My Final Post for Stories of Food and Tech – Making a Cooking Machine! Come check out the complete machine setup & demo!

Learn about my cooking machine's latest electronics assembly, programming, and 3D printing progress!

Learn about my smart cooking machine's latest testing and assembly progress!

Learn about the latest testing and assembly progress of my half-functional smart cooking machine!

This final post of “The Borders of Boston” takes us through our M.Arch thesis project, the synthesis of our months of exploring, eating, volunteering, and reflecting. ‘A taste of home’ is a thesis that explores the food landscape in Boston through the lens of the immigrant experience.

Learn about the initial smart cooking machine assembly and individual components testing.

In this post, the authors each sought out volunteering opportunities with local free food provision organizations to see first-hand a different kind of border many people across the city encounter—that of food scarcity.

The excitement of the nearing mid-autumn festival thrums streets away from the Boylston T Stop. As one moves west from Boston Commons, there is a sense that another world is nearby. The buildings huddle closer to each other, and crouch shorter to open up their front windows. Tables emerge on sidewalks, ushering passerby through a maze of bright red banners and stringing lanterns that guides one to the gate of Boston’s famed Chinatown.

Nothing exposes you more quickly to another culture as stepping into an ethnic grocery market. From Vietnamese to Ethiopian to Colombian supermarkets, these stores scattered throughout Boston offer such a variety of food products most Boston residents would never see otherwise.

In our visits to restaurants, we have entered homes and crossed borders to taste food from across the world. However, for as many places as there are with those that offer food, there is equally as high a number of places where people cannot even afford food. In this piece, we explore the food provisional institutions, Project Restore Us & Food For Free, in their respective missions to bring food to all.

On a grey Wednesday afternoon, Carol-Anne and I, Ana, took the bus down Mt Auburn St into Watertown, to visit Tabrizi Bakery owned by Mohammad Tabrizi. The store is famous for its Persian cookies. We tasted nazok, papion, zaban, and rice flour cookies, among others. They all have a subtle, soft sweetness with hints of cardamon.

Five miles east in Somerville is The Neighborhood Restaurant. On a sunny summer afternoon, I sat down in the vine-covered outdoor patio that defines the restaurant’s dining experience. Before even sitting down with me, the owner, Sheila Borges, served me a bowl of The Neighborhood’s famous cream of wheat. It’s a warm, sweet and creamy porridge with a rich taste of cinnamon.

Learn about Ma Po Tofu's original story and recipe and the latest progress of building the Instagram profile for the Stories of Food & Tech column.

How will my “Cooking Robot” iPhone app control my cooking machine? Check out this post to see my initial app interface ideas.

What other savory Chinese dishes might this cooking machine cook? How might these dishes impact the cooking machine design (hardware & software)?

Enjoy the journey of cooking One Pot Tomato and Chickpea with me! Learn about how this dish informs the design (hardware & software) of the cooking machine!

The year this tree was planted, it bore no fruit. It was a wee sapling purchased from a Lowes or Home Depot, most likely of the Brown Turkey variety, selected by my father, a lover of figs.

A story of how a recipe evolved simply by entering another’s household.

“A cheese is just one small piece of the world – one lump of microbe-riddled milk curds – but each is a point of centuries of tradition.”

Is sharing a recipe, sharing a food space?

Results from an exercise in visualizing the embedded meanings of salad, featuring 5 participants.