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...

10,000 hours

Back in December, we spent two and a half crazy weeks developing and photographing 50 recipes for Food & Wine's online site. It was actually fun, and the creative and physical challenge really inspired us, in that Malcolm Gladwell–10,000 hours sort of way. Food & Wine just started to post the recipes and photos to their site, and we are thrilled that they have asked us to do more! So if you live nearby, or are thinking of visiting, here's some advice: April would be a good time to pop in, you'll eat well. And often. These are some outtakes that we particularly like from the first go-round. See all the recipes and pics here. We would love to hear if anyone cooks these recipes--if you do, let us know. Comment on F&W and/or take a picture and post it on our Facebook or your Instagram so we can check it out!

Outtakes: Applegate

The past few weeks we have been shooting a lot for Applegate. Looking through the library of images we came across many pictures that may never see the light of a computer screen but that we think are interesting and fun: details, trays of ingredients, raw chicken, kooky old animal toys… Sorry, no intellectual or art historical reference this week (I’m sure that’s why you keep reading this blog!). Well, OK, I guess there might be some reference to abstract and found art in here, (Rothko, John Chamberlain) so enjoy.

Zeros and Ones

What are Kate and Guy doing this week? A lot really, but I was just thinking.... What is Photography now? I am not going to get too intellectual about this or too romantic about it either. Making pictures has changed dramatically since I started making them in my little basement darkroom back in 1987 or so. (Yes, I admit it, I was in the darkroom from infancy!) But what does it really mean to make a picture, to represent something. John Berger foresaw Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook etc.. in his book Ways of Seeing (check out this short video) It is this inundation of imagery, this constant communication and need for attention that I am curious about. It is a double need—one is that you want the attention and another is a nagging feeling you need the attention to keep up, to stay relevant. Then we fight against it. I hear all the time that people are quitting Facebook or giving up email. We also see a whole lot of people just making stuff by hand. Artisanal is the hip code word for it. And Kate and I try to keep that as part of our daily life, too. But of course to sell the handmade stuff you must be connected in some way (even if it means you fain disdain for the internet), but then we hope to get written about and linked to for being such a recluse. Then you blow up and are selling everything online. I really do not judge it any more, one way or the other. I just see it as truly one of the bigger struggles of our time. It is for me. It challenges me to see so many great images being made every minute with a little phone. They are images similar to the ones I struggled to make over years at the beginning my artistic practice. On another level I struggle too with the questions of value and longevity. Or are they the same question. Does a handmade black and white print have more value than an Instagram post? If an audience seeing the images adds value then there is a close battle going on.

This is all to say that while working on a book that Kate and I are doing for a publisher I made these two pictures (below) that I really liked. Last year (2013) I probably would not have shared them, but this year I have and I will continue to do so. I will also even share some of the black and white prints I made over the years, 'The Archives' so to speak, the images that were the start of my practice, a practice that is still continuing, sometimes by hand and sometimes with zeros and ones.

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.

guy kate and elio!