Category Archives: Storytelling

Food pyramid for the modern mind

May 31, 2015 by antdina

A lizard, a monkey and Socrates walk into a bar. The lizard orders a Tecate beer to which he adds salt and a squeeze of lime. The monkey looks at the beautiful woman in a tight red dress, then back to the bartender says, “I’ll have what she’s having.” Socrates slowly inhales the room then asks, “Where is the rabbi in this joke?” Abraham likes to study successful people. This is an odd choice. His peers act on the belief that to truly know the […]

Categories: Storytelling • Tags: 1313 Main, BBQ, Blackfinn, Culinary Bro-Down, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, poke

The shape of stories and the re-invention of dinner

May 17, 2015 by antdina

Authors know a secret. It was first written in Ecclesiastes so long. “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” The plots. The characters. The scenery. All in some composition or another. The true invention of the artist is in the selection of what to include and what not to include. And the really crafty ones know how to bend history to their favor. Even when the […]

Categories: Storytelling • Tags: Boudin Bistro, cocktail, Fig Leaf, manhattan, panaanini, RDG, Sherlock Holmes, sourdough, taco, Whip In

The Vatican 500

February 23, 2015 by antdina

Walk the halls of Rome’s most sacred museum. You might feel small under the ceiling of the Sistine. Or humbled by craftsmanship it holds. But what you are actually experiencing is NASCAR played out over centuries. Daring, imaginative and experimental. Icons like Leonardo, Raphael, and Michelangelo show us the extraordinary in the ordinary. They muscle through the curves and mash the petal in the straightaway. Each stroke a gear shift. It was in this crucible of the Vatican where one artistic idea fed […]

Categories: Storytelling • Tags: asparagus, competition, duck, fig, invitational, Pizza, winners

Dining from the garden of an artist

June 16, 2014 by antdina

Can’t see the forest for the trees. Consonance and dissonance. “Let there be spaces in your togetherness….” (Khalil Gibran, The Prophet). An expression. The mechanics of music. And recommendation by a poet. These all signal the duality which forms the human experience. They speak to perspective. From the ground, people of the sky lack context. From the heavens people of the earth lack context. Both are true. Hieronymus Bosch painted with a symbolic hand. The Garden of Earthly Delights show fantastical […]

Categories: Storytelling • Tags: Garden of Earthly Delights, Hieronymus Bosch, Michael Bras, painting, Qui, salad, vegetables, Willem deKooning

The hambone in the splitpea soup is Alton Brown

February 2, 2014 by antdina

Maybe it was 2004 with the opening of the film Napoleon Dynamite. Could have been 1984 with Revenge of the Nerds. Somehow being off center, socially awkward yet academically brilliant became in vogue. The muscle of the mind triumphs over the muscle of the meat. Likewise an uncanny twist of fate has emerged for the sciences. Now rockstars of chemistry and physics take to the kitchen and either draw critical acclaim or host television shows. Alton Brown of Good Eats and […]

Categories: Storytelling • Tags: Alton Brown, Alton Brown Live, Alton Brown tour, Austin 360, Easy Bake Oven, Edible Inevitable, Good Eats, hambone, Iron Chef, kitchen table, Napoleon Dynamite, Revenge of the Nerds, Scott McCloud

Introducing the edible portrait

November 10, 2013 by antdina

“After a while I murmured to Picasso that I liked his portrait of Gertrude Stein. Yes, he said, everybody says that she does not look like it but that does not make any difference, she will, he said.” ― Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas Picasso’s paintings strike with an unforgiving savageness. He paints raw truth in sharp relief. And sometimes his words carry that same poison tip. The quote about Ms. Stein opens the door for artists to decouple […]

Categories: Storytelling, The Taste Lab • Tags: bacon, bourbon, bourbon gruel, caciacavallo, celebration, duck bacon, food, gruel, jalapeno, mozzarella, peaches, Picasso, Pizza, portrait, smoked cheese, The Whittington, walnuts, Whittington

the sound of pizza

June 30, 2013 by antdina

Simon and Garfunkel wrote a song about the Sound of Silence in 1964 to point our attention to the sobriety of a fallen president in a time of mass doubt. 12 years before John Cage composed 4’33”, a score with three movements and no music. At least not from any instrument. Rather the audience were invited to focus on the natural ambient sounds. Both meant to sharpen our thoughts by quieting our senses. So why is that when we consider […]

Categories: Communication, Food Finds, Storytelling • Tags: 4'33'', brain scientists, espresso, grilled pizza, John Cage, melody, Paul Simon, Pizza, poets, Serious Pie, Simon and Garfunkel, Slip Slidin' Away, Sound of Silence, Starbucks, Tom Douglas

Travel time on a teaspoon…with no drugs

May 26, 2013 by antdina

It’s in 1977 and so much has already happened. Apple introduces the Apple II. The space shuttle takes it’s maiden voyage off the back of a jetliner. Elvis Presley dies at the age of 42. But what weighs on your mind is Emma’s. Emma’s serves Mexican food typical of the Southwest in a single room on a dusty road in Kingman, AZ. Chili gravy for their enchiladas. No tomato sauce to dilute the musty hot of ancho peppers. Plenty of […]

Categories: Food Finds, Storytelling • Tags: 1977, ancho, apple, Apple II, Arizona, AZ, blueberries, Brain Rules, Buyology, chili gravy, chips and salsa, Elvis Presley, Emma's, enchiladas, english muffin, grapefruit, hoja santa, Husky, jalapeno, jam, jelly, John Medina, Kingman, Konarik, kurant events, lemons, Maine, Martin Lindstrom, memory, Mexican, neon, pear, pineapple, recall cue, root beer, scent, Sears, smell, sopaipilla, Southwest, space shuttle, station wagon, Summer, toast, tomato chutney, Weezieboo

If dinner could talk, could it tell the story of the moon? It can and did.

May 19, 2013 by antdina

Previously we shared how, Italo Calvino published a novel about many travelers who meet up in a castle. The characters tell their personal journeys through a deck of Tarot cards. Flip by flip their individual stories unfold. Card by card their collective story became a single fabric. The genius is that the characters are not limited because they do not have words. Communication can take alternative forms and still leave the audience mesmerized, enriched and transformed. So why not try this with […]

Categories: Storytelling, The Taste Lab • Tags: Castle of Crossed Desitinies, cook, cooking, desert, dinner, dwarves, Fairytale, France, friends, Grimm, Italo Calvino, Italy, macademia, Moon, narrative, Nero Davola, pineapple, port, ravioli, salad, storytelling, strangers, Tarot, tart, taste, wine, Wizard Academy

Express who you are with wine. Seriously.

May 6, 2013 by antdina

In the 1969, Italian author Italo Calvino wrote the Castle of Crossed Destinies where weary travelers were struck dumb. They could not utter a word. Instead they huddle around a wooden table laying out Tarot cards to speak to strangers. The cards crisscross an intertwined narrative. What’s remarkable is that his characters spoke through pictures. And much like the aim of this blog, I believe that complex notions can be communicated through other things than words. Big, important ideas arrive in […]

Categories: Storytelling, The Taste Lab • Tags: asparagus, beef tenderloin, bread, Castle of Crossed Destinies, France, Italo Calvino, Italy, party, Pinot Noir, Vesuvio, wine

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