use real butter

Recipe: stir-fried baby bok choy

There are a few spaces left in the Food and Light workshop to be held in Boulder, Colorado on August 2-3, 2011. If you want to take your food photography skills to the next level, if you’re in a rut, or even if you are just getting started – it’s a great opportunity to learn, work hard, make friends, eat amazing food, have fun, and experience a little bit of glorious downtown Boulder in summer.

shooting in my home studio

We have a rock ’em, sock ’em line-up of instructors who were not only selected for their stunning body of work, but for their ability to teach and teach well. I’m quite proud of this team because our collaboration from the beginning has been cooperative, jovial, enthusiastic and most importantly – we are all focused on providing the best experiences for our workshop attendees. In a month, we will be sending out a questionnaire to Food and Light 2011 participants to gauge what each person’s skill level is and to find out what topics they want us to cover and what specifics they want to be addressed. It’s highly customized to the individuals because we only spend a small fraction of the workshop giving lectures. Most of the time is spent shooting and working one-on-one with the instructors.

matt is a our canon man (photo courtesy of matt wright)

Did I mention that Matt wrote a photography manual to raise money for Japan’s relief efforts? He did. He’s amazing.

This year we’re changing things up a bit and spending our second day of the workshop in a restaurant setting at The Kitchen Upstairs. We’ve got the whole place to ourselves! The first day will still be at that beautiful light-filled Rembrandt Yard art gallery we booked last year. This way we can get some studio work at the gallery, some dynamic shooting at the restaurant, and a group family-style lunch at the restaurant (fun!!!). I’m even going to request Diane’s *favorite* waiter :)

todd working the cake (photo courtesy of white on rice couple)

Besides the fundamentals, we plan to cover: styling, composition, motion, lighting (natural and artificial), and we’re adding a short session on digital post-processing. Our sponsor Pro Photo Rental will be providing Canon and Nikon pro lenses for attendees to test drive. That’s super awesome. As stated on the website: Our goal is to not only teach you the fundamentals of food photography and food styling, but to give you the tools to continue learning when the workshop is over. So I hope you’ll consider joining us because it’s going to be a blast!

diane in the studio (photo courtesy of white on rice couple)

There’s never a free moment around here and that’s largely because I cram as much as I can into my calendar. My friend is writing up her dissertation and I read with some horror that she hadn’t been eating well a few weeks ago. At Cornell, when close friends were “in the cave”, I whipped up a few batches of food for them so they wouldn’t have to worry about cooking/feeding themselves. It’s only natural that I’d offer to bring her some food. Ya gotta eat, right?! I asked if she liked beef and broccoli, hot and sour soup, kung pao chicken, bok choy… She said she’d love anything I made. I hope she likes bok choy.

baby bok choy (because baby everything is cuter)

lop off the base

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: blackberry curd cheesecake in a jar

Boy, that was a busy weekend! And I’m not even talking about Easter since the Sunday prior I said, “I think it might be Easter today.” Then I looked online and found out it was another week away. And all of that Easter candy in the stores didn’t go on sale the following week. I don’t do well with holidays whose dates float. That’s another reason why Halloween is my favorite holiday.

fresh snow on easter?

woohoo!

We had snow all weekend, and it was great! We donned our boots, packs, skis, skins, and finest Patagonia for a lovely day in the backcountry – practically all to ourselves except for the yahoos firing rifles somewhere in the distance (because THAT’S what some folks do on Easter Sunday, I suppose?). When we came home, we chowed down on dinner party leftovers from Saturday night. It only took us a year to get around to inviting our new neighbors over for dinner. Hey – we’re all busy people… plus it was a good nudge to finally clean the house.

I kicked my weekend off a tad early on Friday with an afternoon gathering of my stitch-n-bitch crew which involved absolutely zero stitching. Someday we’ll fix that, but for now we’re having too much fun doing the nosh-n-slosh. It was nice to finally see Marianne, who had been in Antarctica for several months. And also to see Beth who has been in Boulder the whole time, but could have just as easily been in Antarctica with Marianne for all I knew. Like I said, we’re all busy people.

fab food

kitt made french 75s for everyone

these were my contribution

hmmm, seems to be a nikon-centric crowd

and we all wanted to spend time with this handsome little guy

Besides catching up with this group of witty, fun, and smart women, I love that we always have a great spread of homemade food. People bring whatever they feel like and it always works out. Kitt usually brings cocktail fixings as she is our resident mixologist. You can always count on Manisha to bring amazing Indian food. And me? Typically at least one dessert. I meant to bring two this time, but spent Friday morning dumping an entire batch of baklava into the trash (bad walnuts). Good thing I had cheesecake!

my motley collection of jars

mixing graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter

I like to bring individual servings over one giant cake if possible. It’s not always possible or worth the extra headache, but I always try. My first thought was to use cake rings, which I’ve done before, but I didn’t want the hassle of unmolding and I was running short on time last week. Jars… jars… Didn’t Pim recently post about cheesecakes in jars? I went to look and discovered that she posted about them last summer. I guess recent is a relative term for me!

scoop a little into each jar

gently press down

The jars I used were just random jars I have in my recycled jar cabinet. It’s an eclectic mix of shapes and sizes that I tried to keep to around 8 ounces or less in capacity. Ideally, I would have liked to use some of my nicer little serving glasses, but I don’t think they would have survived the oven – even in a water bath. Pim had said jam jars or any jar should work, which makes sense since they have to withstand certain temperatures and pressures.

cheesecake: milk, flour, cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest, egg yolks, eggs

mix until smooth

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: sour cream lemon pound cake

[Portal 2 was released Tuesday. If you know what I’m talking about, you’ll understand the cake reference.]

We had a little accident earlier this week. Well, Kaweah had an accident when no one was around. I came home from an appointment to find her limping about, crying in pain, and hanging her head low and to the left. We’re pretty sure she fell down the stairs. I carried her to the car and drove to her vet. Nothing broken, probably a bad sprain. They informed me that Kaweah has terrific range of motion and health for her age. She got a treat and a bottle of pain medication. She’s on the mend, but we’re watching her and… we’ve installed baby gates at both sets of stairs.

it’s for your own good, kaweah

Kaweah was improved enough Tuesday evening that we were okay to leave her at home and meet up with my cousin and her husband for a lovely dinner at Frasca in Boulder.

waiting for my cousin to arrive

my duck egg appetizer

jeremy’s yellowfin tuna appetizer

colorado lamb roasted to perfection

pan-seared sea bream

I hadn’t been to Frasca since last summer (but I’ve been to Pizzeria Locale quite a bit this year) and the interior has changed up due to a remodel. Our server said we could get a tour of the kitchen after our meal. Bobby Stuckey (owner and wine director) graciously took us around the new spaces – new dining area (which used to be the old kitchen), the gorgeous glass polishing room, the kitchen, the offices, and then out the back way into Pizzeria Locale (part of Frasca) and then next door to the Caffe.

i’d love to have a glass polishing room – and i’ll need a glass polisher too

We are spoiled rotten in Boulder with so many fantastic restaurants (especially considering the size of the city). Frasca is most certainly one of our favorites. It’s that special place you go when something big has happened. I already promised my girlfriend that I’m taking her there for dinner to celebrate the completion of her Ph.D. this summer. I’m looking forward to it. And summer is fast on spring’s heels.

boulder is starting to bloom

Spring in Boulder means sunshine, warmer weather, that yellow-green haze of leaves just starting to bud on naked trees, and undergraduates who are a little too excited to don their Daisy Dukes even though it’s only 55°F out. Spring in my mountain town means snow, rain, rainbows, sunshine, more snow… I like that it’s still cool enough around here for me to bake without wilting in the heat.

time for cake: flour, sugar, butter, eggs, lemons, sour cream, salt, baking soda

grease and flour your cake pan

I used to have a great lemon pound cake recipe that I made often when I lived at sea-level. Then I made it a few months after moving to the mountains and it cratered like nobody’s business. I was really sad. The texture of the pound cake wasn’t even close. I tried adjusting ingredients, but it either tanked or was off or both. So I stayed away from making lemon pound cake for a few years.

add eggs one at a time to creamed butter and sugar

grating lemon peel

**Jump for more butter**