Beetroot Stout

It’s thrilling though rare to learn about traditional fermenting with vegetables in Britain, and in Wales in particular.  This Beetroot Stout is a healing recipe that is totally new to me.

Strong Hands Massaging Cabbage

I filmed this at a fermentation workshop I gave with Sector39 Permaculture at the amazing Reading International Solidarity Centre.  This place has a cafe with really delicious Ethiopian food which was wonderful to eat with a great group of people.  Sorry the video is badly blurry– it’s nevertheless worth it to me to share it.

A participant in the session was an experienced sauerkraut maker, and showed us all his massage technique.  His hands were so strong and active with the salted cabbage, I’d never seen brine be delivered as readily.  Of course I wanted to film it as part of this Recipe by Gesture tag.

Hands belong to Prof. Chris Rhodes.

Recipes by Gesture: Carrots and Stir-Fry

I have started an occasional project to film peoples’ hands when they talk about food and cooking.  I’ve only posted one so far, but there are more to come.

Today I was chatting with a friend and suddenly noticed her hands– three fingers on each one and knobs of bones and some tales of failures by surgeons. She is 75, beautiful, a free spirit, a collector of wool who crochets mad Log Cabin patterns, a guitar player, a cook, a fermenter.

Her mother had had one finger on each hand. Her grandmother had had a job in the 1920’s in a watch factory, hand-painting numbers on watch faces with night-luminous Radium paint; to get a sharp nib, she’d form the paintbrush into a point in her mouth between dabs.

How Her Mother Made Piroshki

This is a Russian friend whose perfect description of how to make Piroshki I couldn’t help but film, there in the Chemist’s, last spring.

I am going to start really making it a point to film people’s hands when they describe how to prepare food. I had a bunch more that were lost in my computer fiasco, but I’m going to begin again. There is so much memory and knowledge in the hands, and a moving performance when they are used this way.

Hey! If you notice someone telling a recipe with their hands, and you are able to film, could you please give it a go, and share with me? I’d love to see if this idea could grow. Thank you!