By Julia Cosgrove  January 28th, 2010 4:51 pm  |  Comments (2)

Irish cheese at the Temple Bar farmer's market in Dublin's Meeting House Square.

An oversize new cookbook landed on my desk right before the holidays: The Country Cooking of Ireland, by Colman Andrews. For many years, Irish cooking has been the subject of ridicule, and this book aims to change that. Andrews—the co-founder of Saveur magazine, winner of numerous James Beard Awards, and an upcoming Afar contributor—is the author to do it.

Flipping through the book’s recipes of brown bread and smoked salmon, shepherd’s pie, and Irish stew, I was momentarily transported to the year I lived in Dublin. During the week, I was there to study Irish literature. During the weekends, I felt it was my duty to eat and drink my way through the city. First stop: Bewley’s, for an overflowing Irish breakfast and some strong tea. Then on to the Temple Bar farmer’s market, where I stocked up on freshly baked soda bread, flaky smoked salmon, and artisanal farmhouse cheeses like Gubbeen and Durrus. By the afternoon, I hit a cafe or pub for some reading, accompanied by a pint of Bulmer’s cider. Dinners often entailed “takeaway” from the local chip shop.

When I think back to that year, it’s not the names of books that I remember (apologies to all my outstanding professors). Rather, memories of food and drink come flooding back.

I know that some of you are as obsessed with food as I am. What are your best food-related travel stories?

Photo by William Murphy.

By Jeremy Saum  December 23rd, 2009 9:12 am  |  Comments (3)

Dear Santa, I would like a subscription to Afar. And an edible hat.

In the second issue of Afar, on newsstands now, writer Christopher Hall takes readers on a delicious romp through Spain, sampling tapas wherever he goes. His dining companion in Madrid was Alicia Ríos, a woman who has a passionate, creative, wacky relationship with food. She makes hats out of meat, bakes entire cities, and constructs Flemish galleons from fruit. If you’re looking for inspiration or if you’ve just seen one too many holiday fruitcakes, check out Alicia’s Web site, alicia-rios.com. I recommend the Edible Representations page. 

Thanks to all of you who have helped Afar get off to such a great start this year. Happy holidays!

By Jennica Peterson  December 7th, 2009 6:00 am  |  Comments (6)

If you have a passion for the ocean, work alongside marine biologists with Tethys to research dolphins in Greece.

On WPIX-TV, Afar co-founder Joe Diaz reveals five trips that might inspire you to change careers. If you love the ocean, join the Tethys Research Institute’s program in Greece (details below) to discover what it’s like to be a marine biologist. Check back on Afar’s blog every day this week for more career-changing trip ideas.

Trip: Tethys Research Institute program in Greece
Overview: The non-profit organization Tethys Research Institute has been studying whales and dolphins for more than 20 years. You’ll work with them in the Grecian Gulf of Corinth identify threats to the area’s short-beaked common dolphins and offer scientific support to conservation efforts.
Skills you’ll learn: How to gather data about dolphin behavior and ecology during daily boat trips; how to track individual animals by photographing their dorsal fins; how to raise awareness in the community and work with local fishermen to protect the dolphins.
Other highlights: Relax in a taverna in the village of Galaxidi, where the program is based. Visit the nearby ruins of Delphi.
Price: from $908 for a six-day trip

Photo courtesy of Tethys Research Institute

Four other career-changing trips:

• Learn to cook in Morocco
• Live the life of an organic vintner in New Zealand
• Help healthcare workers in Guatemala
  
• Teach English and surf in Bali

By Nicole Solis  November 30th, 2009 12:17 pm  |  Comments (2)

Inspired by a trip to the Middle East in 1865, Swiss chocolatier Philippe Suchard added minarets to his home in Neuchatel.

Switzerland’s voters recently passed a ban on the construction of minarets. On the political blog 538, founder Nate Silver and Geneva-based correspondent Renard Sexton look into how religious identity, language spoken, and the foreign population affected how each canton, or Swiss province, voted on the initiative.

Silver kicks off the discussion, finding that the more religious the canton, the more likely it was to vote for the ban. In his follow-up, Sexton examines the role of xenophobia in the decision. He points out that since many multinational corporations and organizations are based in Switzerland, about 22 percent of Switzerland’s population are foreigners. As he says, this means two things:

First, the cultural clash in many Swiss cantons between traditional agriculturally-driven, conservative lifestyle and the “international” culture of more urban areas, who are dominated by the UN, banks and globalized companies, has become very pronounced.

And second, and perhaps more importantly, foreigners can’t vote.

Through their analyses, Silver and Sexton reveal some interesting insights about Swiss culture, especially in the age of globalization. As Sexton wrote, “the politics of culture in a country that is multi-cultural/lingual, yet insular…and isolated are very complicated politics indeed.”

Photo by Tambako the Jaguar. CC 2.0.

By Jeremy Saum  November 11th, 2009 9:24 am  |  Comments (1)

Just another lagom day in Sweden.

In Afar’s second issue, which hit newsstands yesterday, you can read about the Swedish word lagom in the Talk department. Here’s an audio file of how to pronounce it.

When I grow up, I want to have that guy’s voice.

Photo by Per Ola Wiberg.

By Nicole Solis  October 27th, 2009 11:34 am  |  Comments (0)

A double-cloth wool blanket by Eleanor Pritchard

British textile designer Eleanor Pritchard finds inspiration in limitations. That’s one reason she’s so drawn to dobby weaving, a simple weaving technique that uses a limited number of colors and small repeated patterns.

Within these parameters, the bold geometric patterns and vivid colors of her double-cloth wool blankets and cushions are free to pop. Though her designs are modern, the textiles are produced using traditional weaving techniques by a Welsh woolen mill.

If you’re in London, see Pritchard’s work at these upcoming shows:

• November 15: Midcentury Modern, Dulwich, London
• December 4–6: Christmas Open Studios, Deptford, London

[Hat tip to Tea for Joy for reminding me of Pritchard's lovely work!]

By April Kilcrease  October 8th, 2009 5:09 pm  |  Comments (2)

Soft, creamy, sweet, there’s something so comforting about rice pudding. According to Afar writer Jeff Koehler, the milky dessert “is one of the few universal rice dishes around the entire Mediterranean.” In his latest cookbook, Rice Pasta Couscous, Koehler offers three regional variations on the delicious dish.

The oven-baked rice pudding with mastic (sakızlı fırın sütlaç) is inspired by his first trip to Istanbul in 1994. “The weather was cold and wet,” he writes. “Much of my time was spent in cafes and muhallebici, ‘dairy bars’ specializing in milky puddings. Creamy, baked rice pudding was a discovery for me, especially when flavored with mastic. Crushed tears of mastic give a piney flavor to the pudding and a chewier consistency.”

His creamy vanilla-scented rice pudding (rizogalo) is adapted from a Greek family recipe that has been “passed from mother to daughter for generations.”

He also includes a spiced rice-flour pudding (moghli) from Lebanon, where “families prepare this caraway-and-anise-laden rice-flour pudding for guests after the birth of a baby.”

Rice pudding (arroz con leche) is a favorite in Koehler’s Barcelona home. As he shares in his article “Absorbing Rice,” “when the weather cools, my girls start asking for…arroz con leche. These are the days when…the flat fills with the aroma of rice simmering in milk with sugar, cinnamon, and citrus peels. To me that smell announces autumn.” To make the traditional treat, follow the arroz con leche recipe at the bottom of his story.

What foods say autumn to you?

By Nicole Solis  September 30th, 2009 2:57 pm  |  Comments (0)

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989

With the anniversaries of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the founding of the People’s Republic of China approaching in October and November, Jeffrey Wasserstrom examines how communism’s biggest defeat helped strengthen China’s Communist Party in an article for Foreign Policy.

Toward the end of the piece, Wasserstrom looks at two key lessons China learned from the end of communism in Eastern Europe:

1. Patriotism is a winning strategy, but it only works for one side.

By capitalizing on national pride, Eastern Europeans were able to unify citizens within each country against Communism, positioning it as a regime imposed on the country from outside forces. Taking control of this powerful tool, the Chinese Communist Party “placed renewed emphasis on patriotic education, stressing the party’s pre-1949 role in chasing out foreign invaders,” Wasserstrom writes.

2. Class divides give rise to dissent, so give people opportunities to bridge those divides.

East Berliners had to merely look over the wall to see how capitalism afforded their West Berlin counterparts a higher standard of living. Within Eastern European countries, Wasserstrom writes, “The only meaningful social divide was between a small privileged coterie of corrupt officials and the rest. And the rest was pretty much everyone.”

China avoided similar problems by encouraging a consumer revolution over the past two decades. As more working Chinese entered the middle class, there was less of a divide between the average Chinese worker and not only the party faithful but also middle-class workers in capitalist Taiwan.

Read the full article here.

Photo by unknown author, released by permission of the Senate of Berlin. CC 3.0.

By Nicole Solis  September 24th, 2009 10:07 am  |  Comments (0)

Amsterdam tulip market

Every possible passion seems to have a travel trend associated with it. So why not econotourism, for people who are interested in how the economy affects a local culture?

Nobel Prize–winning economist Paul Krugman recently used the term in a post about Dundee, Scotland’s Verdant Works, a museum devoted to the jute industry. The rise (and fall) of the jute industry in the late 19th-century deeply affected Dundee society:

According to the museum, it also created a troubled society in Dundee. The factories mainly employed women and children; many of the city’s men were “kettle-boilers,” stay-at-home dads. Many volunteered in World War I, because it was the first job offer they’d ever had.

But if you want to travel to the Eiffel Tower of economic bubbles, you need to go to Amsterdam. The Amsterdam Tulip Museum helpfully has a Tulipomania video on its website, explaining how wild speculation over the price of tulip bulbs crashed the domestic Dutch tulip market in 1637.

Many Dutch were financially devastated by the crash, but oddly enough, the event helped build the Dutch tulip export market because so many people in other countries wanted to see the flower that created such a fuss. Today Holland is the largest exporter of flowers and plants.

Photo by ethanlindsey, CC 2.0.

By Derk Richardson  September 24th, 2009 8:00 am  |  Comments (0)

Though Irishman Jonathan Swift praised the luscious mollusks in poetry, oysters might not seem likely cornerstones of Celtic cuisine—until you’re in Ireland eating them with a slice of brown bread and a pint of stout. For 55 years, Galwegians, living close to Ireland’s west-coast fishing beds, have celebrated the opening of oyster season at the Galway International Oyster Festival, a four-day indulgence in all things oyster. September 24-27, you can cheer the shuckers during the international oyster-shelling contest, and sample chowders and raw oysters all day long. Join the locals at the opening-night party, afternoon tastings, and the Saturday-night gala ball and banquet.

Check out the oyster shucking and slurping action in this Fresh From the Sea episode on Galway.