The answer to America's myriad of food-related issues seems easy enough---cook at home! Yet the question remains...who is going to do it and when? The British suffragette Hannah Mitchell frequently referred to the "tyranny of meals." And in newly redefined work and homescapes, that question is increasingly complex. While one answer is to devote the entire family to the pursuit of Platonic arugula, there is, potentially, another solution on the horizon.
America's illustrators---a segment of the population that has long know the burdens of cooking by necessity---are taking a crack at making everyday cooking more appealing.* They are moving beyond Ramen by integrating cooking into their social and artistic lives---both of which exist on the internet.
One outpost of the new art/internet/food world is the illustrated recipe blog. Sibling illustrators Salli Swindell and Nate Padavick run the blog
They Draw and Cook.
The blog brings together simple recipes from disparate cuisines, drawn in different styles. Artists from around the globe send it illustrations of their favorite recipes. Even Salli and Nate, who both illustrate greeting cards and also co-write a professional blog, live in different states: He lives in North Adams, Mass. while she lives in Hudson, Ohio.
"It started when I recreated a fig pasta dish I had in Berlin for Salli while we were on a family vacation. That led to Salli buying a lovely little crate of fresh figs, which she ended up illustrating because their shape and color was so intriguing," Nate wrote in an email. Salli started posting food drawings on her blog. The siblings hoped to gather enough illustrations to create a book, but, when some of the drawings were taking too long, they started a blog.
"The blog started out by us asking our artist pals, most of whom work at American Greetings, to contribute a little piece just for fun. Then it spread really quickly as those artists posted it on their Facebook pages and personal blogs. Then, a bunch of food-related blogs started talking about and it really took off," Nate wrote.
The siblings, who grew up in Northeast Ohio, get one or two submissions a day. According to Nate, "the recipe for a good illustration is equal parts illustration, design and typography."
Multiple illustrated recipes blogs have sprung up in recent years as Americans try to redefine their relationship to food. Call it really getting in touch with Grandma's apple crisp.
"By illustrating a recipe or food idea you can really emphasize and capture the whole idyllic nature of food...the color, the shapes, the textures. Plus, an artist can express the recipe on a whole different level through humor or storytelling. Photography can't always bring out the playful factor," said Salli.
*This assumption is based on what I imagine the life of a freelance illustrator to be like...comitragically penniless but dignified a la Gary Larson.
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