the old bureau #2 • in the kitchen

the old bureau

in the kitchen

in the kitchen!

Kitchens are a space where life happens. Cooking, eating and sharing food has become a therapy to many people.

Kitchens can be a unifying space of warmth, communality, and nourishment both physically and mentally. It certainly says something that amidst the shortages of toilet paper and canned foods early in the Covid pandemic, there was also a conspicuous absence of flour and yeast on our supermarket shelves.

Food in itself can embody our personal histories as well as wider cultural histories. Whether consciously or unconsciously, the food we consume and the spaces we consume it in can become a facet of our personality. In the age of Instagram, food has teetered towards the performative, but that tattered and stained piece of paper divulging a well-loved family recipe ensures that for now, food is still rooted in the personal.

In the second issue of the old bureau we have taken a closer look at our kitchens. We are so thankful to all of our wonderful contributors and collaborators who have allowed us a glimpse into their kitchens, and their relationships to the space and its many offerings. As winter draws in, and while life is still far from being normal, hopefully some solace and order can be found in our kitchens. We hope you enjoy our second issue - it’s been a joy bringing it all together.

Izzy and Olivia

contents 3_____Tonia Di Risio 7_____Maria Ylvisaker 9_____‘Food on Screen: When Harry Met Sally…’

13____‘Crispy Sesame Chicken’ - Aldi 101’s recipe, illustrated by Sarah V 15____Adrienne Lichliter 19____‘Two Feminist Wars Fought in the Kitchen’ // Izzy Woods 25____Emma Goodwin 30____‘Cooking Tunes’ - illustrated by Caitlin 32____‘Emerald Dream Jellied Salad’ - Aralia’s recipe, illustrated by Cara 33____itookaphotoofyourshopping 37____‘Food on Screen: The Breakfast Club’ 44____Miles Angerson 45____Ximena Filomena 48____‘Quorn Spag Bol’ - Emma’s recipe, illustrated by Ella 49____‘Feast for the Eyes: Consuming Colour’ // Aralia Maxwell 55____Aralia Maxwell 57____Irina Grigoryeva 61____‘Food on Screen: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ 64____‘Yorkshire Puddings’ - Olivia’s recipe, illustrated by Izzy 65____‘Joe’s Tomato Pasta’ - Joe’s recipe, illustrated by Natalie 67____Jessica Wilson-Leigh 71____‘Wrap of the Gods’ - Izzy’s recipe, illustrated by Sarah H 72____‘Stranger Kitchens: The Secret Ingredient is Not Confidence’ 78____‘Ed & Hal’s Sausage Pasta’ - Ed and Hal’s recipe, illustrated by Rafaela 79____‘What We’re Loving Right Now…’ 81____Artists Bios 84____Credits & Notes

Tonia Di Risio 3

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Maria Ylvisaker

What's for dinner?

Do you remember what you ate for dinner the night your parents told you they were getting divorced? How about the first meal you made in your first apartment? What’s the dish your partner cooks that you secretly hate or the takeout you order every time you return from a trip?

The food we eat at home doesn't always make it to our social feeds, but it plays a part in how we see ourselves and the world around us. What's For Dinner? is a collaborative project about food, memory, and home. I'm creating a series of drawings with stories collected from friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers. I hope to gather many memories as a way of celebrating everyday moments in all the ways we experience them: happy, sad, banal, joyous, repetitive, unique.

I started this project in 2019, before eating at home became a matter of safety and necessity. I’m curious how this will shape eating habits in the future and hope to collect memories from this year as well as to continue gathering stories about the more distant past.

To share a story, visit https://tinyurl.com/whats-for-dinner.

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food on screen

(or olivia and izzy chat shit about things vaguely related to the scenes and films in question)

when harry met sally… (1989)

Harry and Sally eat at Katz’s and argue about women faking it Izzy: So this is not about the specific scene, but I remember trying to watch ‘When Harry Met Sally’ and I absolutely hated it. I was like, these people are so annoying, I hate them both, they’re the worst. But I gave it another chance and I was like, that wasn’t too bad. It’s still no ‘Bridget Jones’ or ‘Notting Hill’ or something. Or ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, which is amazing. But I will watch anything that Meg Ryan is in because she is beautiful and amazing and I love her.

Olivia: I’m not a really big rom-com fan, I haven’t seen ‘Sleepless in Seattle’, I haven’t seen ‘Notting Hill’, I haven’t seen most of these films. I only watched ‘Love, Actually’ like four years ago. And I can’t remember when I watched ‘When Harry Met Sally’, it was at some point during uni but I remember I really liked it. But I feel like they are really annoying. I feel like when I first saw it, I was like, this is great, but if I watched it again now, I don’t think I’d like them anymore. But it’s the only Meg Ryan film I’ve ever seen.

I: They actually reference this scene in ‘Notting Hill’.

They’re in a restaurant and they overhear this table of lads talking about this scene and how much they want to fuck Meg Ryan.

O: Is that the Julia Roberts one?

I: Yeah. It’s a very sweet film.

O: She’s so beautiful. I remember when I first saw ‘Pretty Woman’, which I didn’t see until last year, and I just

remember the whole film being like, Julia Roberts is so beautiful and that was the main thing I took away from it.

Everyone in the 80s had such good hair, whenever I watch 80s rom-coms all the women have this amazing hair. One of the things I wrote down about this scene was how much I’m obsessed with Meg Ryan’s hair. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: So the deli where they filmed this is Katz’s. In New York at the deli they have the table where they filmed it and they have a sign above the table and it says, hope you have what she had.

I: I bet it’s a site of pilgrimage.

O: I feel like if I went there I’d have to sit at that table. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: I want to have one of the sandwiches there.

I: I just want to go to New York and to eat all the food. I want to have bagels and I want to have a slice of pizza and I want to have a really nice sandwich.

O: If you went to New York, would you not be vegetarian while you were there?

I: I’ve thought about this a lot, Olivia, I won't lie to you. I don’t know, because most of the time I’m not fussed about meat, but there’s some times if I want to try something, I will just try it. I wouldn’t say that I’d definitely eat meat, but if there was something meat-based that I really wanted to try, then I probably would try it.

O: I feel like I would want one of those big pastrami sandwiches. That would be something I’d make an

exception for. There are specific places I’d want to go and make exceptions for, like I’d want to go to Milk Bar and have the crack pie which obviously isn’t vegan, but if I was going to that specific place then I’d want to have that.

There’s a lot of good vegan places in New York that I want to go to. There’s one, [Seasoned Vegan], that does a vegan po’boy sandwich, which to me sounds better than having one that’s actually shrimp.

I: When I listen to the Off Menu podcast, I feel like there’s loads of places in New York that they talk about, but also obviously because they’re both comedians and they have

a lot of comedians on, they talk so much about places in Edinburgh, and I want to go back and go to all these food places. But I was going to say when you were talking about the deli this was filmed in, I think it’s really funny thinking about all these really nothing-y cafes or whatever that have become sites of historical importance because of films or books. There’s that cafe in Edinburgh where JK Rowling supposedly started writing Harry Potter. I walked past it and it genuinely looks like the shittiest cafe but there’s queues of people.

O: I suppose with Katz’s, it’s been around for 100 years or something. It was already a symbol of New York before the film. I feel like even if that film hadn’t happened, you still would’ve had to queue to go there. It’s such an institution.

But it is weird going to places you’ve seen in films, when they’ve become more successful as a result of that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: I don’t understand her level of confidence, she does that whole performance and then she just immediately goes back to eating her salad as if the last few minutes didn’t happen.

I: I feel like Meg Ryan plays a lot of characters like that, very carefree.

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Adrienne Lichliter 15

My practice as a whole revolves around collecting uncontrived moments and marks. Whether it be dirtied concretes, painted over buildings, spills or tears, I love the pace and existence of something not derived from human manipulation. Often I deem paintings or lithographs finished only after I’ve torn them up and piled them. Regardless of how my art evolves, this vein is always present in some fashion. I also am a lover of meals – the meditation of cooking, the satisfaction from feeding people, the warmth of a wine and flavor induced conversation, and the erratic mess of a table that’s truly been dined upon. All of it.

In 2015 I started joining my love of sharing food and creating art, seeking to invigorate found moments off the table and from the cooking process onto paper, creating abstract maps of ingredients and drips. In my food grease lithographs, originally done for a collaborative project with a potter and a chef, I take ingredients from a dinner and use the food to transfer greases onto lithographic plates, processing them for print. In another effort I’ve documented table marks – drips, crumbs, spills, sweating glasses -- through a tracing process. The detail shown here is from a 9ft table shared by artists at an Alchemy Artist Residency on Toronto Island, Canada. Both processes connect nebulous forms with the human interaction shared meals promote, bringing a universal experience to the sometimes distant understanding of abstract art.

I’ve set this practice aside in the past years, but as the pandemic drones on I’m reengaging the process as a means of dealing with the longing of gathering at a table without worries of reaching across the table, double dipping, laughing hard, and all the other ill-advised etiquettes that make for the perfect shared meal. Delving back into these works feels like a letter written to a distant lover, letting them know you will soon again be in each other’s arms.

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Two Feminist Wars Fought in the Kitchen // Izzy Woods My favourite thing that I own is a wooden spoon, given to me on my previous birthday. It belonged to my grannie, and her mother before that. I spent a lot of time with Grannie in her kitchen, and I always insisted on using this particular spoon for whatever sweet treat we were concocting. It’s an unusual shape: instead of the oval shape you would expect from such a utensil, the bowl of this spoon has a sharp point with a beautiful rounded slope back down to the handle. When I asked Grannie why it looked like this she told me it had been slowly worn down over the last hundred years or so from the sheer pounding it was exposed to. As someone who is a sucker for some family history, this delighted me. The thought of this familial line of women, each beating cake mix, or Yorkshire pudding batter, or pastry, or whatever treat would be on the table that night to within an inch of its life was so wondrous to me. It still is, and I like that I am the next person to own this spoon.

To me now, the spoon embodies long histories of women working in the kitchen. Historically the role of food preparation and feeding was attributed to women because of their ability to breastfeed, with certain social conditions (namely lack of childcare and participation in the workforce), solidifying women’s role within the family. [1] As women were largely excluded from the workforce, they fulfilled this role by preparing dinner for their husbands, to be ready when they returned from work. [2] According to data published by Suzanne Bianchi, in 1965 women were cooking for over nine hours a week, in contrast to one hour for men. [3] Even after women were widely employed in the workforce during both world wars, once they were over they were expected to give up their wartime jobs and resume their roles as housewives.

Exacerbating this was the myriad of advertisements in the 50s, 60s and 70s which endorsed the role of women as homemakers.

While the idea of a kitchenless home has been part of Western feminist ideology since the 19th century, it wasn’t until the advent of second wave feminism that the kitchen explicitly became the Enemy Of Woman. To some second wave feminists, cooking reflected women’s oppressed status in society, both inside and outside the home. In 1968 a group of feminists dumped a pile of aprons in front of the White House, symbolically rejecting the traditional notion that cooking is women’s work. [4] Meanwhile Ann Oakley stated that “housework is directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualisation”, and called to abolish the housewife role. [5] Similarly, one of feminist magazine Spare Rib’s early subscription gifts was a purple dishcloth that read: ‘First you sink into his arms, then your arms end up in his sink.’ The magazine wanted to distance itself from the standard housewifey rhetoric found in publications like Woman’s Own, and banished cooking from its pages altogether. [6] As a result of this new wave of feminism, artists were compelled to reconsider domesticity, and to contest the nostalgic visions of the domestic sphere as a space of comfort and security that had been pushed onto women from the end of the second world war. [7] Feminist artists 19

Above: Nancy Woods in Miranda, 1954. Right: Martha Rosler, Hot Meat, c. 1966-72.

of the period turned to motifs of the kitchen, and domesticity in general to critique their relegation to the home and their depiction in pop culture. This mode of representation was revolutionary at the time, with feminist artists drawing from their own experiences, specific events and narratives from daily life. And of course for many of these artists, their daily life meant dealing with the expectation that they would be the ones putting dinner on the table.

Pop art began in the mid 1950s, quickly becoming a global movement that focused on a language of protest, often engaging with the changing societal order and the influence of mass consumption. Colours and motifs from popular culture became symbols for critiques of the current socio-political orders. While most Pop artists mirrored the patriarchal values found in the media, some feminist artists embraced popular culture to voice their ideology.

The sudden boom in consumerism meant there was an increase in the manufacture of household items, and given the nature of many of the advertisements selling them, feminist artists had much to critique in their work. While some of this work concentrated on the negative way women were presented as traditional objects of male possession, other artists presented the home as a liberating site of female creativity and sexuality. [8] Martha Rosler combined these two aspects of female experience, critiquing the patriarchy, consumerism and the pervasive sexism of popular culture.

Her series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain (1965) was disseminated in underground, mainly feminist, newspapers. In the series, a fridge, a washing machine and an oven are covered with cut-outs of female ‘meat’ from the pages of Playboy. The jarring combination of the domestic appliances with the images of women’s bodies causes the viewer to consider the contradictions in stereotypes of women, e.g. being domestic and docile but also sexual and objectified. This contradiction was analogous of women’s position in 1960s consumerist society, where, as Linda Nochlin argued, ‘women were the 20

Above: Rosler, still from Semiotics of the Kitchen, 1975. Right: Carrie Mae Weems, Untitled from Kitchen Table Series, 1990.

primary agents of consumerism and yet were frequently objectified in popular culture as if to be consumed.’ [9] Rosler also plays with the fragmentation of women’s bodies, and aptly calls this photomontage from the series Hot Meat, where the female body is shown only in part, chopped up like meat in a butcher’s shop, ready to be consumed.

In another of her works, Semiotics of the Kitchen (1975), Rosler again takes to the kitchen, this time in the form of a mock cooking show backdrop. In the video, she satirises the social construction of women as homemakers and engages with the absurdity of housewifery by presenting kitchen tools to the viewer in alphabetical order, creating a half cooking show, half children’s show parody. Lauzon describes her character as a “postwar suburban American housewife, part-automaton, part-renegade”. [10] As she works her way through the alphabet, her actions become more and more aggressive, highlighting the rage and frustration of oppressive women’s roles. Rosler reveals the home as a battlefield for the gender politics of the day and it is clear that the semiotics of this kitchen signify fury, resentment and containment.

Characteristic of these two works by Rosler and other feminist work at the time are the assumptions that underlie their critique: the conflation of white, heterosexual, cis, upper middle class housewives with a universal notion of ‘Woman’. As Western culture has become more open to hearing the voices of minorities, second wave feminism has rightly come under fire for its limited, Eurocentric scope, which focused primarily on the experiences of White women. bell hooks argued that for Black women, the home, far from a site of oppression, was traditionally a subversive space for critical consciousness and resistance, a space forged for women who were excluded from second wave feminism and the then patriarchal culture of Black Power.

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Carrie Mae Weems began her artistic practice in the wake of the Black activism of the 1960s and 1970s, and in a talk she gave at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, she explained that Kitchen Table Series (1990) was made at the time of great feminist writings, referring specifically to the work of Laura Mulvey (who coined the term ‘male gaze’).

Weems stated that work such as this didn’t have space to consider women of colour, and that their experience was not part of the critique. [11] Weems decided to show another way in which the female subject could be portrayed, this time focusing on the experiences of Black women.

The title of the series is of particular relevance since ‘Kitchen Table’ is also the name given to a publishing press formed in 1980 that published work by and about women of colour.

One of the founding members, Barbara Smith, said: “We chose our name because the kitchen is the center of the home, the place where women in particular work and communicate with each other. We also wanted to convey the fact that we are a kitchen table, grass roots operation, begun and kept alive by women who cannot rely on inheritances or other benefits of class privilege to do the work we need to do.” [12] Deborah Willis argues in her article ‘Translating Black Power and Beauty’ that the kitchen is symbolic in Weems’ work because while it was the place for cooking and eating, it also housed discussions which fuelled the political work of Black women. [13] The series consists of multiple tableaux of a young woman (portrayed by Weems) sitting in her kitchen, accompanied by a variety of figures in each photograph. There are almost two dozen photographs in the narrative, which explores a cycle of daily life. It’s important to address the one thing that is consistent among all the photographs in the series: the setting.

The audience is let into an intimate space, which contains a table and chairs, a door, vent and a single light, which illuminates each scene from above, acting almost as a spotlight on a domestic stage. The way that the scene is set suggests that there is another chair in the space beyond the picture plane, and that it is the viewer who occupies this seat. This device makes the scene more accessible, since the kitchen is traditionally a place where people are fed and cared for and where conversations take place. By opening up this space to the viewer, Weems presents something very universal and recognisable in one’s own life. In her book Reflections in Black, Willis states that: “The kitchen table is, for many of us, the spiritual place for open discussion.” [14] In presenting this familiar scene to us, Weems attempts to extend this open discussion to the audience, to help investigate themes of history, gender, race, and the way that these combine to form a cultural identity.

One of the photographs shows Weems playing cards with a male partner in a smoke filled kitchen. She references Georges de La Tour’s 1635 painting The Card Sharp with the Ace of Diamonds, which also depicts a game of cards. The setting of Weems’ photograph is similar to the one in the painting, and both grapple with the dichotomy between hidden and 22

seen, and the power dynamics that this creates. Above her on the wall hangs a poster of Malcolm X, whose gaze is figurally doubled with her own; a reminder of the Black Power movement that Black women had not found a place within. [15] Here Weems subverts the idea of the male gaze, and instead presents an image in which the male figure is in a more vulnerable position, achieved by the framing of the image whereby the viewer can see his hand of cards but not Weems’. The fact that this scene is presented in a kitchen highlights the differing attitudes towards the home; instead of a place where women are trapped, their freedom taken away, in this tableaux Weems presents the power as being on the woman’s side.

While the radical second wave feminist ideal of the abolishment of the kitchen has now faded, it may have left its mark on the architecture of modern homes. Some researchers identify this kitchenless society in the form of an open plan living space which, in opening up the space, has made cooking more collaborative, leaving the image of a housewife alone, trapped in the kitchen in the past. The result of the kitchen’s new identity is perhaps closer to the space of collaboration, discussion and resistance that bell hooks, Deborah Willis and Carrie Mae Weems spoke of. Martha Rosler continued to respond to images of the home in her art, but instead employed it to critique the housing and homelessness crisis in North America, and then the Vietnam War in the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (1967-72). While many of the concerns dealt with by this generation of artists are still discussed, feminism and feminist artists moved to incorporate concerns about race, class, privilege, and gender identity and fluidity, creating a new movement of more intersectional feminist art.

Shockingly, some feminists like to cook! After some of the radicalism of second wave feminism subsided, feminists wrote about reforming the act of cooking to align with their beliefs. Men were encouraged to cook, vegetarianism was endorsed, food co-operatives were founded and women chefs were supported. There was also a rise in feminist cookbooks. In 1983 a lesbian feminist group, the Cincinnati Lesbian Activist Bureau, published a cookbook called Whoever Said Dykes Can’t Cook? As well as raising funds for the group it also aimed to prove than lesbian feminists cooked, AND ENJOYED IT. I for one love to cook. And bake. And dance around the kitchen using my wooden spoon as a microphone. I also love doing these things for the people I love (maybe excluding the dancing; no one needs to see that…). Sitting around the kitchen, sharing food and chatting with people who make me happy is one of the simplest forms of joy, and I’m glad I don’t have to question my position as a feminist when I experience that joy.

Grannie’s wooden spoon has now been retired, and instead sits proudly on top of my chest of draws, a reminder of the queen that she was, and the cakes she made. Perhaps it’s time to dust it off and whip up a batch of her famous chocolate cake.

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Notes: 1. ‘“I’m Not a Feminist… I Love Cooking!” Why Food Is a Feminist Issue’, Feminist Current (blog), 4 January 2015, https://www.feministcurrent.com/2015/01/04/im-not-a-femini st-i-love-cooking-why-food-is-a-feminist-issue/.

2.

Debbie Kemmer, ‘Tradition and Change in Domestic Roles and Food Preparation’, Sociology 34, no. 2 (2000) p. 324 3.

Suzanne M. Bianchi et al., ‘Is Anyone Doing the Housework?

Trends in the Gender Division of Household Labor’, Social Forces 79, no. 1 (2000) p. 201 4.

Stacy J. Williams, ‘A Feminist Guide to Cooking’, Contexts 13, no. 3 (2014) p. 59 5.

Ann Oakley, The Sociology of Housework (Policy Press, 2018).

6.

Rosie Boycott, ‘Why a Woman’s Place Is in the Kitchen’, The Guardian, 26 April 2007, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/apr/26/gender.lifea ndhealth.

7.

Claudette Lauzon, ‘An Unhomely Genealogy of Contemporary Art’, in The Unmaking of Home in Contemporary Art (University of Toronto Press, 2017) p. 33 8.

Lucy Lippard, ‘Household Images in Art’, in The Pink Glass Swan: Selected Feminist Essays on Art (New York, 1995).

9.

Elizabeth Richards, ‘Materializing Blame: Martha Rosler and Mary Kelly’, Woman’s Art Journal 33, no. 2 (2012) p. 9 10.

Lauzon, ‘An Unhomely Genealogy of Contemporary Art’ p.

37 11.

National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Carrie Mae Weems: Kitchen Table Series, 2018.

12.

Elizabeth Pérez, Religion in the Kitchen: Cooking, Talking, and the Making of Black Atlantic Traditions (NYU Press, 2016), p. 111 13.

Deborah Willis, ‘Translating Black Power and Beauty - Carrie Mae Weems’, Callaloo 35, no. 4 (2012) p. 994 14.

Deborah Willis, Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the Present (W.W. Norton, 2002) pp.

183-4 15.

Claire Raymond, Women Photographers and Feminist Aesthetics / Claire Raymond. (New York : Routledge, 2017) p.

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Emma Goodwin 26

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cooking tunes Empire of the Sun, Walking on a Dream • Ella The Comet is Coming, March of the Rising Sun • Izzy Moe Koffman, Curried Sole • Aralia Jeff Buckley, Lilac Wine • Olivia Soft Hair, Lying Has to Stop • Sarah H Babe Rainbow, Love Forever • Cara Jona Lewie, You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties • Sarah V Tom Waits, Jockey Full of Bourbon • Miles Kevin Morby, City Music • Adrienne Broods, Peach • Caitlin Robert Lester Folsom, My Stove’s On Fire • Maria Kirk Franklin, Love Theory • itookaphotoofyourshopping Portico Quartet, Prickly Pear • (for) Joe Julia Jacklin, Motherland • Nat Toña la Negra, Azul • Ximena Don McLean, American Pie • Emma Luiz Bonfá, Bye Bye Blues • Hal Abir, Yallah • Ed Listen to the playlist on Spotify (the old bureau) by scanning the code above

MARINA, Orange Trees • Jess 30

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itookaphotoofyourshopping

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the breakfast club (1985) It’s lunchtime in detention

Izzy: I love this scene.

Olivia: I love this film. I haven’t watched it in a really long time but I would say that in terms of films I watched in my teens, this is probably at the top of the list of films that were influential on me.

I: Oh definitely. I feel like I wanted to be every one of the characters.

O: Oh ok, I’ll get to that. But what I was going to say was that I used to be able to probably quote this film line-by-line along with the film because I watched it so much. [...] I feel like I wanted to be Allison, and for a while I tried to dress like her. But I feel like I’m Brian. I know that I am.

I: I think the same about me.

O: I feel with the female characters, most people are neither of them. It’s either really popular and basic, or really weird and there’s no in-between. But Brian is the in-between.

I: I was listening to something the other day and it was talking about women in domestic roles and that in advertising, there’s only ever these two forms of women and if you’re not one, you’re the other.

O: I feel like I can imagine one of them being really perfect and health conscious and the other one being the one who wants loads of snacks. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ 37

I: I really love in this scene how everyone’s personality is reflected in their food choice. And I just love the bit where Judd Nelson’s character is like ‘Well Brian, this is a very nutritious lunch. Every food group is represented’. I love that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: That bit where Emilio Estevez has got his big bag and he’s just pulling things out of it, this is me on my period. I feel like out of the five people there, that was the one that was most representative of what I want to eat.

I: Do you remember that time we went on that lovely day out to the seaside with your mum and we had both just started our periods and we went to the CO-OP and got so many snacks. I had to carry all of them because I was the only one who had a bag. I just looked like the greediest pig in the entire world, with like five big bags of crisps and chocolate and biscuits.

O: I remember getting back and just sitting and eating frazzles.

I: Do you remember when I ate that whole bag of frazzles 38

and nearly vomited? Also do you remember my eclair drawer?

O: Yeah. Your eclair drawer is one of my favourite things you’ve ever done. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I: One of the things I’ve written down is about the iconic ‘80s Coke can. I feel like that is one of the most recognisable things. It’s so perfect, everyone knows what that is and I love seeing it in all these films. I can’t remember who said it, but you know where you stand with Coke, you’re drinking the same Coke that the Queen is drinking. It’s this universal thing. What are you doing?

O: I’m trying to fix my parting.

I: I’m trying to have an intellectual conversation.

O: I don’t like Coke.

I: And that’s Olivia’s contribution.

O: I think it’s really overrated.

I: I actually might have a can of Diet Coke downstairs which I’m excited about.

O: I think I like Diet Coke more than regular Coke. I’ve gone off almost all fizzy drinks. I used to drink Fanta all the time, and now I find it disgusting.

I: You’re quite a lemonade person, aren’t you?

O: What, because of that time for 3 months where it’s all I drank?

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I: I forgot about that, I couldn’t remember why I’d equated you and lemonade.

O: During that period in Venice, if I was ill in any form lemonade was going to help. All I ate for most of Venice was that minestrone soup from Conad and oranges. And Conad own-brand wafers.

I: I forgot about those.

O: I still maintain those are one of the best things I’ve ever eaten and I want to go back and get some.

I: I bet you’d hate them if you tried them now.

O: I don’t agree. Do you remember that time that we spent like €15 each on that big wafer basket from Loacker?

I: It was so worth it. Also that picture you took of me with it was on my Tinder profile for so long.

O: When we got back we very diplomatically divided all the wafers. The only other thing I ate in Venice was just different breads I’d buy from the supermarket. And those onion rings I ate all the time. And those wedges we started buying where you fried them with the weird herby butter.

I: They were so good.

O: I honestly think if I bought them now and tried to eat them, they would make me so sick. I feel like I’ve ruined potato wedges for myself because of those. Unless it’s Domino’s potato wedges which I think, controversially, are the best potato wedges available.

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I: Did you mention the crinkle cut crisps? Because that was probably the thing you ate most overall.

O: By the end I would say all I ate was oranges, those crinkle cut crisps and the wafers.

I: At least you weren’t going to get scurvy. I think all I ate in Venice was those olive breadsticks and that hummus, gnocchi and pesto, digestives which I had for breakfast, bananas, and probably that minestrone soup.

And also those weird massive bags of cookies. I feel like that’s a very European thing, bags of cookies. You would not find that in the UK.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: I still don’t know what she was putting in that sandwich.

I: One of the things was tubles of sherbert. And some kind of cereal.

O: That’s the sort of thing you’d think was amazing when you were six and if you were served it as an adult you’d think it was vile.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I: Do you want to run me through your top 5 cereals again?

O: So in no particular order, Chocolate Mini Weetabix; Cheerios; Special K Red Berry; Cornflakes; and then interchangeably Hazelnut Krave or Golden Grahams.

I: Did you ever go to one of those cereal cafes?

O: No but I really wanted to. I think the main reason was how many Pop Tart flavours they had.

I: I think Hazelnut Krave would be on my list. Also Cheerios. I also love Rice Krispies. I love getting a big spoonful of Rice Krispies with really, really cold milk when they’re still crunchy.

O: When I was a child I used to have a bowl of Rice Krispies, no milk, and then loads of white sugar on the top. What would be your top 5 breakfasts?

I: Maccies breakfast (as many hash browns as I can fathom, pancakes and a coffee. Maybe some orange juice). Really good scrambled eggs on some really nice bread, maybe with some avocado on top. Shakshuka. And if I wasn’t vegetarian, a full English breakfast with everything apart from black pudding. I guess the thing I have most is porridge, but I don’t think that would be my dream breakfast. Out of all of those things, shakshuka is the thing I feel most passionate about at the moment.

What about you?

O: Special K Red Berry with Alpro Plain yoghurt, and if I have fresh fruit. Bacon butty. Probably an

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English breakfast as well but no black pudding and no baked beans, which I don’t like, controversially.

I: We can argue about that later.

O: Those mini Belgian waffles that you can buy from supermarkets in stacks. And then cookies and cream Pop Tarts, which I know isn’t really a breakfast food but when I used to be late to things, I could eat them while I was walking. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: Who brings a bento box of sushi to school when you’re seventeen? Also you’re in school all day, is that really going to be enough food?

I: Also it’s going to get very warm.

Miles Angerson

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Ximena Filomena

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Feast for the Eyes - Consuming Colour Aralia Maxwell “Beauty will be edible, or it no longer will be.”

-Salvador Dalí, “Concerning the Terrifying and Edible Beauty of Art Nouveau…,” 1933

Food is necessary for human existence. We eat for our health, but we also eat for our pleasure. A colourless plate of food, healthy or not, is unappealing to most. We have been altering food colours for centuries, for myriad reasons. Scientists have demonstrated that food colour manipulation has the ability to skew the perceived flavours, textures, and aromas of food. The presence of colour creates an expectation for how the food will be, thus influencing our anticipation and our overall experience of consuming.

Our food preferences have been linked to genetics, learned cultural behaviours, and environmental stimuli, but many scientific studies have also concluded that experiences with food are determined by the expectations visually generated before tasting. Kantha Shelke, a food chemist at the Institute of Food Technologists, maintains that: “Colour creates a psychological expectation for a certain flavour that is often impossible to dislodge … Colour can actually override the other parts of the eating experience.” [1] In other words, colour can trigger more than merely visual sensation; it can skew our whole sensorial experience of food.

To expand upon the idea of how learned colour preferences affect consumption, consider neurologist, Oliver Sacks’ writing, “The Case of a Colourblind Painter.” In this essay Sacks describes the experience of a man who unexpectedly and abruptly becomes colourblind: He found foods disgusting in their greyish, dead appearance and had to close his eyes to eat. But this did not help very much, for the mental image of a tomato was as black as its appearance. … The ‘wrongness’ of everything was disturbing, even disgusting, and applied to every circumstance of daily life. Thus, unable to rectify even the inner image, the idea, of various foods, he turned increasingly to black and white foods—to black olives and white rice, black coffee and yogurt. These at least appeared relatively normal, whereas most foods, normally coloured, now appeared horribly abnormal. [2] Without colour, the man becomes physically repulsed and unable to consume the common colourful foods which he once enjoyed. The fact that the man chooses foods which are 49

typically black or white in colour indicates that foods deemed to be their appropriate colour are preferred.

In another noteworthy study conducted in 1974, human association with food colour was tested in a dinner party format. Psychologist Charles Spence describes the meal in the following passage: [Guests] were invited to dine on a meal of steak, chips, and peas. The only thing that may have struck any of the diners as odd was how dim the lighting was.

However, this aspect of the atmosphere was actually designed to help hide the food’s true colour. Part-way through the meal, the lighting was returned to normal, revealing that the steak had been artificially coloured blue, the chips looked green, and the peas had been coloured red. A number of [guests] suddenly felt ill when the lighting was turned to normal levels, with several of them apparently heading straight for the bathroom. [3] This description outlines the association between colour and perceived edibleness or even digestibility of food.

Humans have been altering the appearance of food for millennia. Ancient Egyptians were known to colour candies; similarly, during Roman times, Celts would enhance the colour of their wines. [4] [5] Indeed, around the world, the past and present use of natural colourants such as saffron, egg yolk, annatto, beetroot, squid ink, paprika, turmeric, and other herbs and spices to enhance visual and gustatory appeal is well documented.

Healthful natural dyes such the ones listed may relate to the biological necessity for nutrition. Certainly, it is not uncommon to hear of dietary recommendations that emphasize colour vibrancy. Dr. Michelle Hauser, a certified chef, nutritionist and clinical fellow at Harvard Medical School tells us that when it comes to plant-based foods, it is beneficial to “eat all the colors of the rainbow,” stating that, “These colors signal the presence of diverse phytochemicals and phytonutrients.” [6] These vibrant substances not only appeal to the eye but also provide a wide range of nutrients and vitamins necessary for a healthy diet.

Marketers, aware that the average consumer assesses colour vibrancy as an indication of nutritional value, may artificially enhance their products accordingly. A primary reason to colour food is to give it the appearance of freshness. With consumer demand for products which have longer a shelf life, added colour can disguise browning, greying, or other unappealing signs associated with degradation. Plant-based foods especially are subject to degradative reactions during handling, processing, or storage. Colour can also be added to 50

make a fruit seem riper. Ai Hisano, a business and marketing historian, describes the emergence of citrus fruit dyeing in the United States: During the early 1930s, Florida citrus growers began to colour orange skins by soaking the fruit in synthetic colour solutions, to make the fruit look ripe. Certain varieties grown in the state ripened without a change in skin colour, due to the warm climate. Growers strongly believed that oranges with green skins would not sell on the national market even if the fruit was ripe inside. By the 1940s, the so-called colour-add process had been widely adopted in Florida. During the 1946–1947 season, twenty-one million out of thirty million boxes of fresh oranges shipped out of state were coloured with synthetic dyes. [7] This practice of dyeing fruits and vegetables continues today, proving that our perception of what naturalness looks like is easily fooled. When one considers the long journey produce must take to get to the grocery store, it should be no surprise that the industry has developed tricks such as dyeing orange skins, coating apples in wax, or spritzing lettuce with water to evoke a vision of perfect freshness.

While added colourants such as those natural varieties previously listed are largely safe for consumption, throughout history the addition of toxic ingredients to enhance colour has also been common. In Medieval England, white bread made from refined flour was preferred by the elite. For the lower classes, bakers would often produce a cheaper version which contained lime, chalk, or even crushed bones to attain the desired white colour. [8] Similarly, when global trade expanded in the 16th and 17th centuries, new exotic foods such as tea, coffee, chocolate, and spices were regularly supplemented with colourful, but toxic substances to extend product quantities, as well as improve appearance. [9] For instance, tea was reportedly contaminated with iron filings, clay, gypsum, copper sulfate, and red oxide to intensify colour and texture. [10] Inadvertent recipes for poison, cases like these have occurred globally throughout history.

In general, it has been found that consumers assume that the more intensely coloured a product, the more intense the flavour. For example, the more intensely red a salsa is coloured, the spicier the taster will imagine it to be. [11] Food marketers have exploited this correlation of colour and flavour intensity in foods, as well in packaging and advertising.

Just look at the shift in colour gradations of potato chip bags from regular to “spicy� flavour, or consider the average interpretation of white chocolate versus dark chocolate flavours.

Alongside chromatic intensity, certain colours will signify other specific expectations.

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Colouring certain foods white can cause tasters to expect saltiness while colouring certain foods orange can cause tasters to expect citrus or cheese flavour. This effect varies with culture and geography. A 2010 study examined how the relationship between colour and flavour in beverages differed for people in the U.K. versus people in Taiwan. It was found that people in the U.K. associated brown with cola, blue with raspberry, and red with cherry; in Taiwan brown was associated with grape flavour, blue with mint, and red with cranberry. [12] In both countries participants associated the notion of “clear” with water, indicating that there is some common ground worldwide.

Researchers have also demonstrated that when colour confuses tasters’ perceptions of flavour, it often leads to an adverse reaction. In one investigation, three groups of participants were given a bright pink ice cream-like dish. The first group was provided with no information about the dish, the second group was told it was called “Food 386,” and the third group was informed that it was a “frozen savoury mousse.” [13] In reality, the pink dish was a frozen savoury salmon dish. Predictably, the participants given no information assumed that what they were about to eat was a sweet and fruity strawberry ice cream. The first group, which was misled by colour, rated the smoked salmon ice cream as being very unpleasant, disgusting, and too salty. The other two groups, which were given “Food 386” and “frozen savoury mousse” rated the dish as pleasant and well flavoured. [14] Similarly, when participants in a 2011 study were given colourless Cheetos, lacking the artificial dye FD&C Yellow No. 6 known as ‘sunset yellow,’ they rated the snack as bland and derived little pleasure from eating it. [15] On this issue, Gardiner Harris, a writer for the New York Times, made the observation: “Their fingers did not turn orange. And their brains did not register much cheese flavour, even though the Cheetos tasted just as they did with food colouring.” [16] Like Sacks’ colourblind painter, these tasters found much less satisfaction in consuming food which was lacking its usual visual vibrancy.

Colour also has been found to influence tasters’ perceptions of food odours dramatically.

Scientists in a 2001 study found that by artificially colouring wines, they could observe a phenomenon of “real perceptual illusion.” [17] For example, when white wines were coloured to imitate red wines the participants, even expert wine tasters, perceived the white wine as having the odours of red wine. Furthermore, it was also discovered that when participants were blindfolded and given a verbal indication of the wine’s colour, the odour of wine was influenced by the mental image of colour generated.

Finally, the cross-modal effects of colour have also been found to skew our haptic experience of food. A 2015 examination tested the gustatory relationship between colour and texture with yogurt and granola flakes. It was found that when the dish was tinted 52

redder, participants reportedly perceived a creamier texture. Conversely, when the dish was tinted bluer, participants reportedly perceived a crunchier texture. [18] Colour evokes in our minds an expectation of how food will be. When a dish is colourless or perceived to be ‘wrong’ in colour, the results are off-putting. We use colour as a signifier of nutrition, freshness, naturalness, and tastiness. Throughout history, food providers have taken advantage of these preferences to manipulate the appearance of food and pique appetites. Typically considered to be a purely visual aspect, colour can influence perceived flavours, textures, and odours. Colour is a conduit to full sensorial experience. Food manufacturers and mass media marketers have tapped into our innate human desire for colourful foods by giving us vibrantly filled refrigerators and pleasing dinner tables. The narrative of food colouring continues to feature many dramatic twists and turns; imagine what chromatic possibilities the future holds.

Notes 1. Kantha Shelke, "Colorless Food? We Blanch,” interview by Gardiner Harris, New York Times, April 2, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/weekinreview/03harris.html.

2. Oliver Sacks, “The Case of the Colourblind Painter,” An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. (New York: Knopf, 1995). 7.

3. Charles Spence, "On the Psychological Impact of Food Colour." Flavour, (2015): 7.

4. John B. Hutchings, Food Colour and Appearance. (Gaithersburg, MD: Aspen Publishers, Inc.,1999). 11.

5. Pliny the Elder, “Book XIV,” Natural History, Vol. IV, Books XIV–XVI. Translated by H. Rackman. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960). 233.

6. “Add Color to Your Diet for Good Nutrition,” Harvard Health Publishing, July, 2013, https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/add-color-to-your-diet-for-good-nutrition 7. Ai Hisano, "The Rise of Synthetic Colors in the American Food Industry, 1870–1940,” Harvard Business School, Business History Review 90, no. 3 (December 13, 2016): 492-493.

8. Harold J. McKone, "The History of Food Colourants Before Aniline Dyes,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, no. 10 (1991): 25-31.

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9. Vinita Sharma, Harold T. McKone, and Peter G. Markow, "A Global Perspective on the History, Use, and Identification of Synthetic Food Dyes,” Journal of Chemical Education 88, no. 1 (January 2011): 24-28.

10. Harold J. McKone, "The History of Food Colourants Before Aniline Dyes,” Bulletin for the History of Chemistry, no. 10 (1991): 25.

11. Charles Spence, "On the Psychological Impact of Food Colour." Flavour, (2015): 1-16.

12. Maya U. Shankar, Carmel A. Levitan, and Charles Spence, “Grape expectations: The role of cognitive influences in color–flavor interactions,” Consciousness and Cognition 19, no. 1. (March 2010): 380-390.

13. Martin R. Yeomans, Lucy Chambers, Heston Blumenthal, and Anthony Blake, "The role of expectancy in sensory and hedonic evaluation: The case of smoked salmon ice-cream,” Food Quality and Preference 19, no. 6 (September 2008): 565-73.

14. Ibid, 569-572.

15. Gardiner Harris, "Colorless Food? We Blanch,” New York Times, April 2, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/weekinreview/03harris.html.

16. Ibid.

17. Gil Morrot, Frédéric Brochet, and Denis Dubourdieu, "The Color of Odors,” Brain and Language 79, no. 2 (2001): 309-20.

18. Mathew Chylinski, Gavin Northey, and Liem Viet Ngo, “Cross‐modal Interactions between Color and Texture of Food,” Psychology & Marketing 32, no. 9 (August 11, 2015): 950–966.

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Aralia Maxwell 55

Dainties, 2018-20, acrylic and wood.

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Irina Grigoryeva These photos are part of my Hybrid project. The series consists of diptychs, collage + photo. Thinking about the processes taking place right now - depersonalization, collective thinking, information manipulation. The most introverted, melancholy outsider is involved in something, although he really does not want it. Technological progress was only one side of the coin. This series of collages is about losing shape, decomposing, and reassembling.I think many have felt something similar before or right now. Gathering yourself is very important. To continue life, rethinking, liberation. Collages are supplemented with photographs. Still lifes made during quarantine. This is an attempt to streamline thoughts and things and a reflection of the impossibility of bringing this order.

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harry potter and the philosopher's stone (2001)

Harry, Ron and Hermione meet on the Hogwarts Express (+ eat lots of sweets) O: The reason why I love this scene, and also when they go to Diagon Alley for the first time, is because it really sets up the universe.

I: It’s so wonderful and joyous. It almost takes all of the things that are really exciting in childhood and makes them even more magical.

O: It’s kind of like watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for the first time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I: The Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, I used to be so obsessed with those. Do you remember Jelly Belly jelly beans? I used to love getting those because it made me feel like I was in Harry Potter. Then they released the Bean Boozled things, which I guess were like their Every Flavour Beans, and some of them are good and some of them are bad. I think I got some for Christmas in a stocking, and we had a Christmas party, and there was a boy I had a crush on and I was trying to get him to eat one of the nasty ones. So I bit into loads of them until I found a nasty one and then tried to glue it back together and give it to him.

O: That’s disgusting. When me and my brother and sister used to go to McDonald’s a lot when we were younger, and we would have these competitions where whoever got the longest chip wins, and then you’d take parts of chips and try and stick them together so it looked like one long one.

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I: Was there a prize, or just knowing you were the champion?

O: It was just getting to feel smug I think. Can you buy Every Flavour Beans if you go to Harry Potter World?

I: I think you can, and I think you can get Chocolate Frogs as well.

O: I’m pretty sure someone gave me a Chocolate Frog for Easter once.

I: One of my friends went to Harry Potter Studios, or whatever its called, when we were in 6th form, and she got a Chocolate Frog, and I remember being insanely jealous.

O: Apparently Butter Beer is disgusting.

I: I see recipes for it everywhere. And Butter Beer cakes, Butter Beer cupcakes.

O: What’s actually in it, because it sounds vile.

I: Let’s have a look at a recipe. For the actual drink, it’s two litres of cream soda, a ¼ teaspoon of caramel extract and a ¼ teaspoon of butter extract, whatever that is. Then for the cream topping, whipping cream, butterscotch topping and powdered sugar.

O: That sounds absolutely vile.

I: In the films, it’s made to seem like the most delicious nectar and then it’s just not that. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O; So when that woman comes passt and she’s like, ‘anything from the trolley?’ and then Harry just decides to flash some cash.

I: He’s a cocky little shit. Also, what about all the poor children after him.

O: I wasn’t sure, because it wasn’t like he bought one of everything, it seems like he bought the whole trolley.

I: Well he says ‘we’ll take the lot’.

O: What a greedy little boy. He’s not going to be able to eat all of that.

I: How’s he going to fight Voldemort if he eats like that?

O: If you ate all of that would you go into a diabetic coma?

I: I don’t know, but it certainly wouldn’t be good. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ O: That whole film is great, when they go to the first feast and all the food magically appears, the sorting hat scene.

I: Is there a reason that you chose this scene over the banquet scene? Is it particularly poignant for you?

O: I think both of those scenes are on equal levels. When I thought about this film, that was the first one that came into my mind.

I: It’s kind of hard for me to judge. I came to Harry Potter quite late compared to some people. I think I watched it for the first time when I was twelve or thirteen, maybe a bit younger. I feel like the scene on the train with all the sweets is what I’d remember if I’d watched it as a child.

It’s a forbidden thing, having unlimited sweets and they’re magical as well. Whereas I think now I’d probably appreciate the banquet scene a bit more.

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recipe by Gary Rhodes

chosen by Olivia

made famous by

Brenda White 225g plain flour a pinch of salt 3 eggs

1 egg white 300-450ml milk oil, lard or dripping

Preheat the oven to 220०C/450०F/gas 7. Oil 8 x 10 cm moulds or larger and preheat in the oven until almost smoking.

Sift the flour with the salt. Add the eggs and egg white, if using. The egg white gives extra lift to the batter. Whisk in 300ml milk. This will give you a thick batter which works very well. To check the consistency, lift a spoon in and out. The batter should hold and coat the back of the spoon. If it seems to have congealed, simply add the remaining milk. The batter is now ready to cook. It can be made up to 24 hours in advance and will still rise.

Once the fat in the moulds is almost smoking, it’s time to add the batter. Bake individual puddings in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes and large ones for 40-45 minutes. illustration by Izzy

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Joe’s Tomato Pasta serves 2 300-400g cherry tomatoes 200g pasta 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 cloves minced garlic Salt Pepper ¾ cup dry white wine (optional) ½ teaspoon chilli flakes Parmesan cheese (optional) 3 dashes soy sauce Basil Heat oil in a pan until shimmering Add cherry tomatoes and cook for 5 minutes Add minced garlic and chilli flakes and fry until for another minute Using a potato masher or other implement, crush the now soft tomatoes Add ¾ of a cup of white wine (optional) or ½ a cup of water and a few dashes of soy sauce, let simmer for a further 10 mins Grate a little parmesan cheese into the tomatoes and stir (optional) Bring water to a boil and add pasta, cooking according to packaging Drain pasta when done, add to the tomato sauce Add in chopped basil and stir well, adding another drizzle of olive oil can also help to thicken sauce Finish with a grating of parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste

illustration by Natalie Fabbri

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Jessica Wilson-Leigh ~~ My practice is concerned with the challenges and anxieties of living within a time of environmental uncertainty. As scientists declare a climate emergency we must adapt and change the way we live to secure our future. Most of us will feel the effects of the changing climate by the way it will impact our food system.

Scientists and food manufacturers worldwide are developing new products and production methods in hope of finding more sustainable ways to feed the growing population. “And They Grow Into Recognisable Meats� looks at the idea of lab-cultured meat, a process that harvests cells and grows them into real meat tissue. Grown separate to the animal, this eliminates the need for slaughter while also claiming to be more sustainable than traditional livestock farming by requiring less land and water to produce. I find the relationship between problems we have created and the ridiculous / weird / futuristic solutions that we have for them super interesting and use these as a starting point. This work considers the future of food production and what we may find in our kitchens in years to come.

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Stranger Kitchens: The Secret Ingredient is Not Confidence // Izzy Woods Contrary to every phone/zoom call Olivia and I have ever had, this one actually started on topic; we were talking about Pringles. Joining us were Ed and Hal, two cousins who together have a cooking show called Stranger Kitchens.

The format is simple: they choose an area of London, knock on the doors of strangers (as many doors as they need before someone lets them in), and offer to cook them lunch in the stranger’s home. Yes, you heard correctly. Ed and Hal bring the food, the stranger brings the kitchen. We just get to see the magic. When I discovered their channel I was around three G&Ts in, I was alone in the house, and I was just wandering around laughing hysterically to myself. I’m not sure how much the G&Ts had to do with it, but what I do know is that it is comedy gold like no other.

There was definitely some tension when it came to the Pringles issue. Olivia would go for original, I’d go for BBQ, and both Ed and Hal opted for sour cream and chive. Thankfully we could all agree that you must steer clear of salt and vinegar Pringles. Those things will burn a hole right through your tongue. I would say you have to be as brave to eat a salt and vinegar Pringle as you would to go and knock on a stranger’s door. But that’s just me. Ed and Hal feel otherwise.

Hal: We’ve had days where it’s the second door. We’ve had days where we just don’t get in and we end up going back to one of our houses and quite solemnly cooking what we were planning on cooking for someone else.

I’d say it probably averages out to 40 doors before someone lets us in. There was this one door, it was reinforced steel and had four locks on it. It looked very off.

E: Yeah, yeah! A big thick metal door that

was painted to look like wood, with a bolt and four locks. And there was a dog… so we just left.

H: We can sort of tell from the outside. We’re like “I like the look of that.” Knocking on the doors is quite a good in-built filter. The type of person who’s just going to spontaneously let two people into their house to cook for a couple of hours is quite likely to be quite interesting.

“Everyone’s got that thing that they actually really care about, and regardless of what it is, it is just nice to listen to people chat about something they’re really passionate about. It’s pretty intoxicating.”

We were curious as to whether there was a lack of things to talk about with a complete stranger, or an abundance; Hal said, “I watched a couple of episodes back, and I noticed we take a lot of cues from the house.

But there are times when I think, ‘god, we are really crap at making conversation’. I think cooking in general, and eating with people is a good way to be quite open, because it’s something you tend to do with people you’re closer with - if you do it with a stranger your mind kind of tricks you into still being quite open, just because that’s the norm when you’re eating with people. And before they know it, we know them. Then we’ve got them.” In one episode, brilliantly titled ‘Pop-Up Cooks and Pop-Up Books’, after the host shows them into the kitchen, he starts very proudly showing off his kitchen knives.

Hal says, “I feel like everyone knows two or

three dads who have an absolute hoard of kitchen utensils that they’re very proud of.

Everyone’s got that thing that they actually really care about, and regardless of what it is, it is just nice to listen to people chat about something they’re really passionate about. It’s pretty intoxicating.”

I sometimes get nervous cooking even for friends and family, especially when I know the person I’m cooking for is not going to hide their disgust. One particularly painful time, I made a risotto with probably ten times the amount of bouillon required and I made my grandma vomit. I wanted to know whether or not they’d ever cooked something truly terrible on the show, and sure enough, their answer was comforting.

Ed: There was one where we made a very sub-par pad thai.

Hal: That pad thai was so terrible. Oh my god.

It was all going fine until the eggs. We put in way too much egg and it was horrible.

E: That was probably the worst one.

H: In another one we did that never got released - that was TERRIBLE. E: That had the same problem pretty much.

We’ve now learnt the lesson that you can’t just stir fry a raw egg into an existing stir fry. You can’t just chuck it in there.

H: The secret ingredient is not confidence.

E: The problem with doing the show is that people now assume that we can cook.

H: When you tell people that you do a cooking show, they’re immediately like, “oh WOW, you must do good cooking”. I mean, I can cook well, but I’m not great.

E: Hal’s not great.

H: No I’m not. That can be the headline of the article.

Hal admits that he is a backseat cook. “I CANNOT help myself from saying ‘oh, you

know what goes fucking nice with that?’” We hear groans coming from Ed. “But then Ed has the inverse problem, where if he’s cooking for both of us, he’ll just put the most out there, asinine ingredients in dishes that just- oh my, it’s RIDICULOUS.” Ed: Hal is kind of likeHal: Ed’s about to say I’m unadventurous, but the adventurous he’s talking about, it’s not adventure, it’s just WRONG. E: Actually, I was gonna say Hal’s a purist.

H: Yeah, no I like that. That’s nice.

E: He’s very, um, scared. Basically the one guaranteed way to annoy him- ok, let me set the scene: we’re making tomato pasta or whatever, just a dash of soy sauce, just to likeH: No, no, not soy sauce; fish sauce.

E: Fish sauce! Y’know, different flavours…

H: Yeah you’re right; I’m deeply scared of fish sauce.

It seems that cooking comes very naturally to both of them. For Hal, “I think it’s probably my favourite thing in the world to do to just have the kitchen to myself, I can just take a lot of time and relax cooking something - it’s my favourite way to destress in the world.” Ed agrees, “We’re both people who enjoy just pottering around. I mean, I’m in the kitchen now, it’s 4:30 and I’ve been in here most of the day, just kind of standing around, picking something up, putting it down. It brings me peace. I never really cooked as a child if I’m honest. We always ate what our parents ate, they didn’t make different meals for us. I watched them cook for 20 years, so by the time I moved out there were some things that I could just kind of make, not really from memory or practice but just because I’d seen them cook it so many times. After coming out of school I actually got a job in a kitchen that I used to wash up in. They said they had a position that had just opened up in the kitchen,

and I was like, I can’t cook, and they said they’d teach me. And I was like fantastic!

Let’s go. My mum told me recently that she now hates cooking. But I think that’s on account of having done almost 30 years now of preparing at least two meals a day for between one and four children. I feel like after running basically a bed and breakfast for that amount of time I’d also be kind of done with cooking.”

“I think for me the main thing I remember doing quite a lot when I was a kid was baking”, says Hal. “There’s that trope that baking is more of a science and cooking’s more of an art. Good cooks can just improvise and play it by ear, but it’s a lot easier to understand when you’re a kid that this amount of this goes in here with this amount of this.

It’s a really good, lower barrier to entry. I’ve got really fond memories of doing that with my mum. Cooking cooking wasn’t really a big part of my childhood until I was 16 or 17, but my parents both love cooking, so caring about food and being interested in what I’m eating was always there.”

Having already established that food, and eating together was a big part of both Ed and Hal’s childhoods, we asked whether there was one specific dish that stuck out in their minds as particularly special. I could barely even finish before Hal had his answer.

Hal: SAUSAGE PASTA. Obviously! Ed has the same one, he will absolutely cosign this.

Print this cos this is a brilliant recipe [We did print it, you can find it on page 78]. Maybe I’ll make it tonight actually.

Ed: I would probably include maybe some sunflower seeds or something as a garnishH: Why would you even- that’s not even a compatible flavour. Like you’re just doing that to annoy me. I know you are. You’ve got that

grin. This isn’t so much a specific recipe, it’s just a massive memory - this is actually from Ed’s family, which was that every single Sunday they just for some reason had a soup tradition, which I just thought was so cool.

Like every Sunday. If you were round there on a Sunday, it would just be soup. And I was round there almost every Sunday for a long time.

E: That’s kind of what I was talking about: having watched my parents cook for so long, soup being a great example. Once you’ve seen someone make a soup that’s some kind of substantial vegetable with some stock and onions and stuff then you basically know how to do that with any ingredients.

Now we were onto family there was no way we couldn’t tackle the behemoth that is Christmas dinner - possibly one of the most divisive meals going.

Ed: Was it this Christmas or last Christmas that we were together? I tried to petition the family to get a hog instead of a turkey.

Hal: Some people were really on it, but then obviously no one wanted to build a spit to rotate it, and also NO ONE wanted to slowly rotate a whole hog for probably, like, twelve hours.

E: My grandma actually is a bit of a purist, so it would have to be turkey for her, no matter how tasteless.

H: I’m the youngest of three, and as we’ve got older the sides of Christmas dinner have got more experimental. One of my favourite things that tends to happen each year is this sweet potato thing with a horseradish sauce, which my mum makes. I love that so much.

E: I feel like this is a really unpopular one but I really like carrots in white parsley sauce. We don’t have it any more, cos I think my mum was getting a bit bored of it. Obviously the food that our parents made for us, they’ve

been eating for a lot longer already, so that’s disappeared off the menu, but I might try and bring it back this time around. Wow, it’s nearly Christmas already.

Don’t remind us.

H: The way we’ve always done it in my house is that each person takes one thing, so I feel like I’ve got all of the sides down. I’ve got all the constituent units, except the turkey. That’s the beast.

E: We can probably both cook everything.

Maybe not the turkey - that’s not a claim I’m comfortable making.

H: Maybe we should make turkey on the next episode. Just a whole turkey. “Excuse me, do you have eight hours to spare?”

E: Yeah what we’d do is we’d go round at 8 or 9 at night and be like “do you mind if we leave this here for 12 or so hours and we’ll be back tomorrow morning for it?” Just a more prolonged experience.

The next few questions were under the category ‘Fantasy Foods’ in my notes, which was not representative of what followed. What actually happened was we asked increasingly mean/obscure questions without giving them any time to prepare an answer. We started off talking about who their dream dinner guest

Ed and Hal

would be, and what they’d cook for them.

Ed: I’ve been reading a lot about Muhammed Ali recently, he seemed like a pretty cool guy.

I’d love to have a chat with him, cook him something - I don’t think I’d have enough food for him. Maybe some Vietnamese or Thai food?

Hal: I love Steve Carell, I think he’s brilliant and he sounds like a really cool guy just generally. If this is a fantasy, I’d probably do this octopus stew my mum sometimes makes.

It was tomato based with potato, a couple of different types of fish. It was just unbelievable. I reckon I’d probably cook that.

Some foods if they’re too showy, they don’t facilitate a warm, relaxed atmosphere - this dish definitely has that warm quality, but it’s also interesting enough to impress Steve and maybe he’d want to be my friend.

E: On my first day in the restaurant, I walked in and the head chef and the guy I was going to be replacing, one of them was holding a plastic bottle and they were both just forcing an entire cooked octopus into the bottle. And I was just like “what is this gonna be like?”

Now the tables were turned. What would their dream meal be? I can’t pretend this idea wasn’t heavily (completely) borrowed from the Off Menu podcast, where comedian hosts Ed Gamble and James Acaster ask their guest what their dream starter, main course, side, drink and dessert would be. The difference is the guests on Off Menu have a chance to actually think about their dishes, whereas this was sprung on our guests with no warning.

Still, they had some pretty delicious answers.

Hal went first: “For a starter… if I see it anywhere and I’m near the sea, I’ll get calamari, with a bit of lemon. Really simple.

Ah, it’s lovely. Main. I think the nicest dish I’ve ever had was this spider crab, cherry tomato, lemon linguine. It just didn’t taste like

anything I’ve ever had. I think about it a really weird amount. And then dessert... Probably a nice crumble, I just think you can’t go wrong.

Probably a rhubarb crumble with vanilla ice cream. I know Ed’s going custard.”

Ed: I am a big fan of all things custard, whether it’s tarts, creams, custard…

Hal: Yeah, I was about to say, there aren’t that many things that custard can be. “I’m a fan of all things custard, like… custard”.

E: Yeah! In all of its many forms.

H: Liquid, solid, gaseous.

Next up was Ed. “I would probably go for starter, something like bruschetta, nice slice of that. I got a hand blender so I could make bruschetta at work. I went through a phase of trying to cook increasingly elaborate things in the office. Because I cook with so much garlic, I put in about seven cloves. I got through the first slice of bread and I was like, this is hot. Then I started the second one and my boss was like ‘take that to another room or throw it away, please, that can’t stay here’ and I couldn’t even finish it, it was like a spicy garlic. For main, I had the most incredible soft shell crab, probably a year ago, that was just perfect. It’s sad for the crabs, you have to catch them at the time when they’ve moulted the old shell and haven’t got the new one yet, so they’re definitely at their most vulnerable.

For pudding… I have a sweet tooth, so I like things that are caramel-ish. Over lockdown, over a week or ten days I made three sticky pear puddings. So… probably something like that.”

Continuing the streak of hard hitting questions, we wanted to know if they were only able to use one condiment for the rest of their life, what that would be.

Hal: Sriracha mayo. Easy. Just to be clear, I’ll never buy the sriracha mayo. You get sriracha

and mayo and you can mix them to whatever strength you desire, there’s a lot you can do there.

Ed: But that’s two condiments.

H: No no, it’s two condiments that you can vary. You gotta think smarter, not harder.

E: But I couldn’t say I want tomato ketchup with… I don’t know. I think you’re stupid. If you couldn’t have sriracha and mayo mixed together would you settle for sriracha mayo?

H: Never. That would just feel wrong. It’d just be off. In that case I’d go for sriracha or mayo.

I think on balance it would probably be mayo.

No it wouldn’t, no it wouldn’t. It’d be sriracha, it’d be sriracha. Yeah, it’d be sriracha.

E: I’d probably go for chilli oil or something like that. As someone who’s been into sriracha for a while now, I’ve kind of got bored of itH: That’s so indie and cool, you’re so zany.

E: I’m trying some different chilli sauces out.

H: *scoffs* I was coming to the end of my notes, and the last thing we had to talk about was food and Covid-19.

H: Ah, the rone zone. We haven’t really talked about how it will be bringing the original model for Stranger Kitchens back under the current circumstances. Our business model is uniquely poorly suited to Covid. It really is.

Not only do you need a lack of risk of infecting someone with a virus, but you just need trust of strangers, which is just the most eroded thing right now. Unfortunately there was no furlough pay for Stranger Kitchens.

E: We have a lot of ideas about stuff we want to try and incorporate, but just not knowing when any of it will be possible makes it difficult. We’d like to go to the US at some point and do that, to try and adapt that format to the experience of travelling throughout America.

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H: We had an idea - probably slightly farfetched, but also cool. To hitchhike through America and only stay at the places where we were let in to cook. But then it gets a lot harder, because not only are you saying “can I cook you dinner?” you’re saying “can I cook you dinner and sleep in your house?” which is a slightly harder sell, although I feel like a British accent in the US can get you pretty far, but it probably can’t get you that far.

On his experience in lockdown, Hal said, “It all happened very quickly. All of my siblings came back home and there were seven of us in a house that is just not big enough for seven people. We were trying as much as possible to stay out of each other’s way, but cooking was the moment where everyone came together, so eating together was really important.” Ed seemed to have had a similar experience: “Since I’ve been going back into work, I’ve found a lot of enjoyment in cooking at the end of the day. The thing about working from home is that the day never really ended, so now it’s kind of nice to have a break, where I’m done with everything, so I can spend an hour or so in the kitchen. In summer everything tastes better, and we’ve got a little garden, so eating outside is really nice too.

Although we have four elderflower trees around the garden and all of the flowers turned into berries and now the garden is just full of pigeons and shit. It does make me think that pigeon might actually be tasty. They just kind of look plump and nice.”

People have used this unprecedented time in isolation to take up cooking, with sourdough and banana bread being the order of the day.

Had Ed and Hal been perfecting sourdough starters or timing their purchase of bananas perfectly to make a loaf at the weekend? What had their lockdown saviours been?

Hal: I was very much the person at the beginning who was telling my parents to buy like a 20 kilo bag of rice and stock up on chickpeas and shit like that. I sort of thought I had it at the time, and it was at the point where no one could really get a test, so I had in my house in Bristol this fuck off thing of rice, and so I just had to use that before I went to London. So lots and lots of rice related stuff.

I’m not sure if that was a saviour or a burden.

Ed: At the same time when I was making lots of puddings, I was also making sticky toffee pudding, and I was trying to avoid the queues for the supermarket. At one point there were like a hundred people in the queue. I walked up the road a bit and found a place that I could buy dates from. So I ate a lot of dates - I think they’re one of the most dense forms of energy.

I was working from home and getting really stressed out about it. I didn’t really make any time for myself. I had a horrible routine throughout lockdown, and part of that was not really eating until dinnertime. So a few times, I remember coming down at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon to get some food and just feeling like I didn’t want to spend time on anything so… three dates?

H: Neither of us had very good answers there.

They were a bit like world war two rations.

E: None of this is doing much for our reputation. An hour and a half of us talking about how crap we are at cooking.

If this interview hadn’t taken place over zoom maybe we could have put that to the test. 2020 has been unpredictable in more ways than one; who’s to say it’s not the year Ed and Hal conquer pad thai.

Check out the kitchens Ed and Hal have cooked in so far on their YouTube channel Stranger Kitchens. Follow what they’re up to on Instagram: @stranger_kitchens.

What we’re loving right now…

… from Instagram accounts, films and podcasts to obscure Facebook pages with very little aesthetic value

Don’t forget to give the ‘in the kitchen’ playlist a listen!

It’s filled with songs that our contributors love to listen to in the kitchen!

There are so many fantastic food focused Instagram accounts, but here are some of our favourites! @dishestodelight focuses on the stories that go alongside recipes - and, if that’s not enough they post the most beautiful pictures of food and kitchens. @coven_bakery is a must to fulfil all your pastel icing needs. The cakes look like they’ve come straight out of a Disney film, but they have a gloriously devilish edge. @thesweetfeminist delivers words we all need to hear, but she does it through pastry and icing, making them infinitely more palatable. @stillherestilllife is a weekly drawing challenge run by two illustrators. Each week there is a different prompt, and we get to see what the hundreds of artists who take part create. And some of the old bureau’s contributors have been featured!

Kitchen is a beautiful story set in contemporary Japan that juxtaposes themes of kitchens, motherhood, transsexuality, bereavement, love and tragedy.

It’s written in simple prose but deals with complex emotions and ideas, with passages that come across almost dream like.

It was actually in our interview with Ed and Hal from Stranger Kitchens (read that on page 72) that we were alerted to the masterpiece that is Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers. In fact, this is what Hal said about it: “The film is apparently culturally, historically or aesthetically significant, so I reckon that’s a good accompanying quote.” It really is Hal. It was filmed at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in California. Our favourite thing about it is that the director recommends that, when the film is shown, a toaster containing several heads of garlic be turned on in the back of the theatre, so that gradually the entire space is filled with the smell of garlic. The film is a celebration of garlic, and I’m sure we can all agree that garlic deserves as much celebration as it can possibly get.

The Facebook page Gripping Food With Force. You have everything you need to know about it from the name...

The League of Kitchens is a team of women from around the world who welcome you into their homes and teach you their family recipes! Through this they seek to forge family cross-cultural connections, increase traditional cooking knowledge and provide meaningful, well-paid employment and training for immigrants.

Check out what they do over on their website: www.leagueofkitchens.com/

Off Menu is a podcast hosted by Ed Gamble and James Acaster. The format is so simple, it’s a wonder no one thought of it before. It’s set in an imaginary dream restaurant, where James is a genie waiter, on hand to grant you any food wish you may have.

Each episode there is a guest (to the podcast and the dream restaurant) and Ed and James take them through the meal asking about their dream starter, main course, side dish and dessert dishes can be from restaurants, family traditions, or just made up on the spot.

Each week they choose a secret ingredient and if the guest mentions it, they are kicked out of the dream restaurant without warning. Fortunately we are yet to see that happen. We can’t imagine many things better than people talking about nothing other than food for an hour. The podcast is brilliantly hilarious and Ed and James are fantastic hosts. Some of our favourite episodes so far have been with Joel Dommett, Lolly Adefope, Selasi Gbormittah, Joe Thomas and Romesh Ranganathan. They’ve also (because they know what the crowd wants) compiled a list of all the restaurants mentioned on the podcast on their website, so we can all spend too much money much too easily.

The Pioneer Woman is trashy daytime TV at its finest. The show follows Ree Drummond on her ranch in Oklahoma, from which she shows us all her favourite recipes, most of which are heart attack worthy. If you like heavy cream and low-sodium chicken broth then this one's for you.

Check out Steve1989MREInfo on Youtube if you want to watch a man eat 100+ year old army rations. It’s fascinating and disgusting in equal measure - the perfect combo.

“Once discovered, food lovers wonder how they ever survived before Books For Cooks!” - Books For Cooks is a wonderful shop dedicated solely to the pursuit of fine food. The walls are lined exclusively with cookbooks, while the kitchen at the back of the shop exudes deliciousness.

Emma Goodwin “My work is based on what I want the world to look like. Avoiding white square gallery walls, I want to create a new space and an immersive environment as a refuge from everyday life. I am capturing mundane moments from my daily routine and mixing them with the fantastical, graphic world that I would much rather be living in.” @emmagoodwinart Adrienne Lichliter Adrienne Lichliter is a printmaking and paper artist and educator working in Dallas, Texas. She received her MFA from Clemson University in 2014 and has a Bachelors of Arts in art history and painting from Southern Methodist University. Her work has been shown throughout Texas and the United States as well as abroad in China, Japan, Egypt and the UK. She has been an invited resident artist at The Kala Art Institute in Berkeley CA, 100 West in Corsicana TX, Artscape in Toronto, Canada and Zygote Press in Cleveland OH. Adrienne continually explores experimental printing methods as shown by her food grease lithography and signature wood lithography process that she has demonstrated across the country.

Aside from her studio practice, Adrienne has a history in art education and non-profit arts administration. She currently is the Marketing and Programs Manager of The Cedars Union Art Incubator in Dallas, as well as the Advisory Board Chair at 100 West Corsicana Residency for Artists and Writers. @adriennelichliter www.adriennelichliter.com/ Maria Ylvisaker Maria Ylvisaker is an artist in Brooklyn, New York. She makes drawings and risograph prints that draw on found photos, collected stories, and curiosity about nostalgia and ordinary moments. Her work has been published by Womanly Magazine and Direct Angle Press, and has been shown at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair, David & Schweitzer Contemporary, and A.I.R. Gallery. A solo show of her risograph prints is scheduled to take place at Tom & Jerry’s when New Yorkers can safely gather. @maria.ylv Sarah Vines Sarah Vines is a Printmaker currently studying at the Royal College of Art. She has a love for

ARTIST BIOS 81

colour, and mainly works in screenprint, pencil and gouache. Her print work is developed from her observational drawings captured from her sketchbook, which she carries with her everywhere. She has a particular interest in capturing moments of quiet absence and home spaces, then reinterpreting them as colourful screenprints and imagery. @sarahvinesillustration Cara Rooney “Hello! I'm Cara Rooney, an illustrator and plaything maker based in Dundee, Scotland, and I like to make work by combining bold painted shapes with charcoal drawings and handwritten type. My illustrations often simplify objects and ideas found in the natural world to encourage people to form a connection to nature. Imagining things from an ant's perspective is one of my favourite things to do.� @cararoooney www.cararooney.com/ Natalie Fabbri Natalie is a designer/printmaker/illustrator from the midwest! #1 fan of all greyhounds in turtlenecks, wannabe farmer, tragic baker, and color-palette collector. @natalie_fabbri Tonia Di Risio A multimedia artist living and working in Southern Ontario, she received a BA in Art and Art History from the University of Toronto and Sheridan College and an MFA from the University of Windsor. She has exhibited across Canada and has been the recipient of Canada Council and Nova Scotia arts grants. She is a member of the red head gallery in Toronto.

She employs time-based media including photography and video. Currently, her work

has developed through ongoing investigations of gendered ethnicity in relation to domestic issues, including housekeeping, home maintenance, food preparation, interior decoration and relationships to the miniature. @toniadirisio www.toniadirisio.com/ Irina Grigoryeva Irina is a visual artist based in Moscow, Russia.

Her work concerns documentary and art photography and one of her main research topics is natural philosophy and the relations between man and nature. Her series in the old bureau was created during the Covid-19 lockdown and considers kitchen waste and the aesthetics of the kitchen post-cooking. @my_gothic_odyssey www.irinagrigoryeva.com/ Ximena Filomeno Ximena, based in Mexico City, Mexico, is currently studying Design and Visual Communication at the Faculty of Arts and Design at UNAM. She mainly photographs the everyday, for her the beauty lies in the details that you find every day in any space where you are. @xfil_777 Rafaela Pascotto Rafaela Pascotto is a third year illustration student from Brazil with a particular taste for illustrations with short nonsensical narratives and colorful representations of trivial and mundane things. @rafaela.pascotto Miles Angerson Miles is a New York based comic artist, who we worked with for our 'Nostalgia' issue, where we featured a 3 page comic.

82 @wet_tobacs

Ella Kasperowicz Ella is an illustrator who loves playing with pens, puns and ideas, graduating from Falmouth in 2017. She is the author of ‘Squad Goals’, published in 2018, and the resident artist for Legs4Africa, a charity getting amputees walking again in Africa. @ellastrated Caitlin Benson Caitlin is a newcomer to digital art and is a fan of bold black outlines and minimalist illustrations. She is an unemployed graduate and is looking forward to developing her illustration portfolio as a creative outlet to offset the bleak job hunt. @caitlinb311 Jessica Wilson-Leigh Jess is an artist from Birmingham whose work concerns life in a time of environmental uncertainty, and how this affects our relationship to food. Read more about her work on page 67. @jwilsonleigh Aralia Maxwell Maxwell is a visual artist and writer based in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. She holds an MFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University and has exhibited at venues across Canada. Working primarily with acrylic paint, in her artistic practice, Maxwell frequently trades paintbrushes for kitchen tools and canvases for sculpted objects. Blending and abstracting vocabularies of fine art and food, the results explore materiality, aesthetic taste, and question what it means to engage in a visual diet. @araliamaxwell www.araliamaxwell.com/ 83

Niamh Barber Niamh is a graphic design student, currently living in Brighton while her heart is in France.

Beautiful junk is her thing. @niamh_barber itookaphotoofyourshopping “Send me your shopping if you rate Aldi as much as I do!!!” @itookaphotoofyourshopping Sarah Hingley Sarah is an illustrator from Manchester and a drawer of lemons, fun bums and silly faces. An avid doodler of many things, Sarah also loves creating things on a risograph printer, making zines, prints and all sorts of fab things to pop into your pocket. If it’s happy, silly or colourful, she’s definitely there. Sarah has also joined illustration forces with her sister to create the group/collaboration/dream world of 2B Or Not 2B (@2bmcr) in which they make lots of fun things in the hopes of making you laugh. @sazzsquatch Izzy Woods is a history of art graduate and occasional maker of things. She has an unhealthy addiction to Oatly and is a huge fan of jazz. Of an evening you can find her eating chocolate digestives, watching Drag Race and aggressively knitting. Favourite fact: citrus is botanically a berry. @_izzywoods_ Olivia Grace Middelboe is a history of art graduate and aspiring curator from the middle of nowhere in Kent. She cares a lot about sustainability, contemporary art and independent cinema. She has a tendency to eat too much hummus, buy too many books, and watch far too much 90s TV. @oliviagracemiddelboe

the old bureau is a compilation zine started by Izzy Woods and Olivia Grace Middelboe in 2019, produced in Manchester, London and Kent. Our contributors are local to the UK as well as international, from the United States to Mexico, Brazil and Canada. Issues are published digitally and available as limited physical editions.

WANT TO SUBMIT YOUR WORK?

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IMAGES ARE NOT TO BE REPRODUCED WITHOUT PERMISSION CREDITS & NOTES Cover Images: Ximena Filomeno Illustrations: Page 2: Image from the 1959 General Foods Kitchens Cookbook via Flickr Page 13: Sarah Vines Page 14 & 47: Niamh Barber Page 30: Caitlin Benson Page 31: Cara Rooney Page 48: Ella Kasperowicz Page 64: Izzy Woods Page 65: Natalie Fabbri Page 71: Sarah Hingley Page 78: Rafaela Pascotto

THANK YOU! We want to say an enormous thank you to all of our contributors and collaborators who gave us their time and creativity and allowed us to produce this zine. We’re so proud of what we’ve managed to produce collectively.

SPECIFICALLY: Adrienne Lichliter, Aralia Maxwell, Caitlin Benson, Cara Rooney, Ella Kasperowicz, Emma Goodwin, Irina Grigoryeva, itookaphotoofyourshopping, Jess Wilson-Leigh, Joe Reynolds, Maria Ylvisaker, Miles Angerson, Natalie Fabbri, Niamh Barber, Rafaela Pascotto, Sarah Hingley, Sarah Vines, Stranger Kitchens, Tonia Di Risio, and Ximena Filomeno

the old bureau