Chef Profile #7 introduces The WasteShed, a recently opened up-cycling center in Humboldt Park. Director Eleanor Ray took a few minutes to fill us in on what the WasteShed is all about, especially as it relates to chili competitions!
Spudnik Press Cooperative (SPC): What is The WasteShed?
WasteShed: The WasteShed collects reusable art, craft, and school materials, and makes them available to teachers, artists and the general public for cheap. We seek to provide Chicago with an organized, affordable, and reliable resource for creative materials, and with a dynamic center for activities pertaining to sustainability, art, craft, education, and material culture.
SPC: What are three food-related adjectives you would use to describe your organization?
WasteShed: Cultured, freegan, “from scratch.”
SPC: In what ways does your chili embody your organization?
WasteShed: Our chili proceeds from the impulse of the moment based on the ingredients to hand, but draws on long experience and bold experimentation. We make the most of cheap and unassuming materials, which take on surprising complexity and tastiness in combination.
SPC: What is your favorite place in the city to enjoy a hot bowl of soup?
WasteShed: We’ll take our soup in a thermos to Humboldt Park to watch the ducks and dogs.
SPC: If you could invite anyone, past or present, to chat over a bowl of chili, who would you choose?
WasteShed: We would opt to dine with Henry Thoreau (a thorough bean-appreciator) and the Italian Futurists, because our chili experience could only be improved by the addition of airplane-motor sounds, being slapped with velvet gloves, etc.
SPC: Do you have words of warning for fellow contestants?
WasteShed: How well do you handle fiendish ingenuity?