Recipe tattoos: Just roll up your sleeves and cook

Sometimes the thought of having to find a recipe in a pile of countless cookbooks, newspaper cutouts and magazines is enough to make you just eat dinner out. But if looking up your favorite recipe was as simple as rolling up your sleeves, maybe you’d never feel compelled to eat out again.

Two Italian design students, Marina Cinciripini and Sarah Richiuso, combined the idea of recipe sharing with tattoo culture to come up with I Tradizionali recipe tattoos. Now, before you start worrying about what your mother will think, know that the recipes are washable illustrations meant to be applied to your forearm after you’ve rolled up your sleeves to start cooking, no tattoo artist or needles required.

“Not only does the tattoo emphasize the common gesture of ‘rolling-up one’s sleeves’ before cooking,” the two write on their website, “but it also helps the cook to remember the order in which the recipe is to be prepared.

They add: “Not only do they assist older generations in passing down family recipes to their children, but they also introduce a new way of spreading traditional, good and healthy recipes to literally anybody,”

For now, there are just a couple of recipe tattoos, which come in English and Italian. They include a recipe for a date appetizer, an artichoke appetizer and an entree of spaghetti with sun-dried tomatoes and anchovies. The two plan to introduce more recipes in the future but were unable to fund their project and meet their 6,000-euro goal on the crowdfunding website Eppela.com.

“We hope to find another way to fund our project,” said Cinciripini. “As soon as we do, we’ll produce them and sell them online.”

Those who backed the campaign on Eppela will receive the tattoos, but everyone else will have to wait for now.

Each of the tattoo packages, which will cost $14, contain full recipes along with ingredient lists and amounts.

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