Paul McCartney Shows You How to Make Mashed Potatoes (1998)

10 min­utes of Mac­ca mak­ing mash. That’s what’s on the menu today.

The clip above was shot back in Decem­ber 1998, only eight months after Paul McCart­ney lost his wife Lin­da to breast can­cer. Dev­as­tat­ed by the loss, McCart­ney stayed out of the lime­light for most of that year. And only with this show did he start enter­ing pub­lic life again. A chance to remem­ber Lin­da, an oppor­tu­ni­ty to exper­i­ment with this new thing called the inter­net, the show let Paul field ques­tions from fans world­wide, rem­i­nisce about Lin­da, and make a recipe from her veg­e­tar­i­an cook­book, Lin­da McCart­ney on Tour: Over 200 Meat-Free Dish­es from Around the World. The demo is pret­ty hands-on. He’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. It’s also com­i­cal and a joy to watch. And watch, you will.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Glass Walls, Paul McCartney’s Case for Going Veg­e­tar­i­an

David Lynch Teach­es You to Cook His Quinoa Recipe in a Weird, Sur­re­al­ist Video

MIT Teach­es You How to Speak Ital­ian & Cook Ital­ian Food All at Once (Free Online Course)

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

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Pizza Box Becomes a Playable DJ Turntable Through the Magic of Conductive Ink

Turns out Piz­za Hut is good for some­thing…

They’ve teamed up with the print­ed elec­tron­ics com­pa­ny Novalia to turn card­board piz­za box­es into playable turnta­bles. Spe­cial­iz­ing in tech­nol­o­gy that adds touch and con­nec­tiv­i­ty to every­day sur­faces, Novalia has cre­at­ed two scratch­able decks, each with con­trols that let you fine-tune the vol­ume, pitch, play­back, and cross­fad­ing. And it’s all done with the mag­ic of con­duc­tive ink.

Accord­ing to Live for Music, “the bat­tery-pow­ered box can be hooked up to a com­put­er or phone through Blue­tooth, then con­nect­ed to any DJ soft­ware like Ser­a­to or DJ Pro.” Right now, the playable piz­za box is only avail­able at a few Piz­za Hut loca­tions in the UK. Above, DJ Vec­tra offers a primer on using the new gad­get.

via Live for Music

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Tree Rings Get­ting Played on a Turntable and Turned into Music

How to Clean Your Vinyl Records with Wood Glue

Postage Stamps from Bhutan That Dou­ble as Playable Vinyl Records

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

Replica of an Algerian City, Made of Couscous: Now on Display at The Guggenheim

couscous

If you head over to The Guggen­heim in New York City, you’re bound to spend time immers­ing your­self in the Moholy-Nagy exhib­it that’s now on dis­play. It’s well worth your time. You can also take a side trip through a small­er exhi­bi­tion fea­tur­ing the work of Mid­dle East­ern and North African artists. And there you’ll dis­cov­er the work of Kad­er Attia, a French-Alger­ian artist whose work “reflects on the impact of West­ern soci­eties on their for­mer colo­nial coun­ter­parts.” Above, we have Atti­a’s repli­ca of an Alger­ian city (Ghardaïa) made out of cous­cous. The Tate explains the con­cep­tu­al thrust of the piece as fol­lows:

The instal­la­tion presents a mod­el of the Alger­ian town Ghardaïa made from cous cous, shown along­side pho­tographs of the Swiss-born archi­tect Le Cor­busier and the French archi­tect Fer­nand Pouil­lon, and a print of the UNESCO dec­la­ra­tion that the town is a World Her­itage site. Dur­ing the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry Ghardaïa was colonised by France, but the build­ings were not altered dur­ing this peri­od and remain char­ac­ter­is­tic of Moz­abite archi­tec­ture. Le Cor­busier vis­it­ed Ghardaïa in 1931, just three years after becom­ing a French cit­i­zen, and made sketch­es of the build­ings. These strong­ly resem­ble the style of mod­ernist archi­tec­ture he sub­se­quent­ly espoused in his trea­tise on urban plan­ning, La cité radieuse.

That a not­ed French archi­tect should take inspi­ra­tion from an Alger­ian town may not seem sig­nif­i­cant, how­ev­er, as Attia notes, ‘archi­tec­ture has first to do with pol­i­tics, with the polit­i­cal order.’ As Attia is a child of Alger­ian immi­grants and grew up part­ly in a Parisian ban­lieue, this state­ment seems par­tic­u­lar­ly res­o­nant. The use of cous cous as the mate­r­i­al to ‘build’ the mod­el is appro­pri­ate as it will pro­vide an approx­i­ma­tion of the town’s decay over time through­out the exhi­bi­tion, while rep­re­sent­ing one of the region’s most pop­u­lar foods – now a sta­ple of Euro­pean cui­sine.

By repli­cat­ing the town as an archi­tects’ mod­el in this way Attia shows the impact of his native cul­ture, which had oper­at­ed as a non-pow­er­ful host to colo­nial France, on their old colonis­ers, who went on to play host to the artist and his fam­i­ly. As well as high­light­ing the cul­tur­al impact of the colonised onto the colonis­er, revers­ing the nor­mal­ly report­ed direc­tion of influ­ence, this also reveals the com­plex­i­ty of hos­pi­tal­i­ty between peo­ple and nations which often relates to dis­pos­ses­sion and re-appro­pri­a­tion…

Atti­a’s cous­cous instal­la­tion is also on dis­play at The Tate. If you’re in Lon­don, pay them a vis­it.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Guggen­heim Puts Online 1600 Great Works of Mod­ern Art from 575 Artists

Rijksmu­se­um Dig­i­tizes & Makes Free Online 210,000 Works of Art, Mas­ter­pieces Includ­ed

The Nation­al Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Art­work Freely Avail­able Online

Down­load 448 Free Art Books from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

If Coffee Commercials Told the Unvarnished Truth

A new com­e­dy video from Cracked makes a fair point: there’s a lot of bull­shit that goes into the mar­ket­ing of cof­fee nowa­days. Slap the words “organ­ic” and “fair trade” on the prod­uct, and every­one feels pret­ty good about keep­ing their caf­feine addic­tions going. Sev­er­al years ago, Sloven­ian the­o­rist Slavoj Žižek took a clos­er look at this phe­nom­e­non and drew some inter­est­ing con­clu­sions about how, with­in con­tem­po­rary cap­i­tal­ism, com­pa­nies like Star­bucks have reworked Max Weber’s Protes­tant Eth­ic, and found new ways to square our eco­nom­ic and spir­i­tu­al lives. Star­bucks has made it, Žižek notes, so that when we enter their stores, we’re not just buy­ing cof­fee and being con­sumers. Rather, we’re buy­ing fair trade and eco-friend­ly cof­fee, par­tic­i­pat­ing in char­i­ta­ble work, and leav­ing with a sense of redemp­tion. The ani­mat­ed video is worth a look.

And lest you think mar­ket­ing cof­fee has always been a sun­ny affair, let me turn your atten­tion to this post in our archive: Men In Com­mer­cials Being Jerks About Cof­fee: A Mashup of 1950s & 1960s TV Ads.

Relat­ed Con­tent

“The Virtues of Cof­fee” Explained in 1690 Ad: The Cure for Lethar­gy, Scurvy, Drop­sy, Gout & More

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

The Birth of London’s 1950s Bohemi­an Cof­fee Bars Doc­u­ment­ed in a Vin­tage 1959 News­reel

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

Good Cap­i­tal­ist Kar­ma: Zizek Ani­mat­ed

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An 1585 Recipe for Making Pancakes: Make It Your Saturday Morning Breakfast

old pancakes

Ear­li­er this week, Col­in Mar­shall high­light­ed a trove of 3,000 vin­tage cook­books on Archive.org, many of which date back to the 19th cen­tu­ry.

Cook­books, how­ev­er, first arrived on the scene well before that. Accord­ing to the ven­er­a­ble British Library, the “late 16th cen­tu­ry was the first time that cook­ery books began to be pub­lished and acquired with any sort of reg­u­lar­i­ty.” “It is also the first time that cook­ery books were direct­ed at a female audi­ence.” That is, priv­i­leged women who could read and had access to sug­ar, spices and oth­er then rare ingre­di­ents.

Above you can find a recipe for mak­ing pan­cakes, straight from 1585.  To make Pan­cakes, the text reads:

Take new thicke Creame a pine, foure or five yolks of egs, a good hand­ful of flower and two or three spoone­fuls of ale, strain them togeth­er into a faire plat­ter, and sea­son it with a good hand­full of sug­ar, a spoone­ful of syna­mon, and a lit­tle Gin­ger: then take a fri­ing pan, and put in a litle peece of But­ter, as big as your thumbe, and when it is molten brown, cast it out of your pan, and with a ladle put to the fur­ther side of your pan some of your stuffe, and hold your pan …, so that your stuffe may run abroad over all the pan as thin as may be: then set it to the fire, and let the fyre be ver­ie soft, and when the one side is baked, then turn the oth­er, and bake them as dry as ye can with­out burn­ing.

It’s Sat­ur­day morn­ing. What are you wait­ing for? Give it a try. The page above also offers recipes for var­i­ous pud­dings. Find those recipes tran­scribed here

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

Dis­cov­er the Old­est Beer Recipe in His­to­ry From Ancient Sume­ria, 1800 B.C.

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An Archive of 3,000 Vintage Cookbooks Lets You Travel Back Through Culinary Time

OC bachelor coobook illustration

By the time I got to high school, home eco­nom­ics class­es had fall­en out of favor: the boys, of course, con­sid­ered them too “girly,” and the girls con­sid­ered them enforcers of tra­di­tion­al gen­der roles whol­ly out of place in mod­ern soci­ety. At that time, Amer­i­ca’s wide­spread obses­sion with food still had a few years before its full bloom, and now I imag­ine that learn­ing to cook has regained a cer­tain cachet even among teenagers. But what of “home eco­nom­ics” itself, that curi­ous ban­ner that com­bines a def­i­n­i­tion of eco­nom­ics nobody now quite rec­og­nizes with the less-than-fash­ion­able con­cepts of domes­tic­i­ty, prac­ti­cal­i­ty, and neces­si­ty?

You can get a sense of the field­’s his­to­ry with a vis­it to the Cook­book and Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion at the Inter­net Archive. Its items, drawn from the Young Research Library Depart­ment of Spe­cial Col­lec­tions at UCLA, the Ban­croft Library at The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, and the Prelinger Library, “take us back to an Amer­i­ca in the ear­ly decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry cov­er­ing top­ics on cook­ery, tex­tiles, fam­i­ly and home, bud­get­ing, domes­tic sci­ences, and many oth­er delight­ful top­ics.” Some will find them more inher­ent­ly delight­ful than will oth­ers, but the his­tor­i­cal val­ue remains unde­ni­able: each and every book in the col­lec­tion takes us back to a dif­fer­ent time and place with its own inter­ests and pri­or­i­ties, in the kitchen as well as else­where in the home.

At the Inter­net Archive blog, Jeff Kaplan high­lights such works as the Pil­grim Cook Bookpub­lished by Chicago’s Pil­grim Evan­gel­i­cal Luther­an Church Ladies’ Aid Soci­ety in 1921 and includ­ing recipes for Sausage in Pota­to Box­es, Blitz Torte, Cough Syrup, and Sauer­kraut Can­dy; 1912’s more sub­dued Food for the invalid and the con­va­les­cent, with its Beef Juice, Meat Jel­ly, Crack­er Gru­el, and advice that, “among oth­er things, beer and pick­les are bad for chil­dren”; and even old­er, 1906’s A bach­e­lors cup­board; con­tain­ing crumbs culled from the cup­boards of the great unwed­ded which, warn­ing that “the day of of the ‘dude’ has passed and the weak­ling is rel­e­gat­ed to his right­ful sphere in short order,” offers meth­ods for the mak­ing of dish­es with names like Bed-Spread For Two, Indi­an Dev­il Mix­ture, Hot Birds, and Finnan Had­die.

If we dis­missed what­ev­er they taught in high school Home Ec as old-fash­ioned, then boy, the wis­dom pre­served in this cor­ner of the Inter­net Archive exists on a whole oth­er plane. But it also con­tains more than laughs: the seri­ous stu­dent of cui­sine and its his­to­ry will also find the likes of 1907’s A Guide to Mod­ern Cook­ery, the work of French “king of chefs and chef of kings” Auguste Escoffi­er, as well as — stick­ing, sen­si­bly, to that most Epi­cure­an of all nations — Le grand dic­tio­n­naire de cui­sine, a 1200-page ency­clo­pe­dia-cook­book pub­lished just after the death of its author, The Three Mus­ke­teers author Alexan­dre Dumas. As rel­e­vance goes, both of them of them sure­ly hold up far bet­ter than, say, The whole duty of a woman, or, An infal­li­ble guide to the fair sex: con­tain­ing rules, direc­tions, and obser­va­tions, for their con­duct and behav­ior through all ages and cir­cum­stances of life, as vir­gins, wives, or wid­ows.

Enter the archive of 3,000+ cook­books and home ec texts here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

53 New York Times Videos Teach Essen­tial Cook­ing Tech­niques: From Poach­ing Eggs to Shuck­ing Oys­ters

1967 Cook­book Fea­tures Recipes by the Rolling Stones, Simon & Gar­funkel, Bar­bra Streisand & More

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Physics & Caffeine: Stop Motion Film Uses a Cup of Coffee to Explain Key Concepts in Physics

Want to teach me physics? Make it inter­est­ing. Bet­ter yet, use a cup of cof­fee as a prop. Now you’ve got my atten­tion.

Cre­at­ed by Char­lotte Arene while intern­ing at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Paris-Sud’s Lab­o­ra­to­ry of Sol­id State PhysicsPhysics & Caf­feine uses a shot of espres­so to explain key con­cepts in physics. Why does cof­fee cool off so quick­ly when you blow on it? It comes down to under­stand­ing heat and ther­mo­dy­nam­ics. Why does cof­fee stay in a cup at all? That seem­ing­ly sim­ple ques­tion is explained by quan­tum mechan­ics and even New­ton­ian physics and spe­cial rel­a­tiv­i­ty. You might want to watch that sec­tion twice.

Shot image by image, this stop motion film took three long months to cre­ate. Pret­ty impres­sive when you con­sid­er that 5,000 images went into mak­ing the film.

Get more infor­ma­tion on the film, and even down­load it, from this page. And find more physics primers below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via Aeon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Physics Cours­es

Free Physics Text­books

The Feyn­man Lec­tures on Physics, The Most Pop­u­lar Physics Book Ever Writ­ten, Now Com­plete­ly Online

World Sci­ence U Lets You Take Free Physics Cours­es from Lead­ing Minds in the Field

Ein­stein for the Mass­es: Yale Presents a Primer on the Great Physicist’s Think­ing

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And Now for Some Culinary Weirdness: Christopher Walken Shows You How to Cook Chicken & Pears

I don’t need to be made to look evil. I can do that on my own. 

- Christo­pher Walken

Five years ago, actor Christo­pher Walken casu­al­ly shared a sim­ple recipe for roast chick­en with pears, above. The light­ing was ama­teur, his imple­ments fair­ly util­i­tar­i­an, and, much to my grat­i­fi­ca­tion, he could­n’t keep his cat off the counter, either.

His impro­vised pat­ter was as non­cha­lant as his han­dling of his ingre­di­ents. Unde­terred, legions of fans still found plen­ty of Walken-esque quotes with which to spice up the video’s com­ments sec­tion.

Chalk it up to the dozens of soft spo­ken, seri­ous­ly unhinged char­ac­ters on which this actor’s rep­u­ta­tion rests. It’s painful­ly easy to imag­ine a rival gang mem­ber or law enforce­ment offi­cial lashed to a chair just off cam­era, squirm­ing in ter­ror as Walken paus­es to appre­ci­ate the “lit­tle cook­ies” the caramelized pears leave behind on the bot­tom of his pan.

What­ev­er he’s plan­ning to do to this imag­i­nary unfor­tu­nate, one hopes it won’t involve flaps of skin and a ver­ti­cal poul­try roast­er.

As to the recipe, it’s as deli­cious as it is innocu­ous. Try it!

If you’re feel­ing less than adven­tur­ous, you can decrease the creep fac­tor by repli­cat­ing the shoot with a grand­fa­ther­ly gent of your choos­ing pri­or to serv­ing. (Any­one who’s not Christo­pher Walken will do.)

If you’re look­ing for fur­ther serv­ing sug­ges­tions, the com­e­dy chan­nel Fun­ny or Die revis­it­ed the dish in 2012, pair­ing it with sal­ad, seafood melange, red wine, Law & Order: Spe­cial Vic­tims Unit star Richard Belz­er, and two heav­i­ly made up assis­tants who appear to be on loan from Robert Palmer’s “Addict­ed to Love” video.

Things get cook­ing with a vis­it to the Byzan­tine Stew Leonard’s super­mar­ket, and end with a cell phone pic of Walken’s nose. There’s a live man­dolin ser­e­nade and the kitchen seems vast­ly more expen­sive, but I found myself miss­ing the homey sense of fore­bod­ing cre­at­ed by the orig­i­nal.

Still, one can nev­er go wrong with poul­try and pears.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Christo­pher Walken Reads The Three Lit­tle Pigs, The Raven, and a Lit­tle Lady Gaga

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Read by Christo­pher Walken, Vin­cent Price & Christo­pher Lee

How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film Fea­tur­ing the Wis­dom of Michael Pol­lan

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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