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these hands. these hands were never made for writing. harvesting. digging. plowing. grasping mounds of calluses. these hands. these hard-won hands. grasping, disquiet hands are my ancestral gifts. family heirlooms passed down from other butter hands. hands which flipped blini made of lace. the hands which skinned potatoes for every dish of every meal. the hands which dug fields. the hands which didn’t catch the stranger’s newborn minutes after the revolution. the hands of embroidery and knitting. sculpting objects of prolonged yarn; only fit for a trail of one’s return. the hands which grazed other women and god’s saints. the hands which picked cucumbers from fields, lifted glasses of vodka to one’s lips. hands piloting helicopters. the hands which overdressed me into woolen layers in the spring. the hands passed down to me worked in murmansk, the former leningrad, and what is now moldova. the hands which photographed a bear in the wild, resembling not a bear, but a stain, a smudge. the hands which firmly clutched a book. held on to the subway railing, refusing to sit down. these hands were never meant for writing. these hands are relative.

Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Olga works within the mediums of photography, text, and installation. Her focus is on memory, home, (dis)place, language, inheritance/loss and the disruptive. She currently resides in Olympia, WA, where she co-founded and co- curates Desuetude gallery.

Photo by Olga Mikolaivna

This piece was originally published in The Inquisitive Eater Anthologywhich you can now purchase online.


From 1968-1971 Gordon Ball managed Allen Ginsberg’s upstate poets’ retreat, recounted in East Hill Farm: Seasons with Allen Ginsberg. From 1969-1997 he took numerous photographs of “Ginsberg & Beat Fellows”; some appear in books, exhibitions, and journals, including the New York Times Sunday magazine. His website is http://www.gordonballgallery.com. He’s authored essays, including “A Nobel for Dylan?” in The Poetics of American Song Lyrics, and two additional memoirs—’66 Frames and Dark Music. His short stories, On Tokyo’s Edge, appeared in 2017. The Museum of Modern Art and Anthology Film Archives have shown his films; the DVD Films By Gordon Ball collects seven.

by Mandy Beem-Miller

by Mandy Beem-Miller

It’s one of those things that seems to come out of nowhere. One moment the rhubarb patch is barren, nothing but dead stalks and dirt. The next you are looking through the back porch window, out over the flag stone wall and the hill that rises beyond to the garden and, low and behold, that spiritless mass of wintery debris is transformed. At first there are just the red nobly buds, poking above the dark earth. Without much ado wide paddle like, almost triangular leaves, in deep emerald green, balloon out from the deep red nubs, which have now become cinnamon candy colored stalks. It occurs in such a jiff, like growing babies, weeds in the garden, and the weekend, that it appears to have happened when your head was turned. From dirt heap to vibrant edible, and one of the first true signs that the growing season in upstate NY has begun.

Much of the yard is still in hibernation; the rest of springs flora and fauna appears to creep along more slowly. The trees are budding but only the first flowers- crocuses, snowdrops, maybe a daffodil or two- have begun to show signs of life. But this rhubarb is one of the great gifts of early spring. While we must wait months longer for the next edible harvest, grandma’s rhubarb patch will be prime for picking in a few short weeks. And the thing is prolific, so long as you keep harvesting it. As per GK’s (Grandma Kate) instruction you must regularly prune the patch to keep up the production. Only then you end up with so much of the stuff that you need to come up with more ways to use it, beyond the requisite pies, crumbles and fools.  A couple of years back we were wallowing in this rhubarb surplus and wondered if rhubarb could be used as savory ingredient as well….  and so the experiments began.

There were compotes and gastriques to accompany pork loin and pot roast, a haphazard attempt at a savory rhubarb chowder, and finally rhubarb salsa. This was the winner. Deciding that the flavors of rhubarb were similar to that of tomatillo- tart, sour, tangy- I created a salsa with all of the other elements of traditional green salsa. By blending together roasted rhubarb with lots of cilantro, onion, garlic and jalapeños, and touch of sugar and salt we ended up with a semi-seasonal spring salsa. The discovery was exciting for an Upstate New Yorker who wants desperately to use local ingredients, but faces many months (most winters) of dreary weather with not an edible thing in sight. It might not be totally local, in light of the fact that until much later in the summer we will have to depend on cilantro from elsewhere, but it’s an improvement. Plus it’s a use for this giant patch of rhubarb.

Mandy Beem-Miller is currently a senior at The New School.  Before obtaining her Bachelors, she spent a year at Apicius, a culinary arts school in Florence Italy, completing the program in Food Communications. She has worked as a food photographer and in many professional kitchens. Just last year she opened her own taco truck that serves locavore style mexican inspired street food.  She lives in the rural Finger Lakes region of Upstate NY, on land that has been in her family for over 100 years.

Republished with permission from Mandy Beem-Miller.

by Valeria Necchio

I am attracted and intrigued by food from many points of view. The esthetic side of it, though, is the one that has always interested me the most. In my pictures food can be both alone or in a context, but it will never be just food.

Valeria Necchio graduated from the Unviersity of Gastronomic Sciences with a master’s degree and immediately took off on a path connecting her passions of good food and photography. A true Italian, she likes to spend time at the weekly market, in the kitchen and behind the camera.

by Kunal Chandra

Nearly 7 million tons of food are thrown away in the United Kingdom every year. This set of pictures is of a humble little slice of beet root forgotten during our Christmas feast. It serves as a personal reminder to respect and honor every ingredient.

(Click on the photographs for a larger gallery.)

Kunal Chandra is a student at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy.  He labels himself a recovering spice addict, mid-20 pro-utopian escape artist, and food and photo mega-geek.  You can learn more about him at www.kunalchandra.com