Food Waste - Recipe Book 

I am having fun coming up with new recipes for my recipe book Left But Not Least.

   To find inspiration beyond useful websites such as Love Food Hate Waste, I have bought two cookbooks: Waste Not, Want Not by Cinda Chavich; and The Leftovers Handbook by Suzy Bowler. However, the issues I found with these books - and others I have read in bookshops - is that they do not offer easy recipes. The ingredients lists are always huge, often requiring expensive kitchen utensils (e.g. pasta maker) and featuring extravagant elements such as 'cilantro', 'rice flower' and 'canola oil'. Additionally, cookbooks have long and boring introductions, and/or endless instructions for the step-by-step recipes. 

    Therefore, based on these observations, I developed the following idea: a simple recipe book presenting simple recipes using simple cooking methods. How else can I convince people to give a second chance to their leftovers? I want to provide recipes that don't put people off as soon as they open the first page.

    The recipe book will offer recipes I came up with myself, and will be illustrated with images from my own portfolio. I intend to create perhaps a few playful photomontages with different foods. Christine from the MA group said something very inspirational to me the other day. She told me that, just as my photomontages are compositions of various pictures, so my book is a composition of various recipes. That made it logical to use my artistic work for the book. Thanks Christine :D 

    My target audience - 16 to 80+ - will be free to alter the recipes to their taste. For instance, if they don't have chicken they can replace it with another meat; or if they don't like potatoes they may use carrots. So far, the two recipes I have invented are the following:

Pink Chicken (with mulled wine)

I thought I'd give funny and mysterious names to my recipes, because it matches the fun of coming up with a recipe using random leftovers from the fridge. So basically, the day I produced 'pink chicken' I had the following leftovers: chicken breast, ginger, half a lemon, and... mulled wine (yes, why not?). I started by cooking the raw chicken straight inside a pan with the mulled wine. I added grated ginger, some crushed garlic, lemon zest. I also spiced it up a bit by adding 5 spice condiment. Obviously the recipes of my book will supply all the information about quantities, even though I tend to do it by eye... Moreover, I will write in each recipe the extra ingredients that are optional (for example here the garlic and 5 spice). Anyway, back to the pink chicken. After marinating the meat in the wine for about 10 minutes, the wine became a bit caramelised and I tried the whole thing and it was DELICIOUS. I added a few leaves of basil for freshness on top. Carbs like rice can be added as an accompaniment.

Conclusion: money saved, leftovers saved, planet saved! :D

Molten Chocolate Heart (with ricotta cheese)

I had this ricotta cheese in my fridge for aaages and didn't know what to do with it. Ricotta is a creamy cheese that doesn't have a strong flavour, like Philadelphia spread. Both are used a lot to make cheesecakes; but I wanted to do something different, so went for a warm chocolate cake with a crispy shell and liquid centre. I used up a leftover butter and two leftover eggs, added a 200g dark chocolate bar, the same quantity in sugar, and a sprinkle of flower (optional). The cake can be either low or fluffed up by a teaspoon of baking soda (I chose the latter). I cooked the cake in the oven for 20 minutes. The result was... oh...my...god. I should say oh my cake, really!

Food Waste Project 

I came up with a few name ideas for my leftover cookbook:

- Left But Not Least

- Rest Is More

- Bits And Bobs

And in the end I decided to go with the first one, which is a play on the saying last but not least (I hope it is obvious enough... lol).

I also collected newspapers and magazine images of food and made the following collage for the title of the recipe book. 

Ok. Now, I need to come up with some cool recipes using leftover bits of food like a piece of cheese. Hopefully it will be a piece of cake ;)

Science Museum Visual Audit

I came to the Science Museum by bus. The first visual sign I saw of the institution was this banner (above)next to the main entrance. It promotes a temporary exhibition about Cosmonauts.

In my opinion, the typeface of the museum is very adequate. It has a 'sci-fi' look. The font was created specifically for the museum by the brand consultants Johnson Banks in 2010.

  

Right at the entrance - as is the case in most museums nowadays - there is the museum shop. It is HUGE (probably bigger than some of the display rooms). Its humoristic 'the science of shopping' wall writing (above) is a good sales strategy; it puts the superficial and trivial act of shopping at the same level of extraordinary and significant scientific discoveries. Therefore, people don't feel too bad in spending money on futile items... --> Confirms the power of writing and font.

I like how the museum people gave a thought about the lighting in the shop. The neon lights have a quite futuristic and non-traditional quality (they look like Star Wars lightsabers).

Before making our way inside the exhibitions, we were given a map of the building. The design of the map is quite simple, with a few images of some of the major human inventions (the telephone, the wheel and the lightbulb).The choice of colour is harmonious, with contrasting blues and yellows.

The inside of the map has been designed so that each floor has its own colour, which I thought was clever as it offers a quicker and more effective way of finding what you want to see. The floor numbers also borrowed the johnson typeface.

As we make our way up to the first exhibition, we pass some posters on the stairs. This poster in particular was very catchy, with its vivid yellow (and picture of a burger mmmh I was hungry at the time). The layout of the poster is airy, with a simple combination of the colours red and yellow. The information conveyed is clear. The burger image is shaped like a circle, a well-known design strategy which causes our eyes to go constantly round the image, with no vanishing point.

On the second floor, we were going to see Alec Soth's photography exhibition 'Gathered Leaves'. Next to the show doors there was a cafe, and each of its small square tables had a triangular leaflet of the exhibition on it. It seems to me that the museum puts a lot of effort into advertising its temporary exhibitions inside its walls, rather than outside...

The entrance to Alec Soth's photography exhibition. I thought the old man in the poster was the photographer himself. It is not very clear until you come across that image in the last room of the exhibition and realise it is just some random guy dancing.
(Also, the guy on left of my picture really looks like the guy in the poster??!!!).

Apart from that, I really enjoyed Soth's photographs. Inside display cases in the centre of the rooms, there were some manuscripts and lovers letters. Those were a joy to read. I especially liked the one above which ended with an interesting 'Take Care and Drop Dead'.

This photo was my favorite because I am obsessed with surreal stuff and optical illusions. Thumbs up Alec!

Finally, I had to include this photograph. It is just so unexpected. Your eyes first see the face of the person and you think it is a woman because of the long hair. But then you start looking down at the rest of the picture, and you suddenly catch sight of her hairy bulky arms. Still a her?

SWOT Analysis

Here is the SWOT analysis for my fictional business (selling my art online):

Flow Diagram - Food Waste Causes

The flow diagram above represents the main causes of food waste, which are the following (clockwise on the diagram from the left):

• We live in an 'all you can eat' society, having unlimited food for a small amount of money.

• Oddly-shaped fruits/veggies are not bought by supermarkets, they are discarded even though they taste the same as 'normal' ones.

• Food is also wasted when we don't use it in time; when the use-by date has passed.

• Deals such as 'Buy 1 get 1 free' encourage people to buy more.

• Impulse buy.

• When big quantities of food are cooked and then not all eaten.

• Throwing away leftovers.

• Incorrect storage or little storage space.

• When one buys more food than one needs.

Vision and Values

Vision

To inspire people with beautiful and innovative designs

Values

• Diversity and innovation
• Quality and efficiency
• Customer satisfaction
• Passion and creativity
• Reliability and trust
• Commitment to sustainability

Positioning Diagram

Here is my positioning diagram of a some food brands, with the axis modern/traditional and textual/pictorial.

Symbolic object

The object I chose to represent my company is a spinning top. In the movie Inception, the main actor uses a spinning top to know whether he is dreaming (the object would be spinning indefinitely) or awake in the real world (the object would not spin). So here are the reasons why I choose the spinning top:

1. My company would be a dream I want to undertake.

2. In order for a business to be successful, I believe one needs both to be serious (reality) and have imagination (dream). 

3. Everything is about balance: once you spin the object, you know it will fall at some point. Therefore, you need to make it balance again, to spin it again. This is a metaphor for my business; if the business has a fail or a mistake is made (it 'falls'), I need to change what is wrong, to improve it (make it 'spin' again). Failures are not alway bad; they can actually enhance the business. By constantly finding solutions to problems, the business will grow stronger and more effective.If the business (the spinning top) 'falls', it is ok because bad experiences happen, not everything in the company is always going to go 100% ok.

Picture below taken during a holiday in Portugal two years ago. I got this spinning top (replica of the one used in Inception) as a birthday present. Crazy how everything is meant to be, I would never had thought I would use it as a symbol for my company years later!

Mood board

My mood board represents a few things that inspire me. I am most influenced by designs that contain optical illusions (e.g. the woman with her left eye on her arm) , or which distort the normal use of an object (e.g. melted ceramic cup). 

  Other than that, I also appreciate realistic paintings (e.g. the contorted naked bodies of Jenny Saville), which are also a kind of illusion; as well as geometric designs (e.g. the tattoo).

Two Brands

1. SoundCloud

SoundCloud (based in Berlin) is the largest social sound platform where anyone can create sounds and share them. I like the way they created the logo, combining a sound wave and a cloud. I imagine they choose a cloud to represent the fact that the sounds created on the website/app can be shared everywhere around the world, just like there are clouds everywhere too. 

2. Just Eat

Just Eat is the UK's leading online takeaway ordering website. I think the logo is brilliant, because it is simple and effective. It is called 'Just Eat' because you don't need to bother cooking, you can just choose a takeaway on the website from a variety of cuisines and enjoy it at home without any effort. The cursor in the letter A points to the fact that it is an online website/app, and that in just one click you can get food delivered to your house. (I used to order a lot from Just Eat, but then I discovered I actually love cooking so I stopped...haha).