The Art of Eating

Food as Art: Cooking in Color

Let's think about each ingredient as a different color paint 🎨 Remember ROY G BIP?

All artists know you must blend your paint first. You can create natural sunset colors from just using red, yellow, blue and white - the primaries. But if you try to use the red straight out of the tube in a sunset painting, it will be harsh and unrealistic. I still struggle to blend, but it makes a HUGE difference, it makes the colors unique to me.

Same goes for food, a red bell pepper is like using paint straight out of the tube. Now imagine a red bell pepper next to purple cabbage? There is not much tonality, its harsh, not a colorful rainbow vibe and instead feels like a primary and secondary color wheel. But what if you steep the purple cabbage in vinegar first to make more of a magenta color? Magenta next to primary red would be more visually appealing. Or perhaps a pickled red onion "pink" next to orange carrots, now that is pretty :)

🍽️ The Art of Impermanence

Taste, texture, temperature, shape - food has even more dimensionality than a painting. But one must practice impermanence because when it is all eaten, you have nothing to show. It is the act of the creation itself, that is why we do it. And ya know...these days you can snap a pic so its not really gone forever :) Non-attachment.

When it comes to food art, it needs to be practical - truly there is nothing worse than a fru-fru meal meant to show off. We do not want one bite of "food art" on our plate. We eat for satiation. I remember, one time I made a green smoothie bowl and put flowers on it which was just for a vibe. I didn't even want to eat the flowers. Since then, I vowed only to use flowers if it makes sense with the bite.

🍷 The Bourdain Rule: Dine to Eat

We love and adore the late great Anthony Bourdain and always got a kick out of hearing him and chef Marco Pierre White laugh about 5 star, 20 course meals. They show up hungry and tired after travel, ask for 18 courses instead of 25 cause they want to get to bed... and suddenly dessert still hasn't come. When they ask what course they're on: "ohhhh you are on 28, the chef wanted to bring you extra" lol. Face palm. Please bring me dessert and a check, I am exhausted.

They both made a hard rule from there on out. They say they dine to "eat" not dine to "dine". You can find that convo here if you want to listen.

🌺 Nature is the Ultimate Creative Director

Once you get into the world of wild flowers and colors, you start to notice things. Just this morning I saw a little pink flower — the plant ID feature on my iPhone told me these are wood sorrels and absolutely edible. Not just edible, they taste like citrus, AND they are a shade of magenta I have never created from typical ingredients. New color unlocked.

Then on my run, I noticed the distinct yellow flower that grows on wild bitter melons all throughout Hawaii. Are those edible? Yes! "The bright yellow flowers of the bitter melon vine are edible and used as a seasoning, adding a pleasant aroma and flavor." NEW inspo just unlocked. I just added two new flowers into my color bank simply because I was curious.

Just the act of having the intent to create can spark inspiration. And on another note — the 5 petal bitter melon flowers are a beautiful shape. So now you are getting into a whole new dimension of the art: shapes. How you cut your ingredients makes a difference. You can make circles from a serrano or long strips. 1 ingredient, multiple shapes.

🎥 Stay Tuned: The Effortless Vlog

On my run, I thought: maybe this would be easier as a vlog. We've been wanting to show up for long form YouTube but I get discouraged by the editing. During that fasted, flow state run it came to me — just live stream talking about the inspiration behind dishes, the travel, where we learned a certain fermentation process. No back and forth, no B roll. Just go.

I ended up giving it a try — you can watch it here if you are interested.

🌈 Vinegar as Color Extractor: Your Ingredient Palette

Think of vinegar as a color extractor, a blending medium. It pulls pink out of beets and changes blues to purples. Here is a quick list of ways I like to add color.

• Bright Red = Thai/Hawaiian Chili, red bell pepper
• Soft Orange = Papaya, oranges, marigolds, squash blossoms, mamey sapote
• Primary Orange = Bell pepper, carrot
• Light Yellow = Scrambled eggs, bitter melon flower
• Primary Yellow = Bell Pepper, roasted squash
• Dark Green = Sauteed Kale, kefir lime leaf
• Mid Green = Cilantro, mint, Serrano, Jalapeno, green bell pepper
• Light Green = Cabbage, lettuce, avocado
• Blue = Butterfly pea flower
• Indigo = Wild flowers
• Purple = Purple cabbage, violets, wood sorrel
• Pink = Garden roses, watermelon radish
• Bright Pink = Diakon radish quick pickled with vinegar and a beet, pickled purple onion
• Brown = Seared mushrooms, thinly sliced caramelized beef, cacao nibs, chocolate sapote
• White = Yogurt, diakon, onion, cottage cheese, potato
• Black = Sesame seeds, truffle, black garlic

✨ Do It for the Act

Food art is not practical, time wise, and most of our meals do not look like this. Beautiful meals are meant to be an act of creation. It will put you in the flow state, get you thinking in color, get you finding inspo from wild flowers, keep you off your phone, and ultimately give a sustainable self generated dopamine boost.

Spend the time creating for the simple sake of creation itself. 💚