VISUAL FEAST III

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MUSICAL INTERLUDE

Music for the eyes, my saunter through my market, a swing through the grocery store and tumbles of cauliflower, watery green enveloping creamy white; heaps of citrus in silken orange, neon bright, the shimmer of overhead lights leaving a smear of shine; knobbly spuds and gnarly tubers in violet fading to black or a rainbow of warm chocolate browns; the harsh pinks of rabbit flesh, arms stretched out in supplication, empty eyes staring into nothingness, the shock of Eraserhead images lying placidly, violently in the butcher’s case. I capture my visual feast, a winter’s palate of earthy, rooty things, sordid beauty broken by the pale charm of buckets of roses, sweet and a hint of romance. A week of replacing words with images, visual moments, illustrations of my city, my life, filtered, sharpened to a pointed observation or muted to a fuzzy, romantic recollection. Taste with your eyes, your imagination.

Head down, working, so many projects, so little time, I decided to share some of my visual thoughts, the expressions of my day, a walk through my culinary world, a brief interlude. We shop often and as I trail behind the man pushing the cart or carrying the basket, I slow down and ogle the voluptuous charm, the allure of both the lovely and the ugly. I hold up my iphone and frame these objects of desire, sweet and savory delights. I let him worry about the recipe, envision a dish from the season’s best and brightest. I surround myself with art, the banal becomes dazzling, the lumpy, elegant, the edible, visual.

And I share just two announcements:

On Thursday 24 January at 11:30 a.m. EST (that’s 17:30 here on the European mainland, 8:30 a.m. Pacific Time US) I am hosting a Google+ Hangout. Google+ Guru Chef Dennis Littley has organized a time and a virtual space where I, along with my friend & co-instructor Meeta, will be presenting and talking about our From Plate to Page food writing, styling & photography workshops. Joining us will be two former Plate to Page alumni Robin (P2P Tuscany) and Simone (P2P Weimar) who will give a participant’s viewpoint. There will be plenty of time to ask questions about the workshop as well as food writing and photography.

I am extremely proud and excited to share the news that friend and food photographer Ilva Beretta and I will be leading an Experts Are In session at the IACP 2013 conference held in San Francisco in April. Strategies For Expats will be a discussion on the particular and unique position we who are living and working in a country other than our homeland and readership base find ourselves in, the challenges we face as freelancers straddling two cultures, two countries and how we can make it work.

Et bon appétit!