Tiny people in a world of big food. We love this surreal take on the world of food photography.  Big Appetites is a series of fine art photographs by Christopher Boffoli that have been exhibited all over the globe; as well as a coffee table book by the same name.

“The series presents tiny, meticulously detailed figures posed in real food environments, referencing both a cultural fascination with tiny things as well as an American enthusiasm for excess, especially in the realm of food.”

Playful yet political, the works are visual parables that warn against excess and mindless consumption of the American diet.

Condiment cleaners

Pasta car wash

Caramel salt workers

Peppercorn soccer

Rock candy ice fall

The book will be released in September 2013, and if you’re lucky enough to be in New York,  Boffoli’s series is also on display at the Winston Wächter Fine Art gallery through July 31, 2013

Bee beer, beeswax ice cream, honey crisps – the gourmet researchers at The Nordic Food Lab have had a hive mentality with their latest experiments.

Said Guillemette Barthouil: “With the exception of honey, bee products are mainly considered medicinal. We eat them not because they are good but because they are good for us. Yet the bee hive produces a wide palette of fascinating flavours, which is rather incredible considering they all come from the same small house and are produced by the same animal.”

And, so the culinary academic spent a few weeks researching the different components in order to make a dessert based solely on ‘the beehive’.

And you can make it too! Head over to their blog for the recipes.  Now all you need is a beehive.

Who are they?
Nordic Food Lab is a non-profit, self-governed organisation, established in 2008 by head chef of Noma Rene Redzepi and gastronomic entrepreneur Claus Meyer. Our purpose is to explore the building blocks of Nordic cuisine through traditional and modern gastronomies, and to share these results with chefs, academics, industry, and the public. From a houseboat in Copenhagen harbour, we investigate old and new raw materials and techniques, developing knowledge and ideas for the Nordic region and the world.

Blogger lanaloustyle.com has captured Dutch design and food evening: Linteloo at Weylandts beautifully. We reported on the event here.  Thank you Lana for your beautiful words and photographs!

An excerpt: “We experienced a sensory and visual delight that’s certainly difficult to explain. Starting with a wooden tree adorned with bird houses and nests filled with intriguing colourful ‘balls’. You had no idea what you were biting into, which made the experience all the more fun. Potted salmon in squid ink crumbs, Beetroot and spiced lime in beetroot crumbs and Saffron risotto rolled in parmesan snow… the flavours were exceptional and so creative.” Read the rest of Lana’s piece here.

Don’t play with your food. The Mensa Battle is an online community that strives to brighten up boring lunches by turning them into art. Mensa is the German word for canteen or cafeteria; and the challenge is for students to create something out of the food they’re served at university.

Let’s visit their Facebook page and show them what South Africa’s got!

How about a warm mug of Tetrahedral City? Or a slice of Mondrian?

The Blue Bottle Coffee Bar at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has been serving up desserts based on the works of artists, from Warhol to Lichtenstein Cake—and in a case of art being turned into cake, and then back into art, the 16 of April heralds the release of the Modern Art Desserts cookbook featuring 27 recipes.

Want a talking point at your next dinner party? Then grab the book from Amazon.

Here’s a sneak peek of what’s inside:

Bradford Cheese Plate
For beginner bakers, the simple cheese plate gets an upgrade with homemade buttermilk crackers, apricot butter, and savory slices of cheese arranged according to Mark Bradford’s layered, abstract paintings.

Mondrian Cake
Freeman’s white velvet cake and a chocolate ganache are carefully cut and arranged to resemble Piet Mondrian’s graphic works.

Fuller’s Hot Chocolate
Homemade marshmallows float in rich cocoa and are topped with sea salt for a delicious rendition of Buckminster Fuller’s Tetrahedral City.

Images source: www.dwell.com

Don’t let your boss see you playing these games; but we understand that it’s hard to get into a four-day work week, and you need something to ease you in. Here’s our pick of our favourite online foodie games.

Sautéed foie gras
This game is a basic cooking lesson where you sautée foie gras with caramelised apples. Play it here.

Grandma’s Kitchen
Poor granny! She has so many guests to cook for. Jump in and help her out. Play it here.

Coffee Tycoon
It’s up to you to keep this coffee shop afloat – warning this game will make you feel like drinking copious amounts of coffee. Play it here.

Cake Factory
You’re running the cake factory; and you need to bake the requested cakes on time. Press the switches, buttons and levers to setup a correct production line for your cakes. Be careful because the conveyor will start moving faster and faster! Play it here.

Sushi Style
Dive into a virtual sushi lesson in this stylish game and make your favourites. Play it here.

Visit www.cookinggames.com for more

The winelands are as pretty as a painting; from verdant vineyards to statuesque mountains and valley vistas. Our wine valleys are living works of art, and so are the wines that come from them. Wine and art go together like crackers and cheese, and we’re not only spoilt with a wealth of natural beauty but indeed many wine estates have superlative art collections.

On the Grapes and Art excursion our Art Curator, Ilse Schermers, will personally accompany you on tours of the chosen estates. You’ll begin at Glen Carlou Wine Estate, home to the largest, privately owned contemporary art collection in the world. Then you’ll enjoy their award-winning wine while looking out over their indigenous fynbos garden. After that discover the elegant Rupert Art Museum where over 350 contemporary South African paintings, sculptures and tapestries dating from the 1940 to 1970 periods are showcased. Finish up at Tokara, and enjoy the various art exhibitions on display in and around the wine cellar and tasting room: make sure to have a peek at the ‘wine made art’ unique to the estate.

OR

Immerse yourself in the oh-so fabulous world of Delaire Graff Estate; from the breath-taking gardens to the jaw-dropping collection of South African paintings and sculptures.

*Optional lunch at either Delaire Graff or Tokara. To Book Click Here.

Yesterday, acclaimed Brazilian chef Alex Atala took to the stage at The Design Indaba as a ‘Food Design’ speaker. He seduced the packed room with his passion for Brazil, indigenous ingredients and food philosophy. Some out-takes are:

“Old ideas can be more clever and modern than new ideas. New ideas tend to be driven by innovation, think of the phone to the smart phone.”

“What is creativity for a chef? It’s not doing something that’s not been done. It’s doing something surprising.”

“The best way to be global is to be local.”

At one point Margot Janse joined him on stage, so we asked her a few questions.

What did you do on stage?
Nothing! [laughs]. He said I was his translator, but I didn’t need to translate anything. My Portuguese is great. [laughs again].

How would you describe his cooking style?
He’s my hero, my inspiration. I really appreciate that he so respects his country and is proud of Brazil. He realises he has a responsibility to educate people about the amazing produce and culture. In his speech he spoke about reinventing and making food a surprise; you’re getting something that’s already done, but in a new way—and he shows respect to where it’s come from.

His food is not overdone, and he honours Brazil in such a deep way.

He’s coming to eat at The Tasting Room tonight?
Yes, and everybody is asking me what I’m going to give him. Well, what I usually do! But I’ll start off with suurvygies. I’ve visited his restaurant, D.O.M many times and I’ve given him baobab and buchu already!

What Brazilian ingredients piqued your interest?
All the strange and unbelievable things from the Amazon; from the wetland plant priprioca which he uses in desserts as you would vanilla, to jambu root which literally tastes  electric.

Peux je prendre un café et un croissant? Or ‘Can I order a coffee and croissant?’

Wouldn’t it be grand to sit at a side walk café in Paris and utter that magic phrase in French? These days anything is possible online. We’ve discovered an amazing, interactive site where you can learn a number of languages for free. The layout is easy to follow and the information is comprehensive. You can learn French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German and more. Plus you don’t have to do it alone; you can invite friends to complete the modules with you.

Do we want to learn a new language for free? I think the answer can only be, Oui! Go to duolingo.com and get started!

As we all know by now Searching for Sugarman won an Oscar last night! We’re so, so pleased and think this accolade is richly deserved for a story that’s so close to the hearts of South Africans.

We did some digging and found an article from August 2012, in The New Yorker about the documentary and the man himself, Sixto Rodriguez.

Here’s an interview excerpt from the article.

You said you were taking tips, looking for stories, when you found out about Rodriguez.
I had been working for Swedish National TV, the SVT, on something called “Cobra,” an arts and cultural show that did stories like you’d find in The New Yorker. But in 2006, I quit and went backpacking, looking for stories with a camera. In six months, I went to sixteen countries: Ethiopia, all the countries in Central America, and a few countries in South America. I went to many places. I found quite a few pretty good stories, but this was the one I was like, “Wow, this is like a fairy tale, this is scripted, this sounds too good to be true.” I fell in love, very, very much. I’d never spent more than four weeks on story before, and I spent four years on this. Normally, I get a salary when I work. I didn’t get any salary for four years.

You sacrificed a lot for this movie.
It was very hard to finance, it really was. The music and the illustrations and the editing was done by myself, but it wasn’t on purpose. I don’t think you should do that. I think you should collaborate with professionals, but I couldn’t because I didn’t get any funding. I borrowed money from friends and family. I didn’t really buy clothes for the last two years.

Is anybody working on that trail of money that Rodriguez hasn’t seen?
Rodriguez today still sells gold in South Africa—only in the last five years he sold another gold disc, but that money does not go to Clarence Avant. It goes to another company in England, and someone should investigate what happens with that money. I spoke to a South African lawyer who solved the case of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and he said, “Sure, we can solve this, but it will take three years and we will need some money because these things are difficult.”

I didn’t get too deep into what happens with Rodriguez’s record checks today, because the story is not really about money. We had a country during apartheid that was isolated, so we didn’t have any cultural exchange. The South African record labels didn’t search for him because they couldn’t bring him to South Africa anyway, it was a boycott. We had a guy who was living in a house without a telephone, which is not very common, and we had a time before the Internet, the third factor. I mean, there are a few factors that made this story happen and the money is only one of those factors, I think.

Have you figured out how many other people knew about this phenomenon?
We haven’t screened the film in South Africa, but there are South Africans that came to screenings. A South African told me, “Of course I knew all this already. I actually had this conversation with an American a few years ago.” He also said, “We were talking about something completely different, and I said, ‘That would be like the seventies without the Beatles, the Stones, and Rodriguez,’ and the American was like, ‘What did you just say?’ ” They talk about him in the same breath as those rock gods in South Africa.

Have people reached out to you that were part of that moment after the release of the movie?
There’s one story that’s pretty cool. In 1970, track number six on “Cold Fact” is called “Inner City Blues.” Next year, 1971, there’s an album by Marvin Gaye, called “What’s Goin’ On?,” released in Detroit. Track number nine is called “Inner City Blues.” On both those albums, you find the same guy, Bob Babbitt, an amazing bass player who just passed away two weeks ago. I called a year ago and asked him, “Is this a coincidence? Or did you tell Marvin Gaye the title of this completely unknown song?” He told me, and I think he was truthful, “I don’t remember anything. I don’t even remember Rodriguez.”

Go here to read the rest of the article.