New photos and a ramble

I don't know what has happened but this year I smell more. Smell as in my olfactory sense is more acute (what did you think??) and walking through my garden has been like travelling in a perfume factory. My nose has 'seen' the flowers before my eyes did and I do wonder how this is, why this year? Aren't I suppose to smell less as I grow older? Aren't stress supposed to reduce the sensitivity of your senses? Could it be my brain who (yes there must be a little person in there, like in that film by Woody Allen) has decided that I was missing out on a lot of what was happening and tried to steer me towards it? Whatever the reason, I greatly appreciate it!

Sometimes I am also surprised by how light works on my visual sense, yesterday I took the dog for a walk on a path in the woods, bringing my camera with me but felt completely uninspired as I didn't see a single thing that made me want to click. Then we turned around and went back and then the magic happened, the light was completely different seen from this direction and everything I looked at was suddenly beautiful and interesting. Light is such a beautiful thing, be it outer or inner light!

Ending on a more prosaic note, as you can see I have reverted back to blogger comments and unfortunately all the comments are gone, once I would have been greatly upset by it but now I regret them being gone and just hope that they might pop up some time in the future. I have the nice feeling of all your comments here inside me and nothing can take that away from me. 

And there is no recipe today either, I'm in the middle of a lot of work right now and just don't have the time but there are a few ideas floating around in my mind and I hope to hav a week off next week so I can dedicate me to Lucullian and my own photography!

Plate To Page Weimar 2011 - the Review! (well sort of)

  ©Julia House

Did I say live blogging? That just shows that right in the middle of the pessimist there's a true optimist. As if anyone had time to do any blogging, all we managed to type were the 140 characters of Twitter and hardly even that now and then. I think I can safely say that the first Plate To Page Workshop in Weimar was a great success and that one of the main reasons to that were the fantastic people who decided to spend their time and money on coming to Weimar to hear us talk about food photography and food writing and how to make the two work together. Just look at all the people in the photo that we took on our way to a French/Breton restaurant with fabulous food, can't you see how they shine with passion, dedication and personality? Simone, Mona, Jenn, Astrid, Ken, Mitch, Deborah, David, Julia, Ishay, Jasmine and Arthi-all of them incredibly focused and talented and what else can you wish for when you are leading a workshop? I know that we - me, Jamie, Jeanne and Meeta, were completely delighted with these people and that we have all found new friends!

  © Simone Berg/Junglefrog

 Well there was one thing - all these photographs that I had to be in, I don't mind when people take photos as long as I don't have to be in them but I couldn't avoid that and now I feel kind of depressed when I see myself-I want to live in this illusion I have of myself instead-where did it go?? Maybe you get the drift when I say that this is the best photo I have of myself. It tells it all. But I do love having the photos of the rest of the group though, they are all so beautiful as you can see in the first picture!

Food was the protagonist though as you can imagine, we had loads of it and it was all fantastic!





We had the incredible fortune of getting beautiful props from the Chicago based prop stylist Paula Walters, not only is she an incredibly talented prop stylist but she must be the nicest one too! See her blog here.

We had other sponsors too, Jamie, Jeanne and Meeta managed to get P2P really great sponsors. The main one is BoardBia that provided us not only with two fantastic participants (Mona and David) but also with a variety incredible food, just look at the beef in the photo above, I still dream about it! And they gave things for the 'goodie bags' that each participant were presented with. We had lots of great wines from Wines of South Africa as well, my only regret was that I had to keep my head clear to be of any use for the participants... Ergo knives gave each of us this incredible knife, it is a dream to use it in the kitchen! Hotel Chocolat gave us each a box with savoury chocolate 'things' for cooking, we had some really delicious Kouginettes from Chocolatier Georges Larnicol, and glutenfree salted caramels from Sweet Pete's! And as if that wasn't enough, we had two Lowel Ego lights from Prokit for two lucky winners (Jasmine and Astrid as it turned out). A big Thank You to all our sponsors who put all this trust in us and who generously gave all these things to us and the participants of the Plate To Page workshop!

The biggest Thank Yous though go to all the partcipants who made this a magic weekend and to my fellow organizers - three lovely ladies with whom it is a pleasure to work and to be friends with! THANK YOU ALL!

So many things: P2P, life and an Egg and Grilled Tomato Sandwich With Fresh Herbs

So many things going on right now, work, life and on Thursday I leave for Weimar where our first Plate To Page workshop is starting on Friday, the one we announced back in in October last year and which is now here! We have been working hard on it all, well, I think the others have been working harder on it than I have but my time will come this autumn when we are doing it again here in Italy, in a fantastic Italian villa down in the valley below where I live. Anyway, we have fantastic sponsors, just check out here, to make us work, eat and drink well! Unless there are internet problems I will be doing some live blogging from Weimar so do look in later on in the week.

I also hope you enjoy the the roses I photographed last evening in my garden, I finished a job yesterday and suddenly realized that I was missing all the beauty out there, I love when the roses flower and in the evening light they are at their most beautiful. If you want to some more, click here.

Another sandwich, you can see that I am living a busy life at the moment, all I seem to post about are sandwiches but it is one of those periods when sandwiches seem to be the best solution to it all. Enjoy it!

EGG AND GRILLED TOMATO SANDWICH WITH FRESH HERBS

1 large tomato

1 egg

1 tblsp freshly chopped herbs like sage, thyme, basil, parsley, rosemary, oregano-you choose and mix what you have at hand and that you like

salt

pepper

extra-virgin olive oil

 Grill the bread.

 Slice the tomato into thick slices and grill them in a grid pan or just a skillet if you don't have one of those. Cook until the tomato slices are softish.

 Poach the egg (or fry it if you prefer). Mix the chopped herbs with a little olive oil.

 Now assemble the sandwich: first you put the tomato slices on the bread, if there are any juices, drizzle these on the bread before putting the tomato on it. Salt it. Then you put the egg on that and finish with adding a little salt and drizzling the herb oil over it all.  Ready to eat.

Me and The Sunday Times Travel Magazine

Back in January I got an email from one of the editors of The Sunday Times Travel Magazine who asked me if I was interested in being featured in their Masterclass in Photography and who was I to say no, it sounded too good to be true in my ears! I didn't hear anything for several months and I had quite forgotten about it when the editor wrote again to fix a time for the interview about how to shoot flowers and foliage last month. And here it is, the feature for the June issue of STTM in pdf, I just got it and thought I would share it with you despite it not being about food. I cannot but thank the incredibly nice editors I have talked to for asking me to be in their magazine, I feel honoured!

Mellow yellow cookies - Camomille Cookies

Not that they are particularly yellow these cookies despite the camomille flavour but they taste yellow! It is probably all in my mind but please humour me and pretend along. They are very nice to eat, the camomille is subtly intermingling with the taste of butter and sugar.
Just came back from Milan and feel completely knackered after three busy days of shooting mood photos for that grill and summer thing (if you are interested I posted few photos here) so here is the recipe! (this extremely short post blogging routine I seem to have fallen into must be changed, Will try to do that next week, promise!)

CAMOMILLE COOKIES
about 35 if made double like here, if not more.

150 g/ 5,3 oz butter
150 g/ 5,3 oz sugar
2 teabags of sieved camomille tea, i.e. containing sieved camomille
1 egg yolk
2 tblsp fresh cream
300 g/ 10,6 oz flour
1 pinch salt

 Open the teabags and put the tea in a bowl,  stir butter, sugar and the sieved camomille until smooth and then add the egg yolk and the fresh cream. Mix well.

 Add the flour and the pinch of salt and work quickly until you have nice, smooth dough.

 Roll out the dough and start cutting out the cookies with the cutters you like the best! I decorated my cookies with a pine nut but you can do as you please. Put on a baking sheet and bake in a pre-heated oven (175°C/350°F) for about 10-12 minutes.

 Let them cool on a rack before eating.

Sandwich love - Goat's Cheese Sandwich With Rosemary Marinated Carrots and Green Peas

First I want to say thank you for all the nice comments about Lucullian being a finalist in the Saveur Food Blog Awards, you are so nice. As usual! Thank You!

I'm off to Milan early tomorrow morning for 3-4 days of shooting a grill and summer job so I need to prepare my bags and prepare a bit of things for the rest of the family even though I know they can make it on their own, it is the malediction of being a mother, always feeling that you have to make your presence felt! Well what I am trying to say is that I need to move on here but I wanted to post a recipe first!

I am a sandwich lover, sometimes I wonder if I like creating them more that actually eating them, there are so many things you can use and combine when you make a sandwich that it feels like an unlimited universe. And they are usually quick to make as well, even this if you just remember to prepare the carrots some hours before the actual assemblage of this Goat's Cheese Sandwich With Rosemary Marinated Carrots and Green Peas. If you use a nice creamy goat's cheese, this sandwich is a dream....

GOAT'S CHEESE SANDWICH WITH ROSEMARY MARINATED CARROTS AND GREEN PEAS

1 small carrot/sandwich
3-4 fresh green pea or snow pea pods/sandwich
75 g/ 2,6 oz creamy goat's cheese/sandwich
1 slice of bread/per sandwich (obviously)
fresh rosemary, finely chopped
lemon juice
extra-virgin olive oil

 Peel the carrots and cut them into thin strips, the best way to do it is to use a mandoline. Put them in a bowl with the chopped rosemary, a squeeze or two of lemon juice and then drizzle it all with olive oil. Leave to marinate for at least 1 hour.

 Steam (or cook in a little water) the green pea pods until soft but still crunchy. Remember to strip away eventual tough strings etc.

 Spread the goat's cheese over the slice of bread,  drip off most of the oil from the carrot strips and put them on top of the cheese and then top with the pea pods. Ready to serve - ready to eat!

Finally some Sunday links again!

Time for a few links, nothing that concerns food though.

I like people who really go all the way through with an idea or a concept, like the photographer Irina Werning has done here.


I really like August Sander, his photography moves me, especially this photo for some reason, and I think that Mark Laita's series Created Equal is a fine 'descendent' of his art.

This is me most of the time made into a chart.

And here you can just flow with the wind.

And to finish a poem. I have since my teens always liked graveyards, I find them peaceful and despite all the sorrow that the deaths have caused, happy places. I finally found a poem that explains my feelings. Even though I know that my parents's bodies actually are resting under the grass on their grave, I feel peace and it is not those moments that make me feel sad or miss them acutely.