Late-May Mash Up

BE GRATEFUL. That is what we wrote on a piece of paper and taped to our wall last week. It will stay there, as a reminder.

We are happy to have a lot going on (a new studio soon, a new book in the works, a cool smoked fish shoot coming up in June, fun work with Applegate, a tree fort going up in the backyard... all of which we'll post about here in the coming weeks), but staying focused has been hard. So when we sat down at the computer to pull together this blog post, these three images made sense to us in that way that salty and sweet make sense to us in cookies.

1. Elio's birthday is on Sunday. Holy 8! (This pic is from last April, wait till you see him now.)

2. Guy has been crazy trying to start a starter and finally he has trapped yeast in flour and water (it is nice and sour smelling) and, hopefully, will soon be making the dense sprouted bread we so love from our time in Germany and Austria.

3. We love this portrait of Fabrizia, and it reminds us that the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School (where we lived and helped produce the book Coming Home To Sicily) is having its 25th anniversary in June. It is going to be a fantastic celebration (which sadly we will miss) but again serves to remind us of the experience that got us started on our path and yet another reason to be grateful.

So, with that we leave you with these...

Kick-ass ice-cream

Where: The Bent Spoon, Princeton, NJ Who: Gabrielle Carbone and Matt Errico

Why: Its their 10 year Anniversary this week! Go get some ice-cream.

I am not sure if we have mentioned that we used to live in Santa Fe, NM, and Sicily, and New York, and, yes!, in Brooklyn too. But we have landed here in NJ. Many people would, (and do), ask why? It is too long of story to get into but what is important is that we are happy, we are near family and we can get really good, really fresh ingredients that we love to cook with.

Plus we can find other people (like the Bent Spoon people) who also like to make incredibly good things with the best ingredients. Lucky us! And there is none of that Brooklyn hipper-than-thou attitude (we have our own sort of attitude to deal with in Jersey, thank you very much!)

On another note, this portrait of Gabrielle is one of my favorites that I made in the last few months. Sort of Patti Smith meets artisanal ice-cream.

Another cookbook...

worth having. Publishes today! The New Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook, by Ellen Brown. Published by Sterling Epicure.

Photographed by Guy and styled by Kate.

We photographed this book a while ago but still remember many of these delicious recipes. (I think we just made the Irish soda bread in March!)

Here's a sneak peek to get you started.

Check it out online  here...

(un)intentional

When Guy and I met, I remember being surprised by a collection of dried-up tea bags tacked up along one wall of his kitchen. A tiny art installation, made of an ordinary thing that I had thrown out thousands of time, turned lovely by focus... One of my favorite food photos that Guy ever took was a Polaroid of two pomegranates that had sat on the windowsill above the sink for too long. They had dried in the New Mexico sun, becoming wizened maracas. But their dusky color stayed true, darkening only a little with age...

Our fridge is always overflowing, so most fruit stays out, surrounding us in bowls and on plates, masquerading as centerpieces. Stuck on shelves near the water glasses. Usually the fruit gets eaten in time, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it gets fed to the chickens, sometimes it gets tossed, and sometimes it keeps sitting there, becoming very old and turning into something completely new.

Snow Day

Back to a few portraits. Even though it may be obvious and cliché I am going to post these portraits for obvious but hopefully not cliché reasons.  

Canal House, Pronto!

Why was I surprised when Elio and I arrived at Tinicum Park and discovered that the Canal House “picnic” was actually a sit-down, mid-afternoon lunch for 100? I should have known better. Everything Christopher and Melissa create deftly balances deliciousness, comfort, class, and fun. For example, generous pours of prosecco and Ramazzotti dark and stormys; the thoughtful swaths of cheesecloth protecting the tables; fluttering garlands made from covers of their latest cookbook, Pronto. Just when I started feeling weak, knowing that I can never live up to the effortless perfection of it all, the tomato toss let loose. Kids and adults donned garbage bags and pelted each other with late-season rotten tomatoes. Elio, who unsurprisingly chose to go protection-free, couldn’t get over that the melee was for real—and adult-sanctioned. Another Canal House convert.

Grilling for Applegate Farms

Capricious Mother Nature and her sun kept us guessing most of the day, but finally the light was right and we were able to dive into this grilling shoot. An old friend dropped in just as we were finishing up—always a nice way to end the week!