March 8th, 2024

Hi friends,

Food as mood. Ideating on my next pop-up dinner (Portland folks follow @tzimmypdx for updates) and contemplating what’s worth crafting a multi-course meal around. So much of menu design is weaving culinary threads around a narrative. To share my experience, to share a season. There are infinite ways to iterate on this most nuanced of arts. I love the storytelling aspect of a well thought menu–an opportunity to elevate innovative textures or nostalgic flavors, a moment to share in a chef’s private predilections. Menu as me, for you.

In planning this kitchen choreography, no ingredients go to waste. Each dish informs the arc and offers a chance to educate, and ideally, inspire. You can be sure I’ve considered every element on your plate, on the table, in the space you and this menu both exist. It’s an effort in imagination and I’m here for sharing the edible yarns.

Excited for this next thread, menu to come.

Stay hungry,Hawnuh Lee | Founder, Closed Loop Cooking

Menus of dinners past.

The dish >>

• Baking for joy in Gaza.

• Anyone else interested in How to Start Farming?

• Reminder–you don’t need a plastic produce bag.

• Same vein, ANYBAG is the upcycled aesthetic I’m after.

• Fish n grid. Stunning overhead.

• Did you know about stop food waste day?

• You know I’m about to make a batch of tangy kraut happen, you too?

• Dolly Parton can do (and cook!) anything.

Seaweed cyanotypes

Looking to regenerative plants for menu inspiration and finding total reverence for our underwater seaweed specimens. In their ability to rehabilitate ecosystems and provide scalable sustenance, there’s so much to appreciate in kelp and other edible sea greens. In researching inspiration I came across the work of Anna Atkins, an English botanist and quite possibly one of the first female photographers of the 19th century. Her 1843 Cyanotypes of British Algae is a stunning documentation of ocean flora–scientific in process and a beautiful collection of art.

Cyanotype, also known as blueprinting, uses treated paper and a placed object. When exposed to sunlight and then washed in water, the paper turns an iconic blue, burning in an image of the placed object. In celebrating this continued recognition of seaweed as a resilient food source, I’m sharing out a few select images from Atkin’s 1843 compilation.These delicately tendriled prints are each awe-inspiring in their elevation of organic form. Aquatic poetry and an ode to plant life, I hope you enjoy.All prints by Anna Atkins and works pulled from The Public Domain Review.

Interested in keeping kelp forests beautiful?

(Flour) flower power.

Love this newsletter? We do too. Share the love with a friend y’all <3

CLC might make a small commission from links in this newsletter. So we can keep crafting rad content for free!

>> New here? <<

Have an idea we should feature in the newsletter? Want to work with us? Drop a line at [email protected]. We can’t wait to see what y’all cook up next! #closedloopcooking