Culture

Weekend Reading: MRI Scans of Food, Dali’s Surrealist Cookbook, and More

What we’re reading, cooking, and clicking this week.

Andy Ellison operates an MRI machine at Boston University Medical School. According to Geek, when needing to test a function of the machine, Andy tossed in an orange and was fascinated by the result. His blog, Inside Insides, with tons of beautiful moving images of fruits and vegetables as they appear in an MRI scanner, was born. —Zoe Schaeffer [Geek]

Chipotle has seriously upgraded its packaging: bags and cups now come bearing short original essays by writers like Malcolm Gladwell, Toni Morrison, and George Saunders. Each work takes about two minutes to read—so you should be able to put way quite a few while you enjoy your ginormous burrito. —_Karen Shimizu_Vanity Fair

Les Diners de Gala, a rare cookbook imagined and illustrated by Salvador Dali, circulated the internet this week. Originally published in 1973, it contains profoundly beautiful artwork and 136 lavish recipes. If the intense cover art doesn't reel you in, then this excerpt will: "If you are a disciple of one of those calorie-counters who turn the joys of eating into a form of punishment, close this book at once; it is too lively, too aggressive, and far too impertinent for you." —_Michellina Jones_Dangerous Minds

Happy birthday, Cronut! Just one year ago, pastry chef Dominique Ansel dreamt up the croissant-doghnut hybrid. Grub Street takes a look at the pastry's success and how it first came into being. —Laura Loesch-Quintin [GrubStreet]

New York Times book critic Dwight Garner wrote a sweet, moving ode to his habit of attending the ballet with his teenage daughter, Hattie. Generally when food shows up in a dance story, it tends to be in a somewhat negative way, but here, Garner brings up the favorite sandwich of iconic choreographer George Balanchine—an English muffin spread with a quarter-inch of butter and a full towering inch of black caviar—as a metaphor for it all. Turns out what sandwiches and ballet have in common is that, when truly great, they're both opulent and unapologetic. —Helen Rosner [New York Times]

Last weekend, New Yorkers crowded into Williamsburg's shuttered Domino Sugar Factory for the debut of artist Kara Walker's first large-scale public installation (on view through July 6). Walker, who is best known for her cut-paper silhouettes confronting the racial tensions that stem from American slavery, constructed a massive sculpture from 160,000 pounds of sugar. It's titled "A Subtlety" after the ornate sugar-and-paste sculptures (sotiltees) once displayed on the tables of medieval feasts. But the subtitle is more telling: "The Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World." —_Mari Uyehara_Complex Art & Design

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