Emerging Futures - Volume 152: Creativity of the Road is Edible

Good Morning beings of long paths,

It was James Baldwin's Birthday this week – August second, we hope that you had a chance to take a moment to celebrate. And if not to celebrate Baldwin, we hope that you have been taking moments to celebrate important people in your worlds – whether they are human or persons who have not “humaned” such as trees, mountains, cats, rivers, beaches, your favorite shoes or even your favorite bodega.

Our month of workshops for teachers (kindergarten through twelfth grade) on new approaches to teaching creativity and innovation just ended. It was very physically demanding, but very rewarding. Not just because teachers walked away energized with new skills, but because we got lots of comments like these:

‍"This has been one of the best hands on workshops I have taken in 26 years of teaching!  

"This was totally mind blowing and thought changing."

"My eyes have been opened to what creativity means.  As a math teacher I was stuck in 20th century thinking..."

But also because in the developing, facilitating and reflecting on what we did, we have also radically evolved both how and what we teach. And as a consultancy focused on the what and how of creativity, it is so rewarding to be evolving at a very practical, pragmatic and nuts and bolts level. With all of the workshops we have done this summer (there are still more to come), our hope is to have online video resources available in the fall.

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Roads Emerging in the Driving

This week Jason is underway adventuring on the long, dry, hot, and dusty roads of the desert south west. And Iain is heading the narrow, winding, and windy roads of the North West (of Scotland). We will both be playing Jason’s music game that we introduced last week. And we will also be playing another favorite road tripping game:

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The Road Trip Cooking Game

You need to eat at the end of the day – so when on holiday, why not make it a real adventure? The goal of this game is to produce an emergent cooking challenge over the length of a trip that then needs to be solved in the shopping for and making of your dinner at the end of the day. This is an excellent embodied emergent creativity challenge that is very collective and great fun!

While we offer a detailed and highly baroque set of rules—the exact rules are not that important—the concept is what matters: arbitrary circumstances give rise to rigorous chance-based food shopping instructions and, ultimately: a perplexing cooking challenge. 

The best part of this game is that the surprise of what the ingredients are is only revealed by the “treasure hunt” that happens during shopping. Nothing is known in advance…

Then, once one has the ingredients, the challenge is to figure out how to connect the non-intentional ingredients with the chance-determined cooking techniques—and to turn it all into a tasty and beautiful dinner.

It is a great team event; the more people working together, the more fun it becomes. If we are on a road trip with friends or we and friends are converging on a location starting from different places, we will all play the game independently and then come together to cook. So much fun!

A brief warning: The rules and steps can seem intense; the first time you play it, it is best to “trust the process” - just read and do each step in a methodical, step by step manner. The ethos of this game is: go with the challenge, however crazy it seems and have a good time experimenting with “whatever comes next”!

‍Preparation:

All you need is

1. That you are on the road,
2. You have a way of making notes (phone, paper, a pen, etc.)
3. A passenger to do the writing, and
4. You will be able to cook at the end of the day (kitchen + equipment).

‍Step Zero: Decide the game has begun

The game usually does not start at the beginning of the trip, but at some point—often closer to the destination—the game commences. 

Step One: Finding the number of dishes

Once the game begins, the name of the first town seen on a road sign will be used to determine the number of dishes cooked. The number of letters in name = number of dishes.

Example: 

If the first town sign is “Paris, Texas. Population 7”. Then “Paris” is used, and “Paris” has five letters so there will be five “dishes”.

Write this down: Dish One, Dish Two, etc. – and give yourself space on the page for more notes on each dish.

‍Step Two: Collecting some numbers and letters

Now watch cars driving towards you and write down their license plates (as best you can). You should have at least three times as many as your number of dishes.

‍Step Three: Selecting Forms of Cooking Used

Make a list of cooking techniques – this should be based on what you know. E.g. Frying, Boiling, Steaming, Baking, Broiling. And it could be more nuanced: stir frying, searing, poaching, sou-vide etc. You can invent techniques – your knowledge and speculation can take this anywhere. E.g. “cook like an ant making a dinner for a whale” 

Number your list: E.g. 1. Frying, 2. Boiling, 3. Steaming, etc…

Now use your list of license plates to select the techniques for each dish: 

1. The first number equals the number of techniques used
2. The subsequent numbers pick out the actual techniques used.
3. Write down the number and selected techniques beside each dish. 

‍Example: 

The “P” Dish:

• The license plates are: N3X 34L, S5W 55M, 
• So there are 3 techniques being used (the 3 in the first license) 
• These are the 3rd (the second number), 4th (the third number)  and 10th (the fourth number) ones on your list: Boiling, Steaming, Broiling. 
• Thus whatever the ingredients are in this dish we need to use boiling, steaming and broiling as our only cooking techniques.

‍Step Four: selecting the ingredients

If you need, collect more license plate numbers. You need one more license plate per dish. Do this once for each dish. E.g. With “Paris” we will be making five dishes so we wait and look at five oncoming license plates. And write down five numbers – one beside each of the dishes.

1. The first number on the license will equal the number of ingredients needed.
2. The second number will be the aisle in the grocery store where you will look for these ingredients. 
3. The letters will equal the first letter that the ingredient found in the store must have. If there are three letters then the ingredients will cycle through the three letters. Write down the letter(s) beside the ingredient number.

Example: 

The “P” Dish

The license plate is: A3D 29K

Ingredients = 3

Aisle = 2 or 29

First letter of ingredients: A, D, K

Step Five: The shopping treasure hunt

Now you are ready to go shopping. When you pull into your final destination for the day, locate a grocery store. Ideally, it will have numbered aisles. If not, quickly divide up the store into numbered zones. Make sure you assign a number to the non-aisle areas of the store (meat, vegetables, fish, dairy, etc.).

Follow your instructions, go to the correct aisle for each dish, and select the first edible ingredient that has the right first letter. Then go to the next letter, etc. Be rigorous and don’t bend the process to your likes and dislikes; if it is edible, and has the right first letter, just buy it!

‍Example:

The “P” Dish

Aisle Two is “beauty products”

What is all edible in this aisle? What product name or brand starts with an A, D or K? Buy those… (see below)

‍Step Six: The cooking challenge

Now the real fun begins – how can you transform your strange ingredients into something beautiful and delicious via the techniques you must use?

‍Example: 

The “P” dish

A = All-in-One Meal Replacement

D = Dr Bronner's Mint Toothpaste

K = Potassium Supplement (Potassium is “K” on the periodic table)

Techniques: Broil, Steam, Boil

Outcome: Boil and reduce the meal replacement (which is sweet) with Potassium added (just a touch), once reduced, broil on an oiled sheet pan to make a brittle. Serve a small piece of brittle as a sweet amuse bouche with a small bowl of hot water infused with just a touch of mint toothpaste as an accompanying aroma.

While this can at first read as seemingly crazy, what makes this game so much fun is that you are all submitting to whatever aisle you find yourself in and whatever ingredients and techniques you must use, knowing that you can figure something out if you just get really experimental.

‍Variations:

1. Just make one dish
2. Just make it about the ingredients (cook however you wish)
3. Just make it about a sandwich (you can do this variation while stopped at a convenience store along the drive).
4. Expand it to cover every aspect of cooking (add tools, dishes, eating techniques, etc.)
5. Use chance to order toppings for pizza, to build a burger, etc., or simply to order dishes at a restaurant—just make sure everything on the menu is part of the game!

If you play this game, send us an email about what you made, and we will share it in an upcoming newsletter.

Stay cool out there, support those doing necessary work, celebrate the world around you, play a lot, and keep experimenting!

Till next week...

Keep Your Difference Alive!
Jason and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab

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