terra cibus no. 4: fortune cookie, courtesy of Caren Alpert

San Francisco-based photographer Caren Alpert has captured mouth-watering shots of food, stylish portraits of chefs and glimpses of chic restaurant interiors for clients such as Bon Appetit, Saveur Magazine and the Food Network. But, beginning in 2008, she branched out from her editorial and catalog work to experiment in fine art.

Alpert has taken magnified photographs of foods, from Brussels sprouts to Lifesavers, using a scanning electron microscope at her alma mater, the University of Arizona. Titled “Terra Cibus,” meaning “nurturing from the earth,” the series, recently exhibited at the James Beard Foundation in New York, provides viewers a new, and often bizarre, look at familiar foods.

I spoke with Alpert about the project:

Can you describe the process of preparing the samples and getting the shot?

I choose the foods out here in San Francisco. I sort of curate them if you will. I decide what I want to shoot. I overnight them to the lab in Arizona. They go through a dehydration process and then a metal coating process. Depending on what the food is, the length of dehydration can yield a better result and different metals used in the coating can yield a different result. That is the preparation process.

With a scanning electron microscope you are photographing the surface of a subject or a specimen—in my case, food. I am basically photographing the electrons bouncing off of the surface.

What have been the most interesting foods under the microscope?

The sugar and the salt for sure. I like the kiwi seeds. I love the pineapple leaf (below).

Have you gotten a sense of which foods are photogenic under the microscope and which are not?

I am getting better. But I wouldn’t say I am dead on 100 percent of the time.

I read that you tried a tortilla chip and it was boring looking. Have there been other duds?

Interestingly, it has been difficult to photograph meats and proteins. Bacon, for example—I thought it would be more interesting than it was at first pass. I am trying to find the best way to photograph foods like that, that are higher in fats.

terra cibus no. 33: pineapple leaf, courtesy of Caren Alpert

What sort of editing do you do?

The machine captures in black and white only. We do a post-processing treatment back at the studio where we infuse the color of the original foods as best we can.

After photographing a shrimp tail, you went to a scientist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to inquire about its feathery texture. Do you often take your photographs to outside experts?

Certainly when I am stumped, yes. I am trying to involve more information about what we are looking at. The shrimp tail was quite surprising. Because the Monterey Bay Aquarium is a local gem for us, it was nice to be able to call on them, and they were very receptive to helping out. They were also very surprised to see the image. That is the part of the tail where you hold it and bite it off and then you throw the tail back on your plate. It is right there at that sort of cartilagey intersection.

What have you learned about food from these photographs?

How an unprocessed food or an organic food intakes water or air, you see a lot of that. Processed foods are very sharp and spiky, whereas unprocessed or more organic foods sort of have a repetitive pattern.

Has working on this series changed your own eating habits in any way?

No. Probably the biggest shock—but it hasn’t been enough to change my eating habits—is the French’s fried onions, which you sprinkle over your string bean casserole. They are really irregular and very violent looking compared to some of the others. You would think after seeing it, it would be enough to make you not want to eat them. But they are sort of a guilty pleasure. I snack on those occasionally.

Is healthy eating part of the goal? What do you hope viewers take away from the photographs?

I hope the viewers think about their own choices everyday or how they influence others around them. I got an email a few months ago from a man who said he and his two kids were on my website trying to guess all the foods. Then they would go back to their kitchen cupboards or refrigerator drawers to see if they had any of those foods at home. I think if it can encourage dialogue like that it is really interesting and successful.

I sort of like to encourage the viewer to look at it more aesthetically. I think people are so floored. “Oh my gosh, that is my lunch sandwich or that is my chocolate cake or that is my morning blueberries.” People are just fascinated. They are taken with the beauty of some foods and not others, of course. I got another email from a young woman in Spain who said that she and her boyfriend were fighting about images as art. She thought the images were beautiful and artistic, and he thought, oh, anyone can do that. They were having an argument about what makes art. That’s awesome, you know? It is really encouraging people to think about the parameters they put around those definitions.

More images can be seen at www.carenalpertfineart.com. Prints are available for purchase directly through the photographer.

Rhubarb is delicious. Image courtesy of Flickr user Haikugirl

I’ll admit that, like most, I take my rhubarb in strawberry-rhubarb pie. I think the best pie I have ever had came from a little country store called Heart ‘N Hand just outside of the town of Skaneateles in the Finger Lakes region of New York. My husband and I ceremoniously sliced into it two summers ago on our wedding day.

But whenever I see rhubarb in the grocery store, I am instantly reminded of another delicious memory—my first encounter with the rosy stalks. I think I was maybe 12 years old, with my mom at a farmer’s market, when she bought me a bundle. I chomped into a stick like it was celery, and my face puckered from its tartness. I liked the taste. Plus, there was something so Laura Ingalls about gnawing on the raw stalks.

If you are thinking about picking up a bundle (as I now am!) or have some rhubarb in your garden or CSA box that you don’t know what to do with, I did a little research. Of course, there are plenty of baked options (pie, cobbler, crisp, even muffins), but my intent is to offer up a few more unusual options.

1. Raw: Before you do any cooking with rhubarb, you ought to at least try it raw. (Note: Be sure to remove all the leaves, as they are poisonous.) Many suggest dipping the stalk in sugar or some other sweet, such as honey, maple syrup or agave nectar, to mellow its tartness a touch. Sprinkling diced rhubarb over yogurt or cereal is an option too.

2. Stirred: Rhubarb, like cranberries, can add a tart zing to a smoothie, and if you puree the vegetable, it can be added to a margarita as well. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver suggests making a jam by slicing rhubarb and cooking it with a couple tablespoons of water, blending and cooling it, and then adding champagne or prosecco for a rhubarb bellini. For a tasty nonalcoholic beverage, Serious Eats starts out by making a similar rhubarb syrup but instead adds it to freshly-steeped iced tea, topping it off with strawberries.

3. Smothered: Rhubarb sauces, chutneys and salsas add a unique flavor to savory dishes. Food writer (and occasional Smithsonian contributor) Kim O’Donnel says that rhubarb chutney—a good way to make use of rhubarb before it wilts—complements salmon, trout, roast chicken, turkey, duck and pork chops. It sounds easy too. She cooks one-inch pieces of rhubarb with orange juice, vinegar, brown sugar, ginger, cinnamon and dates.

A surprisingly butterless recipe from Paula Deen for grilled chicken with rhubarb salsa calls for a salsa that mixes together rhubarb, strawberries, jalapeno, lime juice, cilantro and olive oil. Yum! But perhaps the most creative condiment is rhubarb aioli, which award-winning chef Vitaly Paley of Paley’s Place in Portland, Oregon, pairs with pork. He folds a rhubarb reduction into his homemade garlic mayonnaise.

4. Roasted: Raw julienned rhubarb can be added to a garden salad, but several recipes I have found instead suggest roasting chunks of rhubarb on a baking sheet drizzled with honey or sprinkled with sugar for about five minutes, letting them cool and then tossing them in with greens. These same recipes (example: from Martha Stewart) recommend a killer combination of rhubarb, toasted walnuts, goat cheese, arugula and fennel.

5. Dried: This one is rather time-intensive, and requires a dehydrator, but the fruit-roll-up-loving kid in me likes the sound of the rhubarb leather one commenter on Backpacker.com describes. Basically, to make it, you cook rhubarb in water, with a cinnamon stick, and add sugar to taste, until it is the consistency of applesauce. Then, you pour it into dehydrator trays lined with parchment paper and dry at 135 degrees for nine hours.

Verdict: Salmon can be cooked in a dishwasher. Photo by Ryan Reese.

Last week, a Smithsonian editor sent me a screen capture of a portion of her Facebook news feed. A friend’s status update read, “It’s official: salmon cooked in the dishwasher, complete with dishes and soap, is not only delicious but a boon for the lazy person (e.g., me).” *

The post was lit up with comments. Several people expressed disbelief and fired off questions to help them make sense of it. What do you put it in? Aluminum foil. What’s the benefit to using the dishwasher instead of the oven? It’s brainless. It’s effortless. The experimental cook had a quick response for everyone—even the friend who declared her stark raving mad. “Come try it, flaked into pasta with peas and a light alfredo sauce,” she typed. “Then tell me I’m mad.”

The editor who had passed the idea along to me wouldn’t try it. Her reasoning: she is a more sophisticated cook than that. Another co-worker said he didn’t eat salmon. And another was without a dishwasher. So, I volunteered to be the guinea pig and put the technique to the test.

Materials and Methods

I went to my local Whole Foods, where I briefly considered buying small portions of both salmon and steak, so that if the “surf” turned out to be mushy mess, my husband and I could at least enjoy the “turf.” But, ultimately, I decided to go all in and bought a large salmon fillet. If the fish wasn’t cooked through after one dishwashing cycle, I figured I could salvage it by baking it the oven.

The dishwasher-specific recipes I found on the internet were all quite similar, and seemed simple enough. I tore off two sheets of aluminum foil, placed one on top of the other and drizzled some olive oil on it. Then, I placed the salmon fillet on the foil and lightly seasoned it with salt, pepper and lemon juice. Some recipes recommend adding dill as well, but not a fan of the herb, I decided to kick it up a bit more with some lemon pepper and topped it with a tab of butter. Next, I folded the foil over the fillet, flattened it and tightly folded all the edges.

I put the wrapped fillet in the top rack of the dishwasher and set the dial to a normal cycle. Several sources say that as long as the foil is tightly sealed, you can run a full load of dishes with detergent. But, for the purposes of this experiment, I opted to play it safe and ran the dishwasher empty.

Results

I was more keenly aware of the gushes and wooshes of my dishwasher knowing that my dinner was being subjected to them all. But when the cycle was complete, I peeled open the foil to find a rather normal looking fillet of salmon (with the exception of the foamy layer of butter—if you try this at home, I might suggest leaving that off). More importantly though, it was, in fact, cooked to perfection.

Discussion

I can see how cooking your dinner in a loaded dishwasher is like killing two birds with one stone. Combining the two tasks into one is environmentally friendly and could save you some on your electricity bill. But I didn’t find the process any simpler than baking the fish in the oven (aside from the fact that I didn’t have to clean a baking dish). The prep work was about the same. And the cooking time was significantly longer. I hadn’t ever paid attention to the length of my dishwasher’s cycle, but it was an hour and a half, and a hungry one at that! Needless to say, I won’t be making a routine of it. But it was well worth the experiment.

If you want to amaze dinner guests or your kids, I suggest you try it!

*The author of the Facebook post was Amy Rogers Nazarov, a food and technology writer who blogs at www.wordkitchen.net/blog. She is now weighing the pros and cons of cooking a steak on the engine of her 2005 Toyota Matrix.

A heart-shaped meatloaf, courtesy of Flickr user Clearly Ambiguous.

I love funny family stories, the kind that get told over and over again and get better with age. My family certainly has its fair share, but since I started dating my husband six years ago, I’ve heard a whole slew from the annals of his family’s lore.

There’s the story of my mother- and late-father-in-law and the honeymoon picnic. That one takes place in 1973, somewhere en route from Central Nebraska to Yellowstone, and ends with a pesky swarm of bees. Then there’s the story of Ryan (my husband) and the unslurpable peanut butter milkshake. They sound, I realize, like the titles of Berenstain Bears books. And, oddly, most revolve around food. One story, in particular, is always revisited on Valentine’s Day.

To set the scene: My mother-in-law lives in Grand Island, Nebraska, a city of about 50,000 people that has slipped, in recent years, from third to fourth largest in the state. Grand Island is an exit off of Interstate 80, the highway that runs from Teaneck, New Jersey, to San Francisco, bisecting the country. The place (and my mother-in-law, for that matter) is as Midwestern as it gets. As my husband puts it, draw an “X” over the United States and you mark the spot.

Karen lives on a tree-lined street that reminds me of the one Marty McFly drives his DeLorean down during Back to the Future. Being there feels a bit like traveling back in time. It’s the land of casseroles and fine folks, where the biggest event of the day may be a porch visit from a neighbor. And it’s great—especially when you are looking for a change of pace from a big city.

A pizza made with love, courtesy of Flickr user smiteme.

It’s not a fancy place. Patrons of one of the most popular restaurants in town, Texas T-Bone, are free to toss peanut shells on the concrete floor. So, naturally, Karen and her husband often kept things pretty simple for Valentine’s Day. Occasionally, they would exchange cards. Other times, while grocery shopping, they would just show each other the Valentines they would have gotten. “I’m practical,” Karen says. She would usually urge him not to, but Clark, Karen’s husband, loved to buy her roses. And they would usually opt to prepare a dinner at home. “Because [at restaurants] it was always crowded—well, as crowded as Grand Island can be,” she says.

So, on a particularly cold Valentine’s Day, in 2005, Karen decided she would fix something warm and hearty: a meatloaf. (I called her today just to hear the story again.) “I hardly ever made meatloaf, and he loved it,” she says. At the very last minute, she shaped it into a heart. Though she claims it was not a big deal—just a “little meatloaf of love”—she says, “I pulled it out of the oven. I did the whole close your eyes deal. And you would have thought I had given this man the world.”

Karen is the shutterbug of the family, but it was Clark who said, “Go get the camera.” The photo is buried in a box somewhere, or else I’d share it. But I can imagine what it looks like—Clark grinning ear to ear over that heart-shaped meatloaf. I searched Flickr.com for some sort of replacement, not expecting much, and was surprised to find a few other meatloaves made with love. When I tell Karen, she laughs. “I thought I was being so original,” she says. “It must be a hot thing!”

Every Valentine’s Day, people eat heart-shaped foods—chocolates, conversation hearts, cut-out sugar cookies, sandwiches with the crusts artistically lopped off and maybe even pancakes or fried eggs. But, even a meatloaf hater like myself has to appreciate my mother-in-law’s creativity. Inspired by it, I made a heart-shaped pizza a couple of years ago.

What crazy culinary things have you done in the name of love?

Isaly's chipped chopped ham, courtesy of Flickr user Brian Butko.

As ecstatic as my husband would be if I were, I am not a die-hard fan of any one team, be it football, baseball, basketball or hockey. So when he asked me the other night whether I’d be rooting for the Green Bay Packers or the Pittsburgh Steelers in the Super Bowl, I had to chew it over a bit.

He filled me in on statistics that others might normally take into consideration, like the fact that the Steelers have won more Super Bowl titles (six) than any other team. But my thoughts quickly veered from the teams’ talents to the places from which they hail. Then, soon enough, it was on to the cities’ food offerings.

Food is always on my mind, but I would be willing to bet that, for most people, it’s not that great a leap to make when talking about the Super Bowl. Along with clever new commercials, good grub is an essential part of the viewing experience.

Last year, in honor of the New Orleans Saints making it to the Super Bowl, fellow F&T blogger Lisa Bramen paid due homage to gumbo, suggesting that readers incorporate the stew into their game-day menus. Maybe Pittsburgh and Green Bay aren’t as revered for their cuisine as New Orleans is, but, with a little research, I found a few interesting food traditions.

Pittsburgh Delicacies

To eat “locally,” so to speak, a Pittsburgh native might suggest you try one of these “Steel City” dishes:

City Chicken. Despite its name, this meal contains absolutely no chicken. The Pittsburgh favorite is basically cubes of veal and pork on skewers, rolled in flour or breadcrumbs and then baked or fried. The recipe took root during the Great Depression, when veal and pork were cheaper than chicken. The 1936 version of The Joy of Cooking refers to them as “Mock Chicken Drumsticks (City Chicken)” because the idea was to assemble a drumstick-shaped kebab out of scraps of other meat. Apparently, some grocery store butchers in Pittsburgh sell packages of cubed pork or veal with a handful of skewers labeled “city chicken.”

Chipped Ham. Most people who grew up in Pittsburgh “Remember Isaly’s,” as the dairy-turned-deli-meat-brand’s slogan harps. The establishment’s chipped chopped ham, a Spam-like loaf of ground ham that’s “chipped” into razor thin slices at the deli counter, became popular after World War II and has stuck around ever since. (According to Isaly’s Web site, Steelers fans across the country have it shipped in for big games.)  Traditionally, the ham is fried in a skillet, doused in Isaly’s own barbecue sauce, and then piled high on a bun. But there are many spinoffs: chipped chopped ham scramble, creamed chipped chopped ham over biscuits, chipped chopped ham, rice and spinach casserole….

Pittsburgh-Style Steak. Actually, in Pittsburgh, it’s just called “black and blue.” The steak is cooked so that it is charred on the outside but rare on the inside. Lore has it that Pittsburgh steelworkers used to bring slabs of meat to work and slap them on exposed metal, like a hot furnace, to cook them in this way.

And when it comes to dessert, especially at wedding receptions, Pittsburghers are all about cookie tables.

Snacks for a Packer Backer

For some insider knowledge, I consulted Ray Py of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, whose daughter Beth Py-Lieberman is an editor here at Smithsonian. When it comes to the Super Bowl, he says, it’s mainly beers and brats. But, throughout the year, the Green Bay area offers some of these specialties:

German Beer Spread with Wisconsin Swiss and Cheddar Cheese. Among the usual suspects—chicken wings, chili and nachos—that Mr. Py found listed on the menus of some of his local Super Bowl buffets was something I hadn’t heard of before: German beer spread. I found a recipe from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, a nonprofit funded by dairy farmers that promotes more than 600 kinds of Wisconsin cheese. (Green Bay fans are cheeseheads, remember.) The spread is made by mixing shredded cheese, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, garlic and a dark German beer in a food processor and then served on crackers or rye bread.

Pan-Fried Walleye. The Friday night fish fry is a Wisconsin tradition, which began when German Catholic immigrants populated the area and observed meatless Fridays during Lent. Sometimes cod and perch are served, but a staple freshwater fish is the walleye, plucked from the Great Lakes. The fish is often battered or pan-fried with a lemon butter sauce, though there are countless ways to prepare it.

Booyah. “People will argue until the Holsteins come home about what the proper ingredients are,” Terese Allen, a food columnist for Madison’s Isthmus newspaper, has said. But booyah is a stew of meats, usually chicken and beef, and vegatables, such as onions, celery, carrots, onions, potatoes, cabbage, corn and green peas, often cooked in large kettles for church picnics and county fairs. From what I’ve read, it originated in Belgium, and its name is thought to be derived from “bouillon,” the French word  for broth. One local, in an article in the Green Bay Post-Gazette on October 29, 1976, claimed his father had something to do with the naming of the dish. He said that his father had approached the paper about advertising a “bouillon” supper he was hosting at the school where he taught, but the reporter instead heard “booyah” and published it as such.

Ultimately, I’ve decided to rally behind the Steeler Nation. I was born in Pittsburgh, and although I only lived there for my first six weeks and for about a year when I was four, I have to go with my roots.

If you haven’t drawn your allegiance, though, I say go with your gut.

Pictured above, are three Neanderthal teeth that Dolores Piperno and her colleagues sampled. Copyright, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Neanderthals and modern humans coexisted in Europe between 44,000 and 30,000 years ago and perhaps in the Middle East even earlier, between 100,000 and 60,000 years ago. But, ultimately, it was the modern humans that survived, while the Neanderthals died out.

To better understand the extinction of Neanderthals, Dolores Piperno, senior scientist and curator of archaeobotany and South American archaeology at the National Museum of Natural History, asked a question that has been on a lot of anthropologists’ minds: “Were humans more sophisticated about the food quest in ways that allowed them to more efficiently capture food or capture kinds of foods and calories that Neanderthals couldn’t?”

One popular view is that Neanderthals were largely carnivorous, eating big game, while modern humans had a more diversified diet, including marine resources, small animals and plant foods. But a recent study by Piperno and her colleagues, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provides ammo for an argument that Neanderthals were gatherers, as well as hunters. “What we showed,” says Piperno, “was that Neanderthals exploited, in part, the same kinds of plants that modern humans would come to exploit.”

Figures a-c are starch grains the researchers recovered from the Neanderthal teeth from Shanidar Cave, while figures d-f are examples from the plants of modern specimens. Copyright, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

So, how did they prove it? Piperno has been honing a method to study the diets of early humans from the food particles preserved in calculus, a type of plaque buildup, on fossilized teeth. So, once she and her colleagues decided on seven Neanderthal teeth—three found in Shanidar Cave in Iraq and in the Smithsonian’s collection, and four from Spy Cave in Belgium housed at the Institute Royal des Sciences Naturalles de Belgique—they got to work. In the plaque, they found starch grains from wild grass, legumes, roots, tubers, palm dates and other plants they have yet to identify. Also, some of the grains showed signs of having been chemically altered. For comparison’s sake, the researchers did some experimental cooking with some of the same grains, collected from the National Herbarium at the Natural History Museum and other sources. What they concluded was that Neanderthals did, in fact, cook some of the plants, and, as the study states, invested “time and labor in preparing plant foods in ways that increased their edibility and nutritional quality.”

To use plant resources, Neanderthals had to have had a handle on the appropriate times of year to harvest, says Piperno. The finding raises other questions about their behavior as well. Were Neanderthals practicing some kind of division of labor, as modern humans did, with women gathering and men hunting? “If evidence of plant exploitation as we demonstrated continues to build,” she says, “I think we’re going to have to consider that factor.”

According to Piperno, no single scenario, like diet, is going to explain how modern humans outcompeted Neanderthals. “This is a single study like this,” she adds, “and I think other people now will do this work, look at other Neanderthal fossils and look at other time periods when Neanderthals occupied Europe and Asia.”

Coralscape, by Carl Warner. Is that blowfish made out of a radish? And a jellyfish sculpted from a lychee?

I have always been a fast eater, and even as a kid I was not picky. So I never really built log cabins with my carrots or sculpted my mashed potatoes into gravy-spewing volcanoes.

With the exception of scrawling smiley faces with his catsup, says Carl Warner, he didn’t play much with his food, either. Yet in 1999, the British still life photographer gathered some portobello mushrooms at a market and assembled and photographed them in a way that made them appear like massive trees on the African savannah. The experience changed the way he looked at food. He began to envision coconuts as haystacks, ribeye beef joints as mountains and fortune cookies as folded rugs.

Warner has since made a career of capturing whimsical “foodscapes”: a smoked salmon sea rimmed with new potato and soda bread boulders, the Tuscan countryside with Romano pepper Cypress trees and a London skyline complete with a Big Ben of green beans and a rhubarb-spoked London Eye, among others. His work, reminiscent of Guiseppe Arcimboldo‘s edible portraits, appears in his new book Carl Warner’s Food Landscapes.

Last week, I spoke with the photographer about his unique relationship with food.

I think everyone looks at broccoli and naturally sees little trees. But you take that much further.

It was just a progression from that to see what other things reminded people of. I didn’t really think at first that there were many other opportunities. I thought broccoli was the major player. But I was just exploring what else could be achieved using food. Now, I’m making houses out of loaves of bread, submarines out of aubergines and all sorts of things. It’s like being aware of a palette of colors and saying, well, everyone knows red, but what else is there? You suddenly realize that there is a whole spectrum of colors you can use.

What ingredient have you found to be the most versatile?

Definitely the kale. Curly kale. It’s a very robust green cabbage. You can pin it to distant mountains and make it look like rainforest or you could have it as bushes in the foreground. It’s very tough stuff, as opposed to something like coriander, which will just kind of wilt the moment you cut it from the pot and stick it under the light. Coriander is a beautiful herb. The leaf shape is wonderful. But I know, if I’m using it, then I am just going to put it on at the last minute, when everything is ready to shoot.

What else is difficult to work with?

I think anything that dries out quickly. We treat stuff like avocado, for example. You have to soak it in lemon juice to preserve it for longer. If you cut slices of potato, it will quickly discolor. There are certain chemicals that we will put potato in that will keep it white all day long. We will cheat like that in order to save having to keep replacing it.

In your book, you mention a time when you used the skin of an apple to create a red roof. Are there other instances where you think you’ve worked an ingredient into the landscape so well that it is unrecognizable as itself?

Yes, I think a lot of that goes on. For example, in the fishscape, the roofs of the houses there are made out of seaweed. But I prefer people to be able to find them and discover them themselves, like a Where’s Waldo type thing. It kind of defeats the objective if they are not recognizing it as food. Sometimes I think I’ve gone too far and I have to sort of rein it back a bit and keep a simplicity there so that people have the knowledge of the ingredients and therefore appreciate that.

Where do you find your inspiration?

The inspiration comes from the natural world, but also ideas come from films and books. I think often the works are a mixture of many different influences. The broccoli forest, for example, is a slight homage to my love of Ansel Adams’s work. It’s got that sort of Yosemite Valley feel. But at the same time, it has a yellow turmeric path, which is the yellow brick road. We stuck peas into the broccoli trees, which kind of reminds me of those trees in The Wizard of Oz that throw apples at Dorothy when she discovers the Tin Man.

Has it changed the way you sit down to dinner?

No, not really. I love cooking, and I am real foodie. But I have a very different hat on when I’m cooking at home. When we spend all day pinning and gluing and sticking wires down green beans, the last thing I feel about my work is hungry. I see the food as having made the scenes, but I don’t get a mouth-watering appetite appeal from the food at all. I just see them as props.

After a shoot, you divvy up the food with your team. So, what is the strangest thing you’ve cooked from the leftovers?

I turned up with a bag of stuff after the end of a shoot and my wife just kind of said, right, okay, so we’ve got like 15 packets of green beans and four cauliflowers. I think what I bring home quite often tends to be a bit like one of those veg boxes, where you have to be inventive and creative. You need to get the cookbook out and say, what can I do with okra? And what can I do with that or this root vegetable? Beetroot is a wonderful thing if you find some great recipes to do. Roast them in the oven with balsamic vinegar and serve them with steak, and all of a sudden it’s like, let’s go for it. I’ve got four kids, so we’re always trying to encourage them to try different things, eat healthily, appreciate what’s grown locally and eat what’s in season.

What’s next?

There are many, many food things that I want to do: Thai floating markets, the Taj Mahal. I’d like to make Venice out of pasta. There is no end to it really. I am working on a children’s book where we are making different landscapes out of one color. We built this wonderful orange landscape made out of pumpkins, cheese, clementines, kumquats, carrots and dried apricots. I am also trying to get a children’s animated TV series off the ground. My idea is that it would be to food education what Sesame Street is to literacy. I think it is really needed at this time to combat a lot of the problems we face here in the U.K. and I know that you face in the U.S. I don’t want my work to just be pretty pictures made out of food. I want it to be used as a vehicle to do some good and to bring about a change in our food culture. My work brings a smile to people’s faces. It’s nice for people to think, if this man can do this with the contents of his fridge, then what else can we do?

Energy gels, courtesy of Flickr user nicholaslaughlin

Thirty percent of New Year’s resolutions made by Americans this year relate to weight, diet and health, according to a recent survey by the Barna Group, a Ventura, California-based research firm focused on the intersection between faith and culture. Unfortunately, a rather grim statistic glares those resolute Americans in the eye: nearly half of those who made commitments last year reported that they had experienced “no change” in their behaviors.

Inevitably, every January, I watch this saga play out around me in my office gym. There is a noticeable bump in traffic early in the month, but it gradually dwindles. As a runner, I try to maintain a level of fitness throughout the year, but I am certainly not impervious to the challenges of staying motivated. Things definitely shake my resolve. I always struggle when Daylight Savings Time ends in the fall. With it getting dark earlier, I opt to work out over my lunch hour instead of after work. But even that presents its problems. It’s often hard to tear away from work, and when I do, I usually run on a hungry stomach. The predicament has gotten me more and more interested in finding the perfect workout snack—something that gives me a needed boost but doesn’t slosh around in my stomach.

A couple of years ago, while training for a marathon, I experimented with stashing an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie in the pocket of a fuel belt I wore around my waist during long runs. While it, and other snacks, I’ve since read, such as Fig Newtons, Sweet Tarts, graham crackers, dried fruit, orange slices and, if it’s not too hot out, fun-size candy bars, can tide you over, there is a pretty wide selection of energy snacks tailored specifically to an athlete’s needs. (Note: Re-fueling is usually recommended after running or biking 45 minutes.)

At first, I’ll admit, they seem about as appealing, and foreign, as astronaut food (hence, my cookie), but they are worth a try. There seem to be two categories of energy snacks, and the difference takes me back to my pediatrician and the question she’d ask: liquid or chewable?

The first is energy gel. Gu Energy Gel, PowerBar Energy Gel and Clif Shot are three popular brands, and each comes in at least a one-ounce, 100-calorie packet, shaped much like a sample of lotion. They are easy to carry, and, with sugars, electrolytes and, occasionally, caffeine, they pack a punch. The products’ makers recommend consuming one to three packets (with a few gulps of water each packet) every hour of exercise to help maintain energy levels.

The second type comes in the form of fruit chews and, believe it or not, jelly beans. Clif Bar Shot Bloks, Gu Chomps, Power Bar Blasts and Honey Stinger Energy Chews contain about the same amount of calories per serving (from three to 10 pieces) as half of a gel packet. They re-supply the body with carbohydrates, usually antioxidants and sometimes amino acids and caffeine. It is recommended that they be eaten in different intervals, depending on the brand, starting after 45 minutes of exercise. Jelly Belly has even come out with sport beans to nosh on while running.

People seem to discover something they like, in a flavor they like, and then stick with it. Personally, I think the pudding-like gels are a bit messy and sit funny in my stomach, and the jelly beans, 20 miles into a marathon, can be exhausting to chew. But for me, the Cran-Raz Shot Bloks are just right.

What energy snacks do you prefer?

Beer guru Greg Engert recommends some sparkling beers to toast this New Year's Eve in lieu of champagne. Courtesy of Powers & Crewe.

Perhaps it is because I associate it with that stomach-ache-inducing sparkling grape juice I gulped down during so many New Year’s Eves as a kid, but I am not a huge fan of champagne.

So my ears perked up when I heard that the Boston Beer Company (the maker of Samuel Adams) and Germany’s Weihenstephan, the world’s oldest brewery, were teaming up to unveil a bubbly brew called Infinium that blurred the line between sparkling wine and beer, just in time for the holidays. The festive effervescence of champagne with the hoppy flavor of beer sounded like it could be the perfect combination, and I wondered if there were other “toastable” hybrids out there.

Greg Engert seemed to be the guy to ask. He is the beer director at ChurchKey, a swanky beer bar in northwest Washington, D.C., and Birch & Barley, its sister restaurant downstairs, where he curates an impressive collection of craft beer: 500 bottles, 50 taps and five cask-conditioned ales. Both the bar and restaurant, which opened in October 2009, have been huge successes, and Engert’s hand in them hasn’t gone unnoticed. In April, Engert became the first-ever beer professional to be named one of Food & Wine magazine’s “Sommeliers of the Year.”

Engert was preparing for ChurchKey’s big New Year’s bash (tickets still available for an open bar of 55 drafts and samples from Greg’s “secret stash”) when I spoke with him earlier this week. ”I wouldn’t say I dislike champagne per se,” he said, “but I find that flavor options for sparkling wine are only subtly different. Craft beer, on the other hand, always provides the effervescence of a sparkler, but can do so with a wider range of tastes and aroma. You can enjoy roasty or even smoky flavors, caramel, toffee, toasty and nutty notes, herbal and citric hop freshness, or even fruit and spice aromatics that tend toward the darker side—plum, raisin, cherry—or lighter—peach, banana, apple.”

Engert seemed as ebullient as the beers he has on tap, explaining how the methods of making beer and champagne can be quite similar. A popular trend, he says, is for beers to undergo a secondary fermentation at a winery, in much the same way that sparkling wine does. And, as I had hoped, he offered up some recommendations.

So, now, without further ado, I present to you Engert’s top picks for beers to toast this New Year’s Eve!

Bubbly & Brut-esque: DeuS: Brut Des Flandres | Brouwerij Bosteels | East Flanders, Belgium

This beer is fittingly titled the “Brut” of Flanders, as much of its production mirrors that of the finest brut wines of France, albeit crafted of malted barley initially in the Flemish north. The straw pallor signals the intense dryness to come, no doubt engendered in congress with the méthode traditionnelle*. Post primary fermentation it is dosed with sugar and wine yeast, then carried to Rheims, France (the capital of all things Champagne). Only there is it bottled where it can continue to re-ferment for three to four weeks. More than a year’s maturation at cellar temperature then occurs, after which is riddling (3 to 4 weeks), then disgorgement. What remains is an ethereal brew, delicately emboldened.                                                                 * Note: Though Engert’s other three picks are brewed by similar methods, this is the only one made in the méthode traditionnelle.

Bubbly & Roasty: Black OPS | Brooklyn Brewery | New York

Here is an imperial stout loaded with intensely deep flavors of cocoa, caramel and espresso that is further layered by its four-month maturation in oak barrels once used to age Woodford Reserve Bourbon. Vanilla, spice, toast and coconut tastes abound in a brew that might have ended up heavier on the palate had it not been bottled flat, then re-fermented with wine yeast normally reserved for primary fermentation in sparkling wine. Black OPS ends up neither heavy nor sticky, but rather creamy and tantalizing while losing nothing of its mature character.

Bubbly & Tart & Funky: Hanssens Oude Gueuze | Hanssens Artisanaal | Flemish Brabant, Belgium

The “Champagne of Beers” as a moniker could have originally been applied to Gueuze Lambic, the classic-rustic brew of the Payottenland, a valley surrounding the river Zenne, which flows through—and even under—Brussels. While beer has been brewed in countless regions for hundreds, if not thousands, of years, this region has altered their brewing path very little over the centuries. Airborne wild yeasts and bacteria begin the ale’s ferment, and continue along with a hoard of microscopic brethren in oak casks for a number of years. The Gueuze style is naturally re-fermented, but not by some careful “méthode” or more modern bottle conditioning practice; the Gueuze is a blend of Lambic that has wildly fermented in oak barrels for one, two and three years. The still hungry and now starved micro flora of the three-year-old thread feed upon the as yet unfermented one- and two-year-old beers’ sugars and a natural fermentation results. Sparkling, yes. But wildly tart, earthy and even funky. These are rare craft-made ales that not only astound in their astonishing simplicity, but also stand as a sort of revenant of what beer once was…and is. And will be.

Bubbly & Hoppy: Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Grand Cru | Our Brewers Reserve, Sierra Nevada Brewing Company | California

This is the final installment in the series of artisanal beers brewed to celebrate Sierra Nevada’s 30 years of craft brewing. It consists of two hoppy brews (Celebration Ale & Bigfoot), aged in oak barrels, then blended with fresh Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. While malty and firm on the palate, with vanilla notes from the wood, it exudes huge herbal and citric hop notes in the nose. Stunningly generous, as the re-fermentation serves to exude powerful effervescence that both brightens the texture and pushes the aromatic envelope as well.

Dinner party, courtesy of Flickr user Amelia-Jane.

Entertaining friends and family is a big part of the holiday season. In my family, after we have nibbled on appetizers and enjoyed a meal and the dessert plates have been cleared from the table, it’s game time. Literally.*

If you are a game lover (or are just looking for some excitement), consider playing these games—some bought, some improvised—at your next dinner party.

*Warning: Wait 30 minutes after eating before charading.

Conversation Starters

Whether the group you’re hosting consists of lifelong friends, new acquaintances or a combination of both, Table Topics is a game with, according to its tag line, “Questions to Start Great Conversations.” It is a simple concept. The game consists merely of a deck of cards with questions on each, and the maker has come out with decks of different themes—Dinner Party, Not Your Mom’s Dinner Party and Gourmet, among others. From the original deck: “If you could do something dangerous just once with no risk what would you do?” And from the gourmet deck: “Which celebrity chef would you most like to fix you a meal?” Find out things about your friends that you might never have known.

Another game, called the Game of Things, takes this idea to the next level. A card might say: “Things people do when no one is looking” or “Things dogs are actually saying when they bark.” Each player writes down an answer, and the object of the game is to guess who wrote what. The board game can be improvised if your group comes up with a pile of “Things” prompts. But, I have to say, the topics that come with the game generate hilarious answers.

Trivia

There are so many trivia board games out there that you can pretty much play to a common interest of your group. If you are all fans of TV shows like The Office or Seinfeld, there are games that will challenge you to recall famous quotes and scenes. I recently saw a game called Name Chase, perfect for history buffs, that provides facts and clues about historical figures. The fewer clues you need in order to guess the person correctly, the higher your score. And if you are serious foodies, Foodie Fight, with over 1,000 food-related trivia questions, might be a good choice.

Taboo-Style Games

Catch Phrase has always been a party favorite among my friends. The hand-held electric game provides a word, and, in typical Taboo fashion, you have to describe the person, place or thing (without using the word in question) in a way that will enable your team to guess it. Then you quickly pass it around the room. Whichever team has it when the time runs out loses the round.

What’s great about the game “Celebrity” is that it requires only some paper and pens. Every player submits three or so names of famous people or fictional characters to a hat. The group is divided into two teams and the names into two cups. Each team has an allotted time, say two minutes, to pass their cup around and get through as many names as they can. In the first round, when you draw a name, you can give any clues to help your teammates guess. Then, the names are returned to the cup, and in the second round, you can only say one word and then you have to act out clues. The final round (and the hope is that you get through many names in the first round so that you are familiar with the celebrities in the cup) is purely charades.

In my opinion, this “Celebrity” is more entertaining than the version in which each person at the table writes a famous person’s name on a post-it note, sticks it to a neighbor’s forehead and then asks and answers yes-or-no questions until everyone discovers their post-it identities.

Easy Classics

For the game “Psychiatrist,” one member of the group volunteers to be the psychiatrist and leaves the room while the remaining revelers decide on an ailment. The ailment isn’t an illness in the traditional sense. For instance, you may decide that you will all act as if you are the person to your right. Then the psychiatrist returns and asks questions until he or she successfully diagnoses the group.

This last one risks creating some contrived conversation, but it can be fun. The host of the party pens some outlandish phrases (i.e. “I am loose as a goose” or “It tastes like pickled peppers”) on strips of paper and hides one (or perhaps three, ranging from easy to medium to hard) under each dinner plate. Guests read the phrases to themselves when they sit down to dinner, and then the object is to work them into the conversation as naturally as possible. Try to call out when you think others are using their assigned phrases, and the person able to slip in the most, unnoticed, wins.

My family's antipasto. Photo courtesy of Karen Reese.

Three years ago, on Thanksgiving morning, I gathered all the ingredients—lettuce, salami, prosciutto, aged provolone cheese, roasted red peppers, black olives, stuffed green olives and marinated mushrooms, eggplant and artichokes—for the coveted antipasto salad.

The salad is actually rather simple to make, and yet my family glorifies it as an art form. We eat it only on holidays, and, in recent years, it has become my job to assemble the dish, as family members congregate—and commentate—around the kitchen counter. (I’ll be making one for Christmas.) Layering the meats, cheeses and vinegary vegetables in the right way is key, and my older brother is usually quick to point out if I do things in the wrong order—or to slap wandering hands attempting to pluck olives.

On this particular Thanksgiving though, it was my boyfriend Ryan who was the first to question the artist’s methods. “I think you forgot something,” he said. I shot him a look, or so I’m told, as if to say, how would you know? (He partook in the antipasto tradition with my family at previous Thanksgivings, but wasn’t a fan. According to him, the eggplant is too slippery, and the mushrooms are, well, mushrooms.)

He ducked into the laundry room and, when he returned, planted a ring box on the countertop in front of me. Now, most people would think this an odd time for a marriage proposal. Luckily, I hadn’t yet dunked my hands into the jar of oily artichokes. But to me, it was perfect. The making and eating of antipasto at holidays is a family tradition, and he was becoming family.

As far as I know, the family tradition began with my Italian Grandma Bellino, teaching her daughter, my Aunt Bella, how to arrange the platter. Aunt Bella, in turn, taught my mother, who then taught me. But I’m sure I come from a longer line of antipasto makers. Meaning “before the meal,” antipasto has long been the first course of formal Italian feasts.

The dish, as chef and Mediterranean cooking expert Joyce Goldstein notes in her 2006 book Antipasti, has and continues to go by a number of names. In early Roman times, it was called antecoena (before the cena or “meal”) and gustatio or gustum (from the verb gustare, meaning “to enjoy”). But today, Italians might call it stuzzichini (from stuzzicare, “to pick”) or assaggi, meaning “little tastes.” Perhaps my favorite term, used in Puglia, the heel of Italy’s boot, is apristomaco. Translation: stomach opener. Any Italian can appreciate that.

Apparently, to arrange the meats, cheeses and vegetables over a bed of lettuce, as we do, is an Italian-American interpretation (celebrity chefs Giada De Laurentis and Rachel Ray have their own recipes, even more heavy on the greens). The more authentic approach is to serve a spread of sliced meats, cheeses, seafood and grilled or marinated vegetables as appetizers at room temperature (more like these renderings by the Barefoot Contessa Ina Garten and Martha Stewart). A popular trend now is to turn antipasti (plural of antipasto) into a meal, as people do with Spanish tapas—something I can certainly endorse.

Mangia!