained’ to the kitchen was a duty for our grandmothers and something to rebel against for our mothers. For us, it has become more like an honour, a way to celebrate our free time.
The one thing that should not be forgotten is that nutrition trends only make sense if they can live up to their names and actually provide nutrition.
The food world of today is colourful. Hendrick Haase is even more colourful. He is a designer, an activist and a guerrilla chef. Online he is simply called “Wurstsack”. His message: “Food is wicked.”
In the near future, fresh food could come straight from the living room to your plate.
On this most charming of Florentine squares, South of the Arno, awaits a meal to be remembered.
In many parts of Asia, humanoid robots serve you, converse with you and even cook for you in restaurants
Nikou’s work with cutlery and tableware often suggests the indigestible or the impossible with regard to function and purpose. The occasion of her exhibition Vacancy signals Contemporary Food Lab’s first publication.
How does our food get to our plate, and to plates around the world? About the relation between a growing middle class, booming cities and a lack of research funds.
The fewest meat lovers will see the pig in its original form before their mind’s eye whilst enjoying their meal. At the Berlin Food Week, spectators are told a true story.
From Syria to Tibet, from Iraq to Sudan: Our Food Court event allowed guests to get a taste of those cultures, which are often overshadowed by conflict.
Hungry for discovery, Berliners blindly walk past wild delicacies on a daily basis.
Contemporary Food Lab at the Stadt Land Food Festival: The Urban Farming carrot turned out as the star of the show.
Indulgence and Responsibility. A Contradiction?
In August, we turned an empty lot in Berlin Mitte into a Garden. An experiment in the sensory experience of urban nature. Get some impressions from the video.
For decades humans have dreamed of settling other planets. Now that it’s approaching ever more palpably, the focus has turned to the basics, such as how Mars inhabitants are to eat.
It is with great pleasure that the Contemporary Food Lab presents the exhibition Vacancy by Michelle Nikou until the end of October.
There are so many reasons not to drink milk.But viewed from the perspective of holistic medicine, there are also reasons to enjoy it.
From the age of 10 he had to help his parents every Sunday in the kitchen instead of going to play soccer. What luck!
Salad, scrambled eggs, pasta — there’s nothing these spices haven’t been tried on in Germany. How comes?
This just in from Siemens: A great kitchen is more important than a nice car.
Purslane is delicious and an effective remedy for insect and snake bites.
How can one close water circulation systems in buildings? And how can urban water infrastructure be more flexibly designed?
Drinking instead of eating – a notion ever increasing in popularity
Glamorous Summer Herbs: The main stars of the evening proved to be peppergrass, starflower, fennel, parsley, and lavender.
Christiane Löhr on show at the CFL Exhibition Space until September
The world is witnessing a seemingly never-ending cycle of violence. Still, Chef Tomer Niv continues with his everyday life in his Restaurant.
The Solarkiosk was developed for people in rural, off-grid regions. GRAFT has provided us with one kiosk for our Little Wood Project.
Lyss shares some irrefutable truths about what makes a chocolate truly great.
We are delighted to show the exhibition “Verdrängen” of Christiane Löhr until September in the Contemporary Food Lab Exhibition Space.
The guests in Rama’s Kitchen near Jerusalem see the explosions above the hills from the terrace of the restaurant. Still, Chef Tomer Niv and his crew have to continue with their work. In his kitchen, Muslim, Christian and Jewish cooks work together. They try to make the best out of the changes in the everyday life.
Steve Wagner and Greg Koch must be crazy. They are about to open a brewery in Berlin and introduce the American brewing arts to Germany.
The plant is popular, though sometimes people are not fully aware of its versatility.
Lately, 3D printers are capable of printing not only plastic artworks, organs and replacement parts for quasi-automatic weapons, but real, edible food as well.
While a new wave of violence has taken over Israel, Tomer Niv, head chef at the distinguished Restaurant Rama’s Kitchen in the Jerusalem hills, has to continue with his daily business. In his kitchen, Muslim, Christian and Jewish cooks work together, trying their best, not to let the craziness around them impact the spirit among them.
What is essential is invisible to the eye, that is why Vesela and Veronika developed a new kind of data visualization, which works through the stomach.
Tomer Niv is musician, chef and synesthete. He sees dishes in music and tastes in chords.
Chocolate is more sensitive than your most moody of friends. She doesn’t like light, humidity or heat.
Detox under the Microscope: Are Green Smoothies good for us or rather for Gorillas?
First Supper Club at CFL! Tomer Niv combines music and food on the highest level.
Scientists discover the ins and outs of lunch: who what when where?
It was supposed to be a wine tasting but it turned to out to be a meat tasting.
We all were in a small village in the south of Italy, all asking ourselves one question: How do we want to live?
Dinner Exchange Berlin is hosting a Sunday brunch at the Contemporary Food Lab on Sunday, June 8.
Asparagus “transforms my chamber pot into a flask of perfume,” said Proust.
A friend had invited me to take part in a program for artists. A program where artists would work in fields.
Star chef Micheal Kempf is head chef in Berlin’s Facil. He spoke with us about his most important ingredient.
You can eat eel, or you can celebrate eating eel – a truly Japanese experience
Turner stitches together records of cramped urban kitchens, rural vegetable gardens, and bustling local delicatessens.
One of Germany’s most revered pastries is Baumkuchen, or tree cake.
We are delighted to show two works of Alicja Kwade in our Contemporary Food Lab Exhibition Space until June. The opening was on Wednesday.
Can one learn to enjoy? Nutritionist Eva Derndorfer thinks yes.
The whole is more than the sum of its parts – a few thoughts after attending a serious food fair.
It is difficult not to become a fan of lupine once you get to know her. But not so many people do. I met her recently in Italy.
These food-related German words secured their way in the English language.
Art meets music meets food. Vernissage meets tasting meets book release meets party.
Kimchi and sauerkraut are two of the world’s best known fermented cabbages.
Most people would rather eat low doses of poison than low doses of bugs.
As the world’s population grows, scientists and farmers are faced with the question of how to produce as much as possible in small spaces on little time.
The creators of WineVibes proved once again that sometimes boundaries have to be crossed. They revealed that excellent quality does not always occur conventionally.
Maples produce more and sweeter sap than any other tree, thanks to an intricate mechanism.
What could be a better vehicle than food to create, celebrate, and make moments into something special?
The relationship between limes and lemons is more complex than meets the eye.
Darina Allen, Ireland’s most famous TV chef and proponent of local and seasonal products, has created a comprehensive book called…
At Vom Einfachen das Gute (From the Simple the Good) an extraordinary tasting took place. It was a chocolate tasting, which emerged to be less sweet than expected.
What is Cooking?“ will be the simple motto of this year’s MAD Symposium.
The message of the movie goes far beyond marking the importance and the beauty of protecting nature’s diversity in times of wide spread mono-cultures.
In her cookbook, author Camille Antoine treats the subject of food waste from a culinary perspective.
Cousin to the black-footed Iberian, the mangalica pig was once nearly extinct until Hungarian animal geneticist Peter Toth came to the rescue. Since then, mangalica is enjoying a renaissance.
“Fishing means to bring to the people a product and at the same time to tell them the story behind the product.”
The three of us left the cinema in three different, almost dreamlike, states of mind, which made it difficult to speak.
Fermentation is one of the oldest forms of food preservation. Due to its energy saving aspect, this ancient technique is now coming back into our modern society.
Kara Newman’s book paints the first strokes of a broader portrait of food. It portrays commodities in their most abstract form.
(Deutsch) Kaum hatten wir die riesigen Messehallen betreten, waren wir in einer anderen Welt. Alles was hier eine Rolle spielte, war Obst und Gemüse.
Food lovers: Berlin Film Festival has a very special menu for you on offer.
Flavor enhancers, stabilizers, emulsifier, dyestuffs – any questions about these substances will be answered
The Kinfolk Table is a book that will inspire to gather good friends around a table filled with kimchi couscous,…
foodXchange is a Berlin based initiative for the barter exchange of homemade culinary creations.
The Exhibition is at the Art Institute of Chicago until January 27, 2014. An exhibition review by Jasmina Knezovic.
A new food start-up in Berlin, Chido’s, found a way to culture mushrooms in a cellar in Schöneberg. The particularity:…
Markthalle Neun demonstrates that “Different-Eating” and “Different-Shopping” is possible in a city like Berlin. We talked with the three initiators.
It was fresh-baked cake or freshly brewed coffee yielding a mouth-watering aroma – especially for Molly Birnbaum, passionate about food. It was!
At first I didn’t find Thomas Rentmeister at all, as I entered the old industrial space that the artist uses as a studio in Berlin-Weißensee on a warm summer day
Standing in front of Sironi’s vitreous manufacture at Markthalle Neun in Berlin-Kreuzeberg will instantly leave your eyes and mouth wide-open
Malin Elmlid discovered her passion for baking and started the bread exchange. We met Malin and had her tell us her story.
Did you know that tomato and green tea pair well? Food pairing as a molecular analysis of similarities is a…
A film about the reality behind waste, expiration dates and imperfect food.
Birds of a feather flock together. Flavour Thesaurus is a book about couples of a different kind.
“Who sews utopia, shall reap reality.“ This is the motto according to which the Italian sociologist Carlo Petrini founded the Slow Food movement in 1986.
“Eat nothing of which you don’t know the story”: Manuela Dehn and Jörg Reuter of an eco strategy consultancy are making a dream come true.
Followfish is a network founded by fishermen standing for transparent and sustainable fish products.
Food Rules“ by bestselling author Michael Pollan, is a manual that teaches us easy to follow guidelines regarding daily eating habits.
The star chef, who became famous for his vegetable and herb cuisine. He recently surprised the public with the announcement to close his restaurant and give back all awards. We spoke to him about the reasons.
This shop in Prenzlauer Berg is a little paradise for lovers of good food…
Did you know the word oil comes from olive? For an enlightening history of olives and their oil, read this…
Von der Frage inspiriert, wie die Zukunft unserer Lebensmittelerzeugung aussehen könnte, hat die Produkt Designerin Suzanne van Beest ein innovatives Spielzeug für Kinder entwickelt, …
Von natürlichen Organismen inspiriert, nutzt OLTU Wasserverdunstung und Wärmeabstrahlung des Kühlschranks für die Aufbewahrung von Obst und Gemüse.
Valentina Raffaelli und Luca Boscardin rufen mit ihrer Modulküche “Food Storage” die Lebensmittelpyramide zurück ins Gedächtnis und regen dazu an, sich wieder ausgewogen zu ernähren.
Von Montags bis Samstags werden bei Glut und Späne in der Markthalle Neun Lachs und Forelle und je nach Saison auch Makrele und Hering geräuchert.
Althergebrachte Küchentechniken sind die Themen im Kochbuch Home Made. Auf gelungene Art und Weise verbindet die Autorin Tradition mit Innovation und macht Lust sich in die Küche zu stellen und zu experimentieren.
In einer vergangenen Ausstellung des Wilhelm Hack Museums „I Love ALDI“ 2011 verwirklichte der Künstler Thomas Rentmeister die Installation „Aufschnitt“. Die Aufhäufung von Wurstpackungen hat eine besorgte Schülerin zum Anlass genommen, eine kritische E-Mail an den Künstler zu adressieren…
The Farmery in North Carolina, USA, ist Supermarkt und Gewächshaus in Einem.
Der erfolgreiche Food Blog Green Kitchen Stories hat ein vegetarisches Kochbuch herausgebracht. Wir haben es ausprobiert und sind begeistert.
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