Whetstone Magazine

This edition feels vintage, careening from Asia to the Americas, the Balkans to Brazil, the arresting photography and intimate portraiture are what you all have come to expect from us over the last six years. Have you ever noticed on the front of the magazine, the little idiom, ORIGIN FORAGING? It’s on the bottom center of the cover, and, at first (and maybe still?), people thought that was the theme of a particular edition of the magazine. But we put that stamp on each of our covers, as a way of saying who we are and what we do. Origin is our framework for understanding the world, and also what connects these disparate geographies and communities. It’s about the gap between where we are and where we began, and the…

Shabnam Ferdowsi FRONT COVER ARTIST Shabnam "Shab" Ferdowsi is a legally blind photographer born and raised in Los Angeles. Before Covid, she was primarily weaving her way around the music industry in the media and experiential space until she started performing on stage herself. Once everything went on hiatus, one thing led to another, and a pizza pop-up and catering business was born out of Shab’s home kitchen. After a year roaming LA’s parking lots, backyards, and bar patios, it was time for another shift. Nevertheless, food has now become the new centerpiece for building community, pursuing creativity, and telling impactful stories. Irina Janakievska The food writer and recipe developer is a Macedonian, Kuwait-raised Londoner. Giaae Kwon Giaae Kwon is a food and culture writer whose writing has appeared in…

Literally translated as “seaweed rice,” gimbap is a rice roll that is filled and rolled in a sheet of gim, or seaweed. It bears a physical resemblance to sushi rolls, so gimbap is often dismissively described as “Korean sushi,” which raises my hackles every time. A quintessential Korean food, gimbap is often strongly nostalgic, associated with school, road and family trips, but even this dish can’t escape being described as the Korean version of something Japanese.Maybe, to a Westerner, the juxtaposition makes sense. On a superficial level, the two cuisines do appear similar—they both center around rice, with meals that often include some kind of soup. Korean and Japanese cuisines both use seaweed by drying it in sheets and wrapping those sheets around rice. In Korean, it’s called gim; in…

“Violence was, indeed, all I knew of the Balkans.” writes Dame Rebecca West in Black Lamb and Grey Falcon (1941), her magnum opus on the history and culture of Yugoslavia.Violence and instability are what many still associate with the region. From their designation as the European powder keg that sparks world wars through to the fragmentation of former Yugoslavia, the Balkans have long been the object of such derogatory stereotyping. The effect of this has been to overshadow their beautiful cuisine. The Imagined Balkans: A Brief and Potted History Delineating the Balkans is complicated. Although the name has become an increasingly recognized form of academic reference, to date there is no real geographical, historical or political consensus where the borders of the Balkan Peninsula or the Balkans lie, and no…

Up in the Peak District, the gently picturesque national park in the Midlands of England, you can find the little market town of Bakewell. Composed primarily of tidy Georgian townhouses, it sits prettily on the banks of the Wye, complete with lazing ducks and a medieval bridge spanning its reach.Every time my wife and I visit the Peak District for our annual hiking trips, we always try to make time to visit the town, to take in the sights and try its culinary delights. If you know English puddings and pastries, the Bakewell name probably rings very familiar, for it is indeed the home of the Bakewell pudding. As the story goes, the Bakewell pudding originated sometime between 1820 and 1860, when a cook at a local inn, misunderstanding a…

Four fat pigs lounge in the dappled shade of Isidro Pérez Pérez’s backyard, each tethered to its own tree by a thin rope looped around a back foot. The pigs don't yet know it, but soon they’ll be the stars of the ceremonial soup at the center of San Mateo Yetla’s annual Cambio del Bastón de Mando, or what English speakers might think of as the changing of the guard.As the outgoing Fiscal, the community’s top political and social authority, Pérez will host a series of events over the next three days, including a ritual pig slaughter, communal cooking and meals, a candlemaking ceremony and a latenight dance party with a live band. The festivities will culminate in a group procession to the local church, where a religious service precedes…