Reverie: Jordan Kahn's Ode to Southern California Cuisine on Film

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Natasha Subramaniam and Alisa Lapidus
A still from Reverie

Faced with presenting at a Star Chefs event in New York last October, Red Medicine chef Jordan Kahn called upon filmmakers Natasha Subramaniam and Alisa Lapidus to collaborate on a film they eventually titled Reverie. They had previously showcased his technique in their stop-motion animation film Assiette, and Kahn knew from that experience that the filmmakers would be able to help him express ideas that were otherwise difficult to communicate.

"I wanted to figure out a way to show people the process that I go through, and the best way to translate it would be through moving images," Kahn says.


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The Food Rorschach Test: What Do You See in What You Eat?

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Anne Fishbein
Chicken panzella at Freddy Smalls
Food as art is an overwrought concept; so is food as therapy. But food as art and therapy? Now, that's more fun. And so, we created a little quiz similar to the inkblot test you might have taken during one of your early therapy sessions: Take a look at each photograph, consider what you're seeing and choose the answer that comes closest to your mind's eye. And while we probably can't give you much insight into why you do what you do, we can use your answers to make a few suggestions on where you might like to eat tonight. Which, really, is the least that your therapist can tell you when your 50 minutes are up.

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Fallen Fruit Launches Free Public Orchard in Hawthorne

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via TakePart.com
Planting at Del Aire Park
The L.A.-based artist collective Fallen Fruit, the same group behind Los Angeles' community fruit tree maps, recently revealed their lastest endeavor: a twenty-seven tree orchard located just south of LAX at Hawthorne's Del Aire park.

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5 Great DIY Gingerbread Houses + A King Arthur Decorating Contest

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Rojer via flickr
TJ's gingerbread house
Forget foreclosures and rent increases. The real estate market just got a lot sweeter, with new listings of holiday gingerbread houses. Once upon a time, back when Hansel and Gretel roamed the forest without GPS, people (and witches) made their own candy-coated condos. These days, most of us are too busy for those kind of D.I.Y. projects. But retailers are making it easy to carry on the tradition.

There are three ways to go, none of which require turning on the oven. You can buy a pre-fab kit, which has all the baked walls and fixings needed to construct a house. Or you can purchase an assembled but unadorned gingerbread house, and then decorate it however you see fit. Finally, you can just buy a turnkey house, where all you have to do is pay and display. All of these gingerbread houses are around the size of a large shoebox and they have one other thing in common -- while they're made of food ingredients, they're intended to be looked at, not eaten. "They don't taste very good," one salesperson warned us. Turn the page.

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6 Great Food Museums: Food as Art, Or Not

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Guzzle & Nosh
Gelato at Gelato Bar

Last week, the Carpigiani Gelato Museum opened in Anzola dell'Emilia, Italy, just outside Bologna; the first in the world, it says, to "delve into the history, culture, and technology of artisan gelato." Inside, you'll learn about the history of the frozen treat, from an 11th century recipe for pomegranate sorbet to a collection of gelato machines. We don't know if the museum also pays tribute to the role of gelato on the liberated woman's journey to self-discovery, but we certainly hope so.

Gelato is the subject of just one of many, many museums dedicated to the food we eat (or, sometimes, don't). Turn the page for a few amusing, sometimes amusingly serious, museums of food.


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Campbell's to Pay Homage to Warhol's Soup Can Art at Target in September

Categories: Food Art, Soup

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Campbell's
The commemorative cans
In the early 1960s, Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup can paintings were a spectacularly ordinary counterpoint to any number of lush, sophisticated still-lifes of bowls of laboriously arranged fruit. Warhol wasn't about commentary. He was genuinely enamored of the commonplace and ubiquitous. And he actually did enjoy Campbell's, having once claimed in an interview to have consumed a can for lunch every day for 20 years.

How fitting then that to commemorate the 50-year-anniversary of Warhol's soup triumph, Campbell's is releasing -- for the month of September -- limited edition soup cans inspired by Warhol's creations.

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Victoria's Kitchen: London Should Win Gold in the Cupcake Olympics

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Victoria's Kitchen
Sweet literary snacks
We think it's fair to say that, although we clearly are better at Olympic sports (OK, we'll give them dressage), the Brits are a tad more sophisticated than us Yanks. Case in point: Our "fancy" cupcakes might feature Oscar the Grouch or perhaps a pretty rose or cute doggie. British fancy cupcakes sport such items as perfect replicas of literary classics. These are from Victoria's Kitchen in London, a home-based boutique bakery specializing in "beautiful bespoke" cupcakes, cakes and cookies. This particular batch is for a woman celebrating her 60th birthday, and features some of the books that have shaped her life, including soccer star Christiano Ronaldo's autobiography and Chicken Licken.

Turn the page for more lovely samples. Please Victoria, can you toss some across the Pond? Please? We're really sorry about George Washington!

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Top 4 Strange and Beguiling Dinner Tables: Cubes + Hacked IKEA + Rooftop Tea

Categories: Design, Food Art

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dezeen.com
rooftop dining furniture
When it comes to dining room tables, most of us make do with what's already in our apartment or easily score-able off Craigslist. This way, quite a few splintery wooden boards have become the site of plucky dinner parties. Still, there's another end of the spectrum -- specialized, fantastic, expensive, artful bits of furniture designed to tweak the imagination as well as facilitate gustatory pleasures. We've compiled a few classics, some of which most assuredly aren't for sale.


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Edible Art: Made in L.A. Exhibits Local Food Crafters

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vi ForYourArt
Hand-Crafted Foodstuffs at New.Artisanal.Now
Things just got a bit sweeter for L.A. art fans: Hammer Museum's Made In L.A. biennial art exhibit, which runs until Sept. 2 and features works from celebrated local talent, will be teaming up with ForYourArt (the same folks behind the 24-hour doughnut-a-thon) on July 28 for New.Artisanal.Now a free one-day event that will feature 12 of the "city's finest food crafters selected by culinary insiders Krista Simmons (Top Chef Masters/LAist), Shawna Dawson (Artisanal LA) and Michaele Musel (The Secret Fork)" at the ForYourArt space near LACMA.

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A Cake Wreck for Matt Groening

Categories: Food Art

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Margy Rochlin
At this point we all know that last week The Simpsons creator Matt Groening decided to say so long to his 32-year-old syndicated comic strip, Life in Hell. But how did he commemorate the retiring of the anthropomorphic rabbit Binky, his girlfriend, Sheba, and their illegitimate son, Bongo (as well as occasional guest stars Akbar and Jeff)? With a cake from Whole Foods, that's how. And not just a regular cake, but a strawberry shortcake bearing what looked like an abstraction on '80s video game graphic typography or a candy-based preschool Teach Your Toddler to Spell kit.

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