Archive for the ‘Portfolio’ Category
What if Objects Were Designed to Last Instead of to Be Replaced?
Planned obsolescence is something that I find infuriating. The idea that we design things to fall apart is absurd, especially when we consider the world of mass consumption, and mass waste, that we live in. These days it’s so easy to toss something broken and buy something new to replace it. But even worse; often if something is broken, you might not even be able to get it fixed at all.
I take a look at this topic in my latest piece for Brooklyn Fashion and Design Accelerator, featuring a new smartphone – the Fairphone – that is designed in the complete opposite way of most of our technological devices: it’s designed to have a long life.
Our modern culture has become synonymous with throwaway culture; when something doesn’t work, things are cheap enough that it’s often less expensive for us to toss whatever doesn’t work and buy a new one. Of course, the real costs of getting rid of something and buying something new to replace it are externalized. The price it costs us to replace an object is often far under the real environmental and social cost of producing a new one.
Consider this: in 2010, Americans threw away around 310 million computers, monitors, TVs, and mobile phones. That makes for hundreds of thousands of phones thrown away on a daily basis. When it came to smartphones, only about 11% of those that were disposed of were recycled, leading to a significant amount of e-waste. Certainly there is a part of that number comes from a desire to just have something new, but another part of it comes from being forced to throw something away because it’s just not possible to fix.
In its second iteration, the Fairphone is said to be “designed to change the way products are made.” This isn’t just a new phone design; this is a design challenge to other industries, asking them to step it up and think smarter about design. Besides just design, Fairphone is rethinking the entire economic model that most businesses base their practices.
Read the full piece here.
Image: Fairphone
Are Women the Solution to a More Sustainable Food System?
I have been very inspired by the work of Audra Mulkern and her Female Farmer Project. She recently inspired me to write an article about women and farming over on Foodie Underground, titled “Gender Equality and Sustainable Food: The Power of Women Farmers.”
Here’s a little excerpt:
In the U.S., while between 1982 and 2007, the USDA’s Economic Research Service found that the number of women-operated farms had more than doubled, there’s still a gender gap. According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, 86 percent of the 2.1 million people responsible for day-to-day operations of farms are men. But there are more women coming to the farming world, and in a time when the total number of farms is declining, the number of women-owned farms and women farmers is on the rise. Today women make up about 30 percent of all U.S. farmers – and often, they take a more sustainable approach. Which means that when we think about a more sustainable world of food, not just at home, but globally, we have to be thinking about women.
And if we are going to think about women, then we have to start seeing them too. Audra Mulkern of the Female Farmer Project knows all about that. A talented, self-taught photographer, a couple of years ago, Mulkern decided to launch a projected devoted to documenting the world of women farmers. Inspired by the women farmers in her local Snoqualmie Valley, Mulkern has set out to tell the stories of female farmers. “I noticed over a couple of seasons of visiting farmers markets and farms that there was a marked increase in female interns. I started asking around and decided it was a story I needed to tell,” says Mulkern. Since launching the project, she has photographed women farmers in five different countries, becoming a big advocate for sustainable agriculture and food justice along the way.
You can read the full article here. And I encourage you to give Audra and the Female Farmer Project a follow!
Image: Audra Mulkern
Food Not Lawns
The Food Not Lawns movement is the topic of this week’s Foodie Underground feature article. It’s something I have thinking a lot about lately – our use, and misuse, of space. There is so much space out there that could go to growing food and building communities. Making your own urban garden might seem like a small thing, but it’s a gesture with a big impact. Imagine if every yard had a raised bed instead of just green space.
“As it turns out, we don’t need to all turn into full-scale farmers, but even just using a little bit of our space for growing food would provide great returns. In the United States, for the 85 million households with a private lawn, the average lawn size is about one-fifth of an acre. That amount of space can actually provide a fair amount of food, and imagine if you got only a handful of lawns production more food. If we grow food not lawns, the results can be bountiful. In Milwaukee, a 3-acre farm manages to feed 10,000 people a year. Some people say you can grow most of what you need on as little as one-tenth of an acre.
So why do we choose lawns instead of food? Because gardening takes time. Because Western culture has instructed us that a perfectly manicured green lawn is the sign of success. But in an era where we are more and more threatened by things like drought, rethinking our outdoor spaces and how we put them to use is of the utmost importance.”
Read the full article here.
How to Twist Swedish Cinnamon Buns (Kanelbullar)
When my friend Marissa asked if I might like to have a recipe from Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break featured on FvF, I immediately said yes. I like Marissa’s photography and since I rarely spend any time styling or photographing my own recipes I thought it would be fun to have someone come and do it for me. See, I am lazy in the kitchen!
Get a photographer in your (tiny) kitchen and you immediately realize how hard food photography and styling really is; I have a lot of respect for the people who make it look easy. But let’s be honest; there is nothing like someone doing the hard work for you. And it’s even better when you want to do a series of how-to photos. Instead of playing the awkward Tripod in the Kitchen with Self Timer Camera game, all you have to do is go through the steps and have the photographer shoot it for you. This is perfect for Swedish cinnamon and cardamom buns, which people often ask me how they should twist. Now I finally have a visual guide to share.
Cupcake Feminism?
I’ve got a whole article devoted to questions of cupcakes, feminism and sexism in the world of food over on The Kitchn this week. Here’s a little excerpt:
I asked my friend Lisa Knisely for her opinion. I was introduced to Lisa when she worked at the magazine Render, and I respect her opinion on these topics, as she’s well-versed on the complexities and nuances. Beyond holding a PhD in Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies, she works as a freelance writer and tackles these topics on a daily basis.
“Baking, particularly of the domestic sweet and pie variety (as opposed to the uber-fancy and technical professional pastry chef kind), is a kind of culinary work we particularly associate with a feminized form of care and nurturing in our culture,” says Knisely. “I think a lot of baking businesses employ a kind of gendered marketing and ideology to advance women bakers and it makes sense that they do because many of us have powerful associations of baked goods with love and care from women. And that kind of love and care through food is powerful, awesome, life-sustaining stuff that should be celebrated.”
“But,” she went on, “I don’t see why men shouldn’t be doing about half of this kind of culinary care labor, too. If men were half of the cupcake makers in our culture, either domestically or professionally, that would change the whole field of gender identity and kitchen politics.”
I would agree with Lisa. As a culture, we love to define people and put them in boxes, and that certainly happens with professions. There are many professions which people assume are inherently male; the language that we use is a good reflection of this. For example, why when we read an article about a chef, do we assume that the chef is male? Female chefs are just chefs after all, just like female filmmakers are just filmmakers and female pilots are just pilots.
Read the full article here (I’ll warn you, it’s a long one!).
Fika on Heritage Radio Network’s Eat Your Words (Listen to the Podcast)
I was so excited to not only get to be a guest on a Heritage Radio Network show with Johanna recently, but also to check out their headquarters. Housed in a shipping container in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, Heritage Radio Network hosts a variety of great radio shows that are all about advancing food culture. If you don’t know them, be sure to check them out, the programming is pretty incredible.
It also meant that we got to eat a pizza at Roberta’s right before recording the show, as the radio is housed in the back. A super cool restaurant with an oven in the corner and local craft beer served in mason jars. My kind of place. The Heritage Radio Network studio itself sits in a shipping container right behind the restaurant, so as you sit and chat you look out over the restaurant goers downing their pizzas.
Thanks to Cathy Erway, the host of Eat Your Words, who sat down with Johanna and I and talked all about fika.
You can listen to the full episode here.
Fika in the New York Times
Thanks to my friend Lindsey for the lovely write up in the New York Times’ T Magazine.
The book is a delicious compendium of nearly 50 illustrated recipes inspired by Brones and Kindvall’s childhoods, equally fueled by Fika. The cookies, cakes and breads (including savory variants) tap right into a growing, universal quest to achieve a more laid-back European lifestyle. “As a Swede who lives outside of Sweden and who loves baking, it’s impossible not to think that the rest of the world needs Fika!” added Kindvall, who illustrated the book. To aid readers in integrating the practice into their own lives, Brones and Kindvall trace the history of the concept and cleverly lay out all the necessities from baking tools and methods to mastering the Fika vernacular, and include suggestions for where (anywhere!), when (all the time!) and how to enjoy it.
Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break is Finally Out!
There was a part of me that was a bit nervous that the release date of Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break would be a bit anti-climactic. I already received an advance copy of the book earlier this year, and after having worked on this project for the last two years, I know it inside and out. How exciting could the release date really be, particularly given that I’m not even in the US to celebrate it?
As it turns out, book publication day is kind of like a birthday. It’s exciting. And it’s worth celebrating.
I’ve got a behind the scenes post up on Foodie Underground today looking at all that went into publishing Fika.
If I am reminded of one thing today it’s that good projects take time, and that it’s always worth investing time in the things that you love, even if you can’t see the immediate payoff when you start them.
Now, to go and celebrate. Because life is short, and as my mother would say, you should celebrate often.
Fika on List of Food Bloggers’ Most Anticipated New Cookbooks
As the countdown to the release date of Fika: The Art of the Swedish Coffee Break gets shorter and shorter, I am getting more and more excited about this book finally making its way into the world. Mostly because I want everyone to be having a little more fika in their everyday lives, but also because I want to hear what people think about it.
I was honored to read that one of the food bloggers who I have been following the longest – Clotilde of Chocolate and Zucchini – listed it as her most anticipated new cookbook in a roundup of food bloggers on Publisher’s Weekly. Coming from someone whose own cookbook sits on my kitchen shelf, that’s definitely a notable mention. Thank you Clotilde!
Fika is officially out on April 7, 2015, but you can pre-order it now. Click here for a list of places that sell it.
Oh, and that awesome tote bag? I snagged that at the cafe/restaurant Fika in London. You can get your own here.
Traveling on The Ghan: Australia’s Transcontinental Railway
Last fall I spent a couple of months in Australia, and while I have had great intentions of sharing some photos from that trip, this has yet to happen. In the meantime though, I am excited about a piece I wrote for Roads & Kingdoms about taking The Ghan, a train that goes all the ay from Darwin in the north to Adelaide in the south, crossing through Australia’s Red Centre.
The Ghan is anything but fast. With an average speed of about 53 miles per hour, this is the definition of slow travel, but the train’s snail’s pace is perfect for taking in the desolate, unforgettable landscape outside the window: dusty red ground and dry desert foliage well adapted to the arid environment. We pass a pile of old timber, what looks to be a former cattle loading area. The pieces of wood are dark with age, left to bake under the Australian sun.
Read the whole article here. And check out some of my photos from the trip below.
blog.annabrones.com 