(This means I won’t be blogging here but will keep writing as much as I can at the new site).

Also check out this more personal post from Greater Detroit.

Here’s how. Take some sliced tomatoes, and squeeze out the part with the seeds. Sprinkle with olive oil, salt, pepper, and a little brown sugar if you are so inclined. In a few minutes the tomatoes will begin sweating our their juices.

All right, then put them in an oven at 200F. After a few hours, the tomatoes’ liquid has evaporated off, leaving sweet, richly flavored, tomato-y goodness.

So, from what I gathered, at the rodeo, two caballeros chase around a small cow and then try to ram it into the wall, or get to run in the other direction. I couldn’t really understand the details, but it didn’t seem like that much fun the the cow. In answer to this, my Chilean co-workers said, “Yes, but in Spain it’s way worse.” Touché?

Today, having pickled many a cucumber, cabbage, pepper, garlic, and what have you, I realize how simple the process really is. Take vegetable, add salt and water. Cover. Wait. Eat.

The first thing that struck me when reading “Salt” was how incredibly old and widespread is the use of salt to preserve food. People have been pickling food and preserving meat for millennia. What’s amazing is how arcane and mysterious these techniques have become in such a short period of time. I’ve had my share of smoked salmon and other fish, but I’ve never even seen salt cod, which was a huge part of people’s diets and until recently. The use of salt to preserve food quickly became unnecessary for many people after the invention of the tin can and then refrigeration, two inventions which significantly changed the way people eat.

I probably won’t think about this every time I make sauerkraut (we’ve been ordering way too much cabbage at the place where I’m working now, I’m not a total kraut-fiend) but last time I thought how what I was doing was the exact same process that people have been using for thousands of years.

Another interesting part of the “Salt” story was how, there used to be hundreds of different kinds of salt, identified by where the salt was made and known by their different characteristics and impurities. Some were better for cooking, some for curing or preserving, etc. Different saltworks made salts of different qualities, and they had different values to a consumer. Now, there are basically two kinds of salt, kosher and iodized. Of course there are high-end salts like fleur de sel and whatnot also (produced by the same companies that make the cheap salt). A few months ago I was at a restaurant in Portland where they had a salt bar, where you could sample different kinds of salt. At the time I thought it was pretentious and didn’t pay much attention to it (the food was delicious and interesting though) but having read “Salt” I think I might give it a chance, since I think maybe what they were trying to do was recreate some of the diversity of salts that existed until only about 100 years ago or so (although I still think it’s a little pretentious).

If, perhaps, when you were eating a corned beef sandwich, you suddenly realized that you had made almost the entire sandwich from scratch, including baking the bread, making the mayonnaise, making the sauerkraut, and brining and then cooking the corned beef, then maybe you would take a picture of it too.

Is only one of the features in a new book “Subjective Atlas of Palestine,” designed by Annelys de Vet, in collaboration with Palestinian artists. From their release:

Sublime landscapes, tranquil urban scenes, frolicking children; who would associate these images with Palestine? All too often the Western media show the country’s gloomy side, and Palestinians as aggressors. It is this that makes identifying with them virtually impossible. If we are to relate to the Palestinians other images are needed, images seen from a cultural and more human vantage point.

The Dutch designer Annelys de Vet invited Palestinian artists, photographers and designers to map their country as they see it. Given their closeness to the subject, this has resulted in unconventional, very human impressions of the landscape and the architecture, the cuisine, the music and the poetry of thought and expression. The drawings, photographs, maps and narratives made for this atlas reveal individual life experiences, from preparing chickpeas to a manual on water pipe smoking, from historic dress to modern music. Pages containing humorous and caustic newspaper cartoons and invented Palestinian currency followed by colourful cultural diaries and moving letters from prisoners.

All in all, the contributions give an entirely different angle on a nation in occupied territory. In this subjective atlas it is the Palestinians themselves who show the disarming reverse side of the black-and-white image generally resorted to by the media.

While I think that sometimes culture is overly focused upon in order to divert attention away from political realities, this project doesn’t seem like it falls into that trap (just from the info on their website). Looking forward to reading this book.

(Thanks to Culibog for the tip).