Photo | Monica Simpson

Apparently, throwing whatever relatively edible creatures are available (including squirrels) into a pot to create “stew” is as American as apple pie. This I learned at Wednesday night’s First Person Festival event at the Painted Bride.

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The First Person Festival of Memoir and Documentary Art, now in its eighth year, is all about telling stories. But at last night’s Foobooz Burger Cruise, the connection between delicious burgers and storytelling was tenuous at best: There was a brief explanation of First Person Arts, followed by a rundown by Foobooz creator Arthur Etchells, during which he dabbled in memoir by recalling his parents taking him to restaurants when he was a kid.

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meatartists.blogspot.com

Here’s an opportunity to tell your girl you’re going to a strip show without getting in trouble — this Saturday, Nov. 7, will see the opening reception for The Bacon Show, a cured-pork-themed exhibition at Mew Gallery (906 Christian St.). Featuring the work of 10 artists (including several who belong to the Meat Artists collective), the show will deal in multiple media, with bacon-centric paintings, crafts, drawings, photos on offer. You can peruse the entire show over on the Meat Artists Web site, where pieces are also available for purchase.

Photo | Carolyn Huckabay

Chicha: A schematic.

Thursday night at Penn’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology — among the stone sculptures and priceless artifacts — Sam Calagione, founder and president of Delaware’s Dogfish Head brewery, and Patrick McGovern, a biomolecular archaeologist at the museum, threw a kegger.

The event, a lecture and tasting entitled Uncorking the Past: Ancient Ales, Wines and Extreme Beverages, was a lecture and sipping detailing Calagione and McGovern’s work recreating — from analysis of archaeological evidence — what are believed to be the oldest known recipes for alcoholic beverages. Much of this information is contained within McGovern’s fascinating (and, as per CP food critic Trey Popp, beautifully written) new book, Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, which McGovern (aka, adorably, Dr. Pat) signed last night, as well.

The results of the duo’s archaeological sleuthing was also on hand in liquid form, as Calagione brought samples of four of his recreated beverages:

• Chateu Jiahu (based on examination of pottery jars found in the Neolithic Chinese villiage of Jiahu)
• Theobrama (an alcoholic chocolate beverage based on pottery fragments found in Honduras)
• Pangaea, more of a theoretical ancient ale that culls ingredients from all seven continents in an attempt to imagine a drink from the supercontinent
• and a “mystery beer” that pretty much everyone in the packed house knew to be Dogfish’s purple corn Chicha, aka “the spit beer” (see Calagione explain it here), a recreation of an ancient meso-American beverage whose production involved the chewing of corn as a means of kickstarting the conversion from starch to fermentable sugar.

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Christopher Gabello, pro photographer and owner of CafĂ© Loftus, has teamed up with Varga Bar owner George Anni to create a 12-month calendar featuring real girls done up in the pin-up style popularized by Alberto Vargas. They’ve already got their chick for January (Jessica, above), but they still need some more local ladies to fill out the rest of 2010. If you’re interested (Ettore is doing hair and makeup, and Smak Parlour is taking care of wardrobe), send two photos and three sentences about why you should be a Varga Girl to makemeavargagirl@gmail.com.

Recipelook.co.uk

Keith Haring pancakes, by Matteo Oliverio

One of the best things about a physical copy of a cookbook is the illustrations. From breaking down a duck to how to truss a roast, there are some things that make so much more sense when illustrated instead of explained.

Recipelook.co.uk blogs for visual learners with their drawn-out recipes, ranging from elementary (baking a potato) to avant-garde (Keith Haring pancakes). The site’s creators, Tom Ballhatchet and Amelie Labarthe, welcome submissions from those who can wrangle “a pan in one hand, and a pen in the other.”

I’m sending in the visual version of one of my favorite Mark Bittman recipes, Grilled Eggplant Salad with Yogurt. Send your entry to tom@recipelook.co.uk.

It’s not local, and I can’t sustain regular shopping there on my income, but MoMA Store still wins my heart (and money) with their sleek kitchen toys.  The new fall catalog has me wishing for a fiancĂ©e, soley for the wedding registration possibilities.

Clockwise from top left: Once you get a nice table, you need a nice trivet.  This Alessi crinkled, stainless-steel number ($70) can be flipped to keep small or large hot pots a safe distance above the tabletop.  Add clear elegance to the coffee ritual with Liz Dubois’ glass half-pint creamer; giftable at $14.  Speaking of gifts, this pair of inside-out champagne flutes ($65) is both striking and sensible: the double layer of mouth-blown borosilicate glass has an insulating effect on the bubbles within.  A silicone pig lid from Destination: Japan ($18) can be placed directly over ingredients in a pot or microwave; steam vents through the swine’s snout.

Members of the Museum of Modern Art get 10 percent off non-member prices; all the more reason to join up and see the James Ensor’s 1891 painting, Skeletons Fighting over a Pickled Herring, before it departs September 21 for the MusĂ©e d’Orsay, Paris.

HawkKrall.net

Dog décor

Philadelphia illustrator and Drawing For Food blogger Hawk Krall paints the many faces of hot doggery around the nation for Serious Eats.  Now, tubesteak fans can adorn their walls, as well as their arteries, with the salty confections.

Hot Dog of the Week giclee prints by Hawk Krall, $27 a pop and guaranteed to last longer than late-night dog indigestion.  Pick them up in his online store.

KateDW’s Flickr

Meat dessert?

The world has been consumed by buttercream and obsessed with 70/30 lean-to-fat ratios ever since two of the biggest and most enduringly edible food trends came and stayed: cupcakes and cheeseburgers.

Now Flickr queen KateDW smashingly mashes-up the two tasty fads with her instructional Flickr set, How to bake cheeseburger cupakes.

The clever photog has inspired legions of copycats who post their efforts on Flickr, but so far not a one has topped her for eye appeal.  Pencil in a few hours to try it at home, but don’t offer us any mid-rare.

h/t Urban Outfitters (new) blog

Excerpted from THE REGULARS by Sarah Stolfa (Artisan Books). Copyright 2009. Sarah Stolfa photographer.

Before Sarah Stolfa was an award-winning photographer, she was the fast-but-surly bartender at classic Center City dive McGlinchey’s. Over her 10 or 11 years (she’s not quite sure) distributing shots and cheap beer, she went through the cycles familiar to anyone who has spent significant time serving the public. The initial thrill of making sweet, sweet cash gives way to nightly drudgery, which eventually morphs into smoldering resentment of pretty much everyone on the other side of the bar.

When Stolfa returned to school to study photography, she used the subject matter close to hand — her McGlinchey’s patrons.  Turning the lens on her subjects, always photographed alone, restored their humanity to the grizzled bar vet, and The Regulars series transformed her from a surly barmaid into a famous artist.

The series, first shown in 2006 at Gallery 339, has just been released as a book. Best-selling author Jonathan Franzen, who takes a dim view of both bars and his failed time in Philadelphia, provides a suitably existential forward to Stolfa’s portraits.

Tomorrow, July 14, Gallery 339 will host a reception and book signing with the artist at the debut of The Regulars Revisited, which runs through September 5.

Read more about The Regulars and two other tavern-centric Philadelphia books in Justin Bauer’s Shelf Life column here on CityPaper.net.

Reception for The Regulars Revisited, Tue., July 14, 6 p.m., Gallery 339, 339 21st St., 215-731-1530, gallery339.com