Before

After

BeforeAfter

Photos (the nice ones) by Renee Comet

Styling done by me, Lisa Cherkasky, on all

Smoke and mirrors

When is food cooking?

When is food done?

How to build a fire.

Wisdom from the Big Boys:

Versatility.

Note the spacing of the briquets. Slide frankfurters onto rolls. Get in the act.  A delicate golden brown. Toast on both sides. Wrap securely. Strips of bacon.

Possibility.

Any questions?

Ticky Tacky Toast

I am rubber and you are glue, no matter how tacky it is, your toast bounces off me and sticks to you.

Tic Tac Toast

Malcolm must be rubber,  bouncing in momentarily, and boinging back out.

He’s my hi-bye friend.

Did someone say, “Have a little Bloody Mary with your pickles”?
Those pickles must be McClure’s!

Growing up, we never realized how influential pickles would be in our lives. In 2006, using our great grandmother Lala’s recipe, we started McClure’s Pickles after years of making pickles in our tiny Michigan kitchen. We learned how to make the pickles from our grandfather and parents and now we continue the tradition with a bit more room. We make the pickles, relish, mustard and other McClure’s products just outside of Detroit, Michigan and in Brooklyn, New York. We use as much local produce as possible when it is in season and when it’s not, we call up the farms and speak directly with the growers to know where our produce is coming from and how it is being grown making sure we are getting some of the best, freshest produce available. Every jar is hand packed, the cucumbers hand sliced, and our labels, printed by Rolling Press, use soy and vegetables inks with chemical-free plating and are created with wind-powered electricity. We’re happy that after so many years, we can bring our family recipe, to yours.

McClure’s Pickles

Oliver Uberti

NGM BLOG CENTRAL

Need I say more? Need I say anything at all?

Suits-Herself-Cindy and I artfully melted juicepops  with Renee Comet for the book Making Juice Pops, a huge hit with the under-ten set, which was designed by Cindy. Tell you what, making a juicepop look appealing as it melts is no small task. Recreating that IT moment for the camera is a challenge, too. Several times. Why stop at twice when it’s digital, I ask you.

We put on our food enginerd hats and went to town. We were already wearing our going-to-town shoes.

Have you ever noticed that when a popsicle melts the liquid is not nearly as saturated a color as the pop itself? OF COURSE YOU HAVEN’T! Who would, other than a highly specialized food photography technician at the pinnacle of capability?

~Splatting mustard THANKS with a paint gun all over the front porch of Suits-Herself-Cindy. Cloudy with a chance of hotdogs predicted for this evening.~

Big event in the hood last October, a camping overnight at The Phoebe Hall Knipling Outdoor Laboratory

Dear Grandpa,

Thank you for the $20.00.  I am going to spend1/3 save1/3 and donate1/3.  I am still thinking of what to buy and donate to.  School is O.K for now.

I am cooking eggs.  The eggs are cooking sssssllllloooowwwwwly.  The eggs smell good and warm.  The eggs worked!

My mom is doing chores.  I do not like chores.

I do not know if I will like the out door lab.  In out door lab we take hikes.  And roust winners.

LOVE,

TEDDY

Nick Dubois, Teddy Telzrow and Saleha Hoffman await the bus, October, 2010

The other day, while working on a plate of jambalaya I realized what it is I love about my job. Bingo!

“What do you love about your job”, “How did you get into it”, and “How much do you earn?” are the three questions I am asked most often about foodstyling. The first and second I can’t answer without talking for at least 77 minutes. By then the listener is long gone. The third I hate to answer, although it certainly perks up the listener.

No, I’m not going to tell you what I earn, and I am not going to bore you with my history, but I will tell you what I love about my job. I have finally put it into a sound bite – a sound bite from the days when our attention was longer than 9 seconds. Had a revelation the other day, a jambalaya related revelation, that brought my work happiness quotient into sharp focus.

Sitting in front of a plate, small brushes + bamboo styling picks + a pair of dental forceps within reach, water + vegetable oil + plate ingredients alongside me, the work feels like painting (not that I have much experience with painting). I go into a bliss zone – tweaking, changing, adding, removing, moving, moving again, moving again, burying, lifting, looking, looking, looking. Watching the plate in “person” and on the monitor, accessing the contours, colors, textures, contrasts, balance. Painting with oils must be similar, right? Well, even if it is not, I enjoy my zone. It is often very brief and constantly interrupted, but it is there.

Building something like a sandwich, or a slice of lasagne…same experience, although more sculptural. Build a bit, step away to see it, build a bit more. Color, contrast, contours, textures, balance.

Balance is key.

It is looking and absorging and adjusting and looking again. Like art, right? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t consider myself an artist, not by a long shot, but I do think the mindframe might be similar. And I use my hands, and materials. Tactile is us.

That’s what I love most about my work.

Arlington Cable Access interviewed me for their show “Food for Thought”. They visited Renée Comet‘s studio one day when we were working on the Mt Vernon cookbook, too. I was super impressed by Matt Kraft and Katie Greenan and the rest of the staff. This is the first time I can say that I wholeheartedly enjoyed an interview. Usually I am nervous. Not this time. Having my hair done was key.

Is that Wafffffffle and Wafffle? Or is it Wafle and Waefle?
Lunch Encounter – Lunch ‘n’ Counter – Luncheon Counter

The folks in charge at the Waffle Shop are doing some intentional living. The paint on the awning was recently refreshed.

The Arlandria Waffle Shop is heartbreakingly out-of-step in these parts. In DC, once you are worn in, you are worn out, or so it seems from where I sit. Sat at lunch in a bit of a cringe, expecting the wrecking ball to crash the plate glass at any moment. All I know about the original Waffle Shops, I know from personal observation over the past 40 years. We are down three, down to one. This one on Mt Vernon Avenue.

Alexandria’s Waffle shop, now a Pain Quotidien (gag) was on the optimal corner of King and Washington. I prowled there, during my junior high years, with a small gaggle of mismatched girls – we were not self-aware, styled and snarky in those dark ages of 70’s tweendom.  We skulked for boys with the Waffle Shop as our backdrop. We were too young to go in and too shy. Boys, if encountered, circled warily, too young and too shy to talk us. While the hurdle of conversation hulked between us, we longed for them to hold our hands.

One door down was the former J.C. Penney, brightly lit and safe, where we bought 1/4 pound paper bags of chocolate turtles or malted milk balls before boarding the 9A bus home. Solace and safety.

The Waffle Shop staff today is into it, nurturing the nurturance of the curved stone counter, warn-wood swivel stools, and warmly glowing yellow ceiling. Burnishing a haven.

Took their time, paid attention, used intention, a sandwich worth mention. Beautiful. Rating right up there among my ten most favorite questions, “Would you like those onions grilled?”

I’m eating your fries, I’m eating your fries, I’m eating your fries, said I. OCD much, anyone? The Waffle Shop is highly tolerant of quirks. In fact, quirks seem highly regarded. Being triangular perhaps is conducive to rejoicing in the oddness of others. Setting a very fancy banana-chocolate-strawberry-whipped cream-is-that-a-waffle-under-there the waitress hummed, “On the house.” It’s nice here in the bubble. Don’t ask why, risking a jinx and a ~pop~, just eat it up.

A mighty fine finish to a year of wonders, a year of lavishes and trials, 200 watt bulbs and power outages, soaring and creeping, and plain old walking, one ordinary step at a time. My right hand and left occasionally did not know they were connected to the same women. With an uber-waffle to fuel me, I plan to skip into 2011, bright-eyed and appetited, all limbs in sync.

How I love a handwritten receipt. And a spindel. PUNCH! A satisfying finish to an up-and-down year. Bye bye 2010. Nice to see you…..go.

Yes, no PR is bad PR. One always needs PR. None is bad. And bad is not bad. Any is good. Bad is good. PR is PR. NPR is good PR.

I know timing is everything. I know Thanksgiving 2010 is long past. I could NOT get in the mood to post this in the tight sandwich of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Open space now between feasts and I am feeling all full of myself. In the mood to crow, not gobble.

America’s Test Kitchen gives Thanksgiving a makeover with NPR

More shameless self promotion from me, via NPR. Prior to Thanksgiving I had the pleasure of preparing Chris Kimball and Renee Montaigne for a cooking segment featuring revamped Thanksgiving icons – Turkey Of Course, Gravy O.C., Stuffing Naturally, Whipped Potatoes Natch, Green Bean Casserole in a Slow Cooker – brilliant!, Apple Slab Pie, also brilliant!, Pecan Pie with NO CORN SYRUP IN IT.

To my great good fortune, my earth daughter, Hannah, was visiting. There were 4 days of work on the schedule, with the clock ticking down from two days. My planner did not plan appropriately and Hannah came to my rescue. She looked so beautiful doing it, too, and she dj’d our prep. Punch Bros on the iPod. New to me. Good to hang out with these young people.

What Hannah wrote to me when the segment debuted:
The pictures from the npr thanksgiving went up and there’s a picture of my hands! I was so excited haha.

Rectangles vs. Triangles for that leftover turkey sandwich

You’ve got a lot of decisions to make as you build that leftover turkey sandwich. White or wheat? Mustard or mayo? How about cranberry sauce? One decision you’ll probably make with ease is whether to cut the sandwich into triangles or rectangles. If you go for the diagonal slice, you’re in good company. Chefs, foodies, an architect and even a mathematician all told us that diagonal rules. But why?

paper (emphera) → short-lived whatever (empheral) → mayflies (Empheroptera)

Mayflies
Live under water for a year
Grow wings
Become airborne
Have as much sex as possible for a few hours
Die

The metaphor is obvious, of this I am aware.

At lunch at The Celebrity Delly, I pocketed our receipt as a piece of essential “ephemera.” “Ephemera?” he raised his eyebrows. “I only know it as an adjective,” then did a bit of biologist’s hotdoggin’, mentioning mayflies, noting that their order is Empheroptera from the Greek ephemeros (“short-lived”) and pteron (“wing”).

You gotta mine those strip malls while you are alive and well. There is a rich vein in those non-hills, flat as tracts in Sacramento. The corned beef hillocks, on the other hand – or in both hands – stack tall and juicy.

Mark seems to be sliding off the deck of the Titanic with the imminent demise of sandwiches, plates, utensils and beverages crashing onto the floor, splashing onto the walls and bringing our lunch to a wallop of a halt. Grab hold of that feast while it is in reach and you’ve got the verve of desire.

When one has a lunch encounter with a biologist, the mayfly is typical conversational fodder. Whup whup! You gotta live it while you got it. Birth, transformation, lunch, transcendence, death.

The Celebrity Delly just goes to showya that riches are in your own backyard. Been by it a million times on my way to my favorite knit shop, but never felt the urge to go in. It looks like, honestly, not much from the outside. Just goes to showya, it pays to look deep, not just than wide. Mine that vein.