SydneyrELLA the best city in the world - The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook

Condé Nast SydneyrELLA award

SydneyrELLA Making Waves on Condé Nást 

Winner recorded on Blog on 5 October 2024 at 14:55 …

Our fair city just stole the top spot as Condé Nast Traveller best city in the world for 2024, voted on by over half a million readers. We want to hear what you think makes Sydney the best city in the world.

Sydney has been voted as the best city in the world – and also ranked second to Singapore as being the “friendliest”. The NSW capital just got more reasons to brag after it topped Condé Nast Traveler's “world's best” list, cementing its spot as one of the world's premier tourist destinations.

Ask a local Sydnerrells

If Sydney was somewhere other than Australia, its locals would be insufferable—high on their good fortune for living in one of the world’s loveliest cities, where surfers and top chefs rub elbows at the farmers’ markets, and seemingly everyone has a water view. But, of course, these are laid-back Aussies, who will happily share their long summers and mild winters, rock pools and beaches, incredible restaurants, and vibrant arts and culture scene with the rest of the world.

Conde Nás Traveller

To be a writer is to expose yourself in front of people in ways worse than prostitution. For letting people read about your thoughts, emotions and ideas is like stripping yourself naked in front of the society. 

My biggest dilemma is whether to be mysterious or to write about every emotion that plagues my mind, every thought that haunts me at night. Should I burn all my work so nobody gets to read what I write or should I unleash these demons that I hide? ~ Anushka

How Can Professors Learn Students’ Names?

The Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards gets bigger every year, and this year they have been renamed for their sponsor. The 44 finalists for 2024 have been selected, so go see them all in this gallery. Click on each photo to bring up a full-size version. See the finalists in the video category here.   

Tipping Point is a three-part podcast on The Limits to Growth, a 1970s book that predicted the collapse of civilization by ~2050 (based on early systems dynamics modeling done at MIT) and how it was ignored & discredited

Published in 1961 with an introduction by Alice B Toklas, The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook features recipes and wisdom from dozens of writers and artists, including Harper Lee, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Pearl Buck, Upton Sinclair, John Keats, and Burl Ives. Lee shared her recipe for crackling cornbread:

First, catch your pig. Then ship it to the abattoir nearest you. Bake what they send back. Remove the solid fat and throw the rest away. Fry fat, drain off liquid grease, and combine the residue (called “cracklings”) with:

1 ½ cups water-ground white meal
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 egg
1 cup milk

Bake in very hot oven until brown (about 15 minutes).

Result: one pan crackling bread serving 6. Total cost: about \$250, depending upon size of pig. Some historians say this recipe alone fell the Confederacy.

And Marcel Duchamp offers up a preparation of steak tartare:

Let me begin by saying, ma chere, that Steak Tartare, alias Bitteck Tartare, also known as Steck Tartare, is in no way related to tartar sauce. The steak to which I refer originated with the Cossacks in Siberia, and it can be prepared on horseback, at swift gallop, if conditions make this a necessity.

Indications: Chop one half pound (per person) of the very best beef obtainable, and shape carefully with artistry into a bird’s nest. Place on porcelain plate of a solid color — ivory is the best setting — so that no pattern will disturb the distribution of ingredients. In hollow center of nest, permit two egg yolks to recline. Like a wreath surrounding the nest of chopped meat, arrange on border of plate in small, separate bouquets:

Chopped raw white onion
Bright green capers
Curled silvers of anchovy
Fresh parsley, chopped fine
Black olives minutely chopped in company with yellow celery leaves
Salt and pepper to taste

Each guest, with his plate before him, lifts his fork and blends the ingredients with the egg yolks and meat. In center of table: Russian pumpernickel bread, sweet butter, and bottles of vin rosé.

Not to be outdone, MoMA published their own artists’ cookbook in 1977, featuring contributions from Louise Bourgeois, Christo, Salvador Dali, Willem De Kooning, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. Here’s Warhol’s recipe:

Andy Warhol doesn’t eat anything out of a can anymore. For years, when he cooked for himself, it was Heinz or Campbell’s tomato soup and a ham sandwich. He also lived on candy, chocolate, and “anything with red dye #2 in it.” Now, though he still loves junk food, McDonald’s hamburgers and French fries are something “you just dream for.”

The emphasis is on health, staying thin and eating “simple American food, nothing complicated, no salt or butter.” In fact, he says, “I like to go to bad restaurants, because then I don’t have to eat. Airplane food is the best food — it’s simple, they throw it away so quickly and it’s so bad you don’t have to eat it.”

Campbell’s Milk of Tomato Soup
A 10 3/4-ounce can Campbell’s condensed tomato soup
2 cans milk
In a saucepan bring soup and two cans milk to boil; stir. Serve.