{Japan}

Barry Grass’s essay “Phantasmagoria”, appearing in Annalemma Issue Eight: Creation, profiles brewer Dany Prignon of the Fantome brewery in Belgium. Prignon is an unconventional man with an unconventional style of brewing beer, adding impromptu and bizarre ingredients to his recipes like red moss growing on wooden crates stacked up in his barn. The essay focuses on the importance of following the biorhythms of nature and working with the materials you have close at hand to make your creation a unique reflection of who you are and where you come from. It’s a great read, you should check it out.

In the essay, Barry name-checks The Omnivore’s Dillemma by Michael Pollan as an inspiration for the resurgence of the pastoral idyll that’s been gaining momentum in the collective consciousness of Americans in the past few years. I picked up the book, it opened my eyes to the dysfunction of the industrialized food supply chain and how those dysfunctions have a negative ripple effect for the environment, the economy and the health and well-being of people who subsist on those foods.

Then I came upon this photo project of portraits of families posing with a weekly representation of what they eat, excerpted by from the book Hungry Planet: What the World Eats. The most interesting thing I noticed was how much people in the West eat stuff out of a box and the further South and the further East you go, the more people use fresh, local ingredients to prepare meals.

{Italy}

{Chad}

{USA, North Carolina}

{China}

{Egypt}

{Ecuador}

{USA, California}

{Mongolia}

{Bhutan}

Hat tip to Michelle Rider.