To be spattered with sauce, sprayed with oil, dolloped with drippings, and occasionally lit on fire--these are the tortures that face any cookbook in the kitchen. But why bother consulting a cookbook at all when you can just read your favorite recipe off your arm? These genius tattoos make it happen.
Created by Italian designers Marina Cinciripini and Sarah Richiuso, i Tradizionali is a collection of temporary tattoos aimed at the gastronome. You just moisten the recipe you want to cook and slap it onto your arm. Peel it off, and it has been mimeographed to your skin. Now, instead of going across the room to your cookbook stand to check on the instructions, you can just roll up your chef's sleeve and check your forearm.
The set is divided into themed packages, each of which contain four recipes, including date balls, grandmother artichokes, spaghetti with tomatoes and anchovies, and more. The packaging is made up of crushed, eco-friendly paper. Cincirpini and Richiusu are taking pre-orders for the recipe tattoos, available in Italian and English, on Eppela.com. A single recipe pack costs about $14.
For those of us who end up with more of our food on our cookbooks or iPads during our culinary misadventures than on our plates, this sounds like a great idea. But why stop there? Why not entire cookbooks filled with pages of recipe-tattoos? Or scratch-and-sniff temporary tattoos that give you an aromatic preview of the meal before you cook it? We're amazed it took this long to marry temporary tattoo technology with the humble recipe, but we're glad it's finally here.