Caren Alpert spent eighteen years as a photo editor as well as food photographer before transforming her artist’s eye to the things we see each day yet never look closely at: What we eat.
Red Licorice:
Can you recognize this volcano opening? It’s red licorice, and is made from sugar, fruit flavoring, and gelatin. Though red licorice doesn’t generally contain licorice extract, its cousin, black licorice does, and you may also use licorice extract for skin treatments and hangover helpers.
Chocolate Cake
In your hand, chocolate cake is moist, sweet, and indisputably delicious. But below a microscope, it’s a blocky, geometric collection of cocoa, sugar, flour, and other ingredients.
Banana Skin
Because you throw banana peels in the compost the moment you’re done eating, you might not realize how textured and mountainous the skin can be.
Cauliflower
Cauliflower is part of the cruciferous group of vegetables — together with broccoli, cabbage, and kale — but it hasn’t earned exactly the same popularity. And that’s a pity, {simply because properly-cooked cauliflower isn’t the mushy, cheese-covered side dish of your youth: It’s a tasty canvas for roasting, grilling, blending for soups, and adding other flavors from curry to chestnuts. (It’s also packed with vitamin C, antioxidants, and fiber.)
Fortune Cookie
This isn’t a dark river slicing through an arid desert — it’s a cracked fortune cookie, made from flour, sugar, butter, and extracts, then rolled, cut, and shaped into a sweet folded triangle.
Red Onion
Cooks realize that the real beauty of an red onion is its versatility: The layered veggies put in a tasty depth to salads, soups, stews, casseroles, and many other meals.
Pineapple Leaf
Nice and delicious pineapples are as at home on your dish alone because they are adding a touch of flavor to meats and salads — however the leaves have even more practical use. They could be turned into fibers that ethical designers use instead of carbon-heavy cotton or synthetics.
Radish
A springtime plants, radishes come in nearly all the colors of the rainbow — red, pink, white, purple — and add a zesty tang to lighten up fresh salads and roasted side dishes (you can also add the greens to butter to spread the taste around).
Cake Sprinkles
Once magnified, cake sprinkles look just as colorful as the healthier meals on this list — however the hard texture isn’t quite as attractive as geometric as veggies and fruit skins.
Star Anise
Star anise is among the several foods on this list that’s as extraordinary from afar as it is when magnified: A tasty Chinese spice which is easily recognized by its unique form. Though you may use it in cooking, additionally it is well-known for its medical purposes: fans like its antifungal and antibacterial properties, and use it for fighting coughs (it’s also a main ingredient in Tamiflu).
