More modern mobile tableware

Mobile tableware has been a central subject of this blog for a number of entries. The meal packagings that we looked at included the meal carrier variety: tiffins, rantangs, tingkats, pintos, sage jubakos, gamelles, henkelmänner and something that might be known as a mohinga but also picnic hampers, including travelling tea sets and travelling bars. Last year, in 2013, designer See Yew Siang received Honorable Mention at the Red Dot Design Awards for the pop-up tableware concept. It looks like a folder but opens out into a bowl-plate with a knife and fork that you can use, wash, dry and fold away to be re-used another day.  How’s that for an unusual item to carry with your tablet?

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Packaging cooks egg

While trying to get some background on Koop’s More Freedom for Hens campaign, I came across this delightful little Russian idea: The Gogol Mogol. Buy protectively packaged eggs with a pull-tag to start a chemical reaction in the packaging, heating and cooking your egg for ready consumption where and when you are. Conceived by KIAN, a Moscow- and Novosibirsk-based agency, designed by Evgeny Morgalev, according to here and here. The designers won a number of awards for this packaging-and-cooking concept, such as the Cresta award (Gold in the Design Category, 2013) and the Pentawards (Gold in the Concept Category, 2012). I’d like to see some tentative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of this … meantime I’ll enjoy a Gogol Mogol, otherwise known as a Russian Egg Nog type drink. The recipes revolve around eggs and sugar, with a grand variety of further ingredients, e.g. lemon, orange, vanilla, nutmeg, honey, rum, brandy, liqueur.  It’s reputation includes belonging in the cupboard of grandma’s remedies and a tonic for singers, nobility and everyone else. Find a yummy recipe on theydrawandcook or here.

Stadtgärtnern

“Der Garten ist der letzte Luxus unserer Tage, denn er fordert das, was in unserer Gesellschaft am seltensten und kostbarsten geworden ist: Zeit, Zuwendung und Raum.

Er ist Stellvertreter der Natur, in dem wir Geist, Wissen und Handwerk wieder gebrauchen in sorgsamen Umgang mit der Welt in ihrem Mikrokosmos, dem Garten.”

Dieter Kienast – Die Poetik des Gartens: Über Chaos und Ordnung in der Landschaftsarchitektur (Buch)

Danke für den Hinweis an Martina Hasewinkel, Convivienleiterin Slow Food Bielefeld/OWL

On the value of gardens

“The garden is the last luxury of our days, because it demands what has become most rare and most precious in our society: time, care and space.

It is a representative of nature, in which we use mind, knowledge and craft again, in headful dealing with the world in its microcosm, the garden.”

Freely translated from Dieter Kienast’s book: Die Poetik des Gartens: Über Chaos und Ordnung in der Landschaftsarchitektur

Thanks to an owl for sharing the find (^v^) Martina Hasewinkel, convivium host Slow Food Bielefeld/OWL

Meal packaging: Sage Jubako

No, no, it’s not finished yet, the topic of food carriers, of mobile food, of lunchboxes, stacked and single-story. Today’s presentation is high art.

I was working on the bento entry and came across real tiered or stacked Japanese food carriers, a bento being a “ground floor only” carrier (translate: lunchbox). The stacked food carriers are known as Sage Jubako (or just Jubako), which, I gather, translates to “nesting boxes”.

Growing up in a European culture we learned about the (European) Renaissance, specifically Italy, as a period of particular cultural blossoming and flowering. So now I discovered that these Jubako are a product of the Japanese Renaissance in the Edo Period.

Edo is the old name for Tokyo. During the Edo Period, which was around about 1603/1615-1868, depending on your source, the Japanese voluntarily isolated themselves under the shogun(s) starting with Tokugawa Ieyasu. There’s a lovely little interactive tour site here and much contextual information on the period here.

It seems, from various internet sources, not least a myriad of art galleries, museum exhibitions, antique dealers and auction houses, that the Japanese used increasing wealth and leisure time for picnic pursuits and these lovely jubako were crafted.

The portable picnic sets almost always consisted of a few small food plates, some sake bottles and stacked boxes for the food, all in a large carrier.

The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has a teachers’ resource page for Art & Design with suggestions to Design and Make a Japanese-style Container. The Metropolitan Museum has an Edo Art page here.

Looking at the art from the Edo Period, you can discover picnics – and sometimes the food carriers too! – featured fairly prominently. See works in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts here, in the Brooklyn Museum here and in the Harvard Art Museums here, also in the Japanese Art Open Database here, and in the Marquand Library of Art and Archeology here.

There’s a more modern photo set of a picnic with jubako here on Naz Sahin’s site. I’ve got the same edition of Mediaeval Cuisine of the Islamic World featured amongst the wonderful panoply of great books on her site, just recently when in Granada at the Alhambra!

And here, dear Peeps, is my most astounding gem found on the intertubes while ‘curating’ for this post: An essay on Japan’s Sustainable Society in the Edo Period !! The author is Eisuke Ishikawa, a lecturer at Musashino Art University.

Meal Packaging: Bento

Culinary art in a lunchbox – that’s how one site describes bento, the Japanese tradition of packed, mobile meals. Whole sites are devoted to this tradition and the web abounds in obento. Lets start with some kawaii (cute) bento.

As you can imagine, a lot of that goes to school in packed lunches. There are all manner of helpful accessories such as cutters, picks, cups, separating sheets and things you haven’t dreamed of. Indeed, there’s even an app to help you find bento recipes. Moreover, there are loads of how-tos such as at this flickr site.

But the bento tradition is not just for children’s meals, it’s also the term for packed lunches at work, such as in the scene below, …

… or really at any time. And it goes back a long way. Take the Shokado Bento: a square – often lacquered – box separated into four (or more) compartments. Apparently this dates back to the early 17th century, says Fukui Craft.

You can make bento yourself at home, and, if you’re ambitious you can enter the International Bento Contest (see the 2013 winners here). Or you can buy it at many stores and even from vending machines. The future may even hold a computer filling bento boxes, as at the International Robot Exhibition 2013 in Tokyo here.

Travelling? There’s a special name for railway bentos: Ekiben (from ‘eki’ = train + ‘ben’ short for bento). The following pic is the display poster of ekibens on offer at the Tokyo’s Ekiben Matsuri (train bento festival store).

To me the lacquered lunch box versions are particularly beautiful. There’s a huge variety for sale out there, with one, two or more tiers, square, oblong, round or flower-shaped, traditional, modern or cute, with or without carrying bags, bands, handles and chopstick holders. Take a squizz at casabento, for example.

Travel Bar on Bicycle

Came across this traveling bar on imgur today, followed it back to reddit/bicycle; made me think of Springtime, the picnic-bicycle. Style points lost: If you can transport glass bottles you can transport drinking glasses.