We harvested 30 lbs worth of shells, feathers, and trash from the Rockaways. The washed up shells were unusually large, intact, and occasionally exotic, owing to strong currents from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. After cleaning them, we grew salt crystals on the shells for the table centerpieces, meant to simultaneously suggest wreckage, fossils, and artifacts--what if our future is an ocean devoid of life, and instead replete with empty shells?

We harvested 30 lbs worth of shells, feathers, and trash from the Rockaways. The washed up shells were unusually large, intact, and occasionally exotic, owing to strong currents from hurricanes Harvey and Irma. After cleaning them, we grew salt crystals on the shells for the table centerpieces, meant to simultaneously suggest wreckage, fossils, and artifacts--what if our future is an ocean devoid of life, and instead replete with empty shells?

Octopuses have been dubbed the “weeds of the sea” because of their rapid growth, short lifespans, and flexible development, which allow them to adapt to environmental changes more quickly than other marine animals. Their populations have thrived in spite of—or perhaps because of—ocean climate change, though the mechanics of their adaptation aren't fully understood. We might imagine a future in which sashimi platters are replaced with rainbows of raw cephalopod varieties. We've also replaced caviar with finger limes.

Seaweed is one of the fastest-growing plants in the world, making it a valuable food source. It’s also a carbon sink, and can reduce methane emissions when included in cattle feed. Seaweed aquaculture dampens wave energy and protects shorelines, and it reduces the effects of ocean acidification and de-oxygenation. It’s also promising as a mutually beneficial crop to be grown in commercial shellfish farms: it filters out pollutants, mitigates oxygen depletion, and is a sustainable source for fertilizer and fish meal. This salad incorporates seaweeds among red cabbage as an optimistic blueprint for “mixed salad greens.”

This course is an edible visualization of a future model for symbiotic aquaculture. Currently, growing shellfish, shrimp, and seaweeds together in farm ponds has proven to be a sustainable model: the shellfish filter and feed off of the shrimp effluent and the seaweed can mitigate oxygen depletion. Shrimp is America’s most popular seafood, and it’s mostly farmed rather than caught wild. It’s particularly promising as a sustainable protein source: an acre of shrimp farm can produce 10 times more protein than an acre of cattle grazing land, without competing for freshwater.

Mushrooms are an important part of a climate change diet. Fungi is excellent at freeing up nitrogen and carbon from soil and making it available to plants. Mushrooms can grow in many kinds of climates, making it a hopeful food source when viable farmland is less available. This evening, we are lucky to partner with Smallhold, a Brooklyn-based company proposing an alternate model to mushroom farming: their mini-farms are compact, offering 40 times the output per square foot of a traditional farm with 96% less water usage. Smallhold grows food through its beginning stages and then ships it to mini-farms onsite at restaurants and grocery stores, where the crop completes its growth cycle and is harvested on demand for the freshest food possible.

On top of your mussels is a slice of bread baked with ocean water in the dough, topped with sea urchin butter. On top is a small dome of fermented shrimp paste. Drop it into your soup and stir to dissolve, inoculating your edible shrimp farm. As you eat your mussels, please feel free to deposit the empty shells directly into the table’s centerpiece.

Most of the fruit before you is available in urban supermarkets year round. Its ubiquity leads us to forget that produce doesn’t exist in an aseasonal vacuum but is grown and shipped off-season in energy intensive ways. In front of you are bowls of seawater. Help yourself to some fruit, and then rinse your fingers in the seawater before eating the fruit with your hands, allowing your salty fingers to season the fruit.

In considering some possible food futures, we arrived at five different worlds. Consider this an edible choose-your-own-adventure story.

1. “Fine dining” culture adjusts to the loss of familiar foods, and elevates formerly undesirable foods.

Jellyfish buttermilk sorbet: jellyfish is a readily available invasive species that thrive in our changing ocean climates—though Western cooking is still figuring out what to do with them. (Jellyfish sorbet technique developed by Marina Zurkow.)

2. Scarcity causes widespread collapse of familiar chains of food production and distribution. Farm-to-table becomes a necessity rather than a trend.

Apple pie: the old American farmstead food, served here with Long Island sea salt.

3. Increasing unpredictability of food sources leads us to sever our eating habits from the environment. People consume vitamin-enriched nutrient supplements and gels.

His ’n’ hers jelly: here we consider how advertising might sell these new food products. The “his” half is blue, bacon flavored, and contains omega-3 for improved brain function. “Hers” is pink, strawberry-flavored, and contains biotin for beautiful hair, skin, and nails. Diners are encouraged to pick a side, eat both, or eat neither.

4. A hierarchical, class-based food economy distributes scarce “good” foods to the wealthy. Scarce foods are increasingly fetishized. Single strawberries sell at auction.

Fig, cheese, raw honeycomb, edible gold leaf: as bee populations collapse, honeycomb will likely become astronomically expensive, or unavailable. Similarly, wasp colonies are dwindling at alarming rates. Figs are pollinated by wasps, many of whom die inside and are digested by the ripening fruit, so to eat a fig is to eat the wasp itself and its labor. To eat it alongside honey is to swallow a dying ecosystem.

5. A blank. Failure to adapt. An empty shell covered in sea salt. A shipwreck, a prehistoric fossil, a futuristic relic. Please feel free to take this, or any part of the centerpiece, home with you.

In considering some possible food futures, we arrived at five different worlds. Consider this an edible choose-your-own-adventure story.

1. “Fine dining” culture adjusts to the loss of familiar foods, and elevates formerly undesirable foods.

Jellyfish buttermilk sorbet: jellyfish is a readily available invasive species that thrive in our changing ocean climates—though Western cooking is still figuring out what to do with them. (Jellyfish sorbet technique developed by Marina Zurkow.)

2. Scarcity causes widespread collapse of familiar chains of food production and distribution. Farm-to-table becomes a necessity rather than a trend.

Apple pie: the old American farmstead food, served here with Long Island sea salt.

3. Increasing unpredictability of food sources leads us to sever our eating habits from the environment. People consume vitamin-enriched nutrient supplements and gels.

His ’n’ hers jelly: here we consider how advertising might sell these new food products. The “his” half is blue, bacon flavored, and contains omega-3 for improved brain function. “Hers” is pink, strawberry-flavored, and contains biotin for beautiful hair, skin, and nails. Diners are encouraged to pick a side, eat both, or eat neither.

4. A hierarchical, class-based food economy distributes scarce “good” foods to the wealthy. Scarce foods are increasingly fetishized. Single strawberries sell at auction.

Fig, cheese, raw honeycomb, edible gold leaf: as bee populations collapse, honeycomb will likely become astronomically expensive, or unavailable. Similarly, wasp colonies are dwindling at alarming rates. Figs are pollinated by wasps, many of whom die inside and are digested by the ripening fruit, so to eat a fig is to eat the wasp itself and its labor. To eat it alongside honey is to swallow a dying ecosystem.

5. A blank. Failure to adapt. An empty shell covered in sea salt. A shipwreck, a prehistoric fossil, a futuristic relic. Please feel free to take this, or any part of the centerpiece, home with you.