Leif is an interesting character. I only met him this past weekend when we did our collaborative Secret Supper together, piggy-backing a Favorite meal onto the festivities. It was a challenge for me to really plan what this meal was going to look like, taste like, and ultimately be like until I met him. After we had spent a considerable amount of time together due to the nature of our Supper project, I knew exactly what I needed to do: bento.
Learning about his favorite, the elusive Ms. Emily Cohen, was no easy endeavor. It took him months to get back to me about who his favorite was. I was especially intrigued with the description he gave:
“Emily is one of my best friends and I haven’t seen her much in awhile. She is also my ex-girlfriend. I love her a lot and we have shared tons of great meals together. She has helped me to be a more generous person, to others and to myself. She is a do-gooder with a big heart. She’s been living in Vermont as a farm apprentice for a while and is now doing activist work around prisons in Kentucky, for the moment. I feel like being her friend has made me a better person.“
Who is this woman who has helped make him a better person? In order to find out even the tiniest bits more, I listened. She came up in conversation quite a bit as she is still influential in his life. Just little things like “Oh, Emily would like this…” or “that is something Emily always says…”. So I pieced these snippets together, along with knowing him better from working with him and decided that Bento Boxes were the way to go. His list of flavors was really long and intense! There were so many things to choose from, I could have taken this so many ways. But learning from the little bits I was getting about Emily and Leif, earthy, healthy, and Japanese style/macrobiotic foods were what came to mind.
Leif’s flavor list (I laughed when I first saw this because of it’s absolute completeness and length…he even emailed me a few times to “update” it with more):
green tea, barley tea, twig tea, tulsi, oolong, puer, kumquats, arugala, dates, dandelion greens, soba noodles, ginger, cherry tomatoes, vanilla, quinoa, rice, soy milk, mint, blackberries, konbu, miso, beets, peas, chocolate, kale, popcorn, chiles, sushi, maple, ume plum, fenugreek (associated with skin and soft blankets), japanese incense, vegetable stock, tea
In the bento’s, I made sashimi tuna and salmon sushi, hard boiled quail eggs, seaweed salad, pickled ginger, home made miso (from a local Asian food store), cucumbers, and star fruit. I also baked (I mean of course, I had to!) vanilla buttermilk cupcakes with the left over buttermilk from the home made butter used at the Secret Supper.
(Leif took this picture and the one below)
At the meal, Leif took a few pictures that he was going to send to Emily. I asked him if I could also have those pictures. I am intrigued with the idea that this Favorite, while not present, was ultimately present via technology (text, photo, internet) and very much so a part of that experience. I have done Favorites for deceased celebrities and grandmothers, for a grandmother who was alive and present for the meal, but never for someone who was thousands of miles away, aware that this was happening, and the participant (Leif) was taking pictures for her to “experience” it on her own. As the designer of this experience, it was a new take on the Favorite for me. Because of this, I have been thinking a lot about our connections to others, to ourselves and how these relationships ultimately branch out and become part of those around us; how the internet and technology has ultimately changed how we relate to each other and even how relationships form, grow, or terminate. All of this from a bento box meal? Certainly! Food always has a lot to say.
