It’s been an over-the-top week. Parent conference week plus a trip to UCLA (not a fun drive) for a Tuesday all day meeting to showcase work within the California Subject Matter Project (CSMP), back for more of those conferences and teaching, preparation for an all-day in-person meeting in San Jose for two statewide initiatives that I help facilitate for the California Writing Project (CWP), a flight on Friday after school, the wonderful and thought-provoking meeting yesterday followed by the flight home…I arrived home late, feeling exhausted and ready for bed!
I awoke this morning–briefly–at my regular 5:30am, long enough to peek at the clock and then turn over and go back to sleep for a couple more hours. And when I did wake up, what was on the breakfast menu? Homemade cinnamon rolls: sweet, cinnamon-y goodness, hot from the oven, with oh-so-yummy frosting pooling around the base. The perfect decadent small pleasure baked with love by my amazing husband. A Sunday morning delight! An exclamation point to end my busy, but satisfying week.
We’re not fancy people. We seldom go out to an extravagant dinner and really splurge on the experience. Don’t get me wrong, we eat out our fair share, but we’re more likely to grab In and Out Burger after a beach walk or frequent the tasty but not too expensive local Mexican place for taquitos or burritos.
But tonight, after a couple of days at a conference in Palm Springs, we decided to go out. Geoff had traveled with me, exploring the airplane museum while I conferenced today. It’s our last evening here and this town is full to the brim with conference goers, spring breakers, and retired folks who enjoy the desert when it’s not too hot. I suggested a reservation, hoping I wouldn’t have to make the dinner decision. And I hit the jackpot!
Apparently he skimmed the Italian restaurants in the area (last night was Mexican dinner with colleagues from my school district) and made a reservation at the only one who took reservations. Acknowledging it might be pricey but that neither of us had eaten lunch, and that the restaurant was a quick 3 minute walk from out hotel, we decided that we deserved a high end dinner.
Douglas was an excellent server who let us know right away that the owner was also the chef and that the recipes had been handed down from her grandmother, the pasta was made in house, and that everything would be delicious. Douglas was right! We started with a glass of wine, followed by a wonderful caprese salad to share. I had a lovely pasta entree whose name I don’t remember…but was fresh and so yummy. And of course, we had to top it off with some gelato for dessert.
The real kicker was the price–brace yourself, it was no bargain–but the total was such a unlikely and serendipitous number: 12345! (In monetary terms it was $123.45). But how often does that happen? Douglas encouraged us to head off to the casino in town since surely it was omen of good luck. We declined that suggestion–instead we are hoping that the Megamillion and Powerball lottery will come in for us! But if it doesn’t, we had a lovely dinner on a warm, beautiful Palm Springs March evening. Seems we can’t really lose today.
It’s been raining again. I know, I should be appreciating this liquid abundance that is replenishing local water supplies, nourishing drought-starved plants, and creating conditions that will ease the water restrictions we have learned to live with. But enough already!
So…when it has rained all day–again–it’s a perfect day for comfort food. And in this household, that often means breakfast for dinner. Somedays breakfast for dinner means breakfast burritos filled with eggs and avocado and bacon. Other days it is french toast dunked into an egg mixture and cooked until it is golden brown. Tonight it is pancakes.
If you know me, you know I don’t cook. Somehow all those years ago when I met my husband-to-be over green beer (you can read our tiny green love story here), I lucked into marrying a man who cooks–every single day! So as dinner time approaches each evening, he serves up love in the form of a meal. He makes it look easy as delicious aromas begin to waft through the house. “I’m whipping up a compote for the pancakes,” he says as I peek into the kitchen. He knows that maple syrup is not my go-to pancake topping, so he gathers this and that from the fridge to make something he knows I will love.
The (decaf) coffee is gurgling, there’s bacon in the microwave, and pancakes are almost ready. There’s something warm and cozy and comforting about pancakes for dinner on a rainy day. Almost makes another rainy day worth it!
Do you speak in images? Enjoy taking photos to document your experiences or just to express what you notice in the world? Love to share them with others? Welcome to the weekly photo challenge! I post a new challenge each week…check in regularly and join the fun!
I don’t cook…but I’m lucky to live with a wonderful cook. And he’s patient enough with me to let me capture some of his beautiful cooking with my lens. Earlier this week he was experimenting with a new recipe that included chickpeas, spinach, and sun-dried tomatoes. I love that my photo captures the heat as well as the beautiful colors.
The Summer Institute snack table is often a work of art. I captured this rainbow of cut peppers last week sitting on the table.
To celebrate the 4th of July, my husband went all out with his cooking. We started with chicken and fruits and veggies on skewers on the barbeque.
And he made a cherry pie from scratch! Here’s the “before” with the pitted cherries.
And the after…pie a la mode!
And sometimes I just can’t resist snapping that picture of a guilty pleasure…like these yummy taquitos with guacamole from the local Roberto’s. (These are the pictures I love to text to my sons to remind them what they’re missing now that they no longer live in our place!)
So this week’s challenge is to use food as the inspiration for your photos. It can be your ordinary breakfast…even if it comes out of a box…or a culinary masterpiece. You can snap a guilty fast food pleasure, a fine restaurant meal, or even the raw materials at the grocery store or in the garden!
You can post your photo alone or along with some words: commentary, a story, a poem…maybe even a song! I love to study the photographs that others’ take and think about how I can use a technique, an angle, or their inspiration to try something new in my own photography. (I love a great mentor text…or mentor photo, in this case!)
I share my photography and writing on social media. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter using @kd0602. If you share your photos and writing on social media too, please let me know so I can follow and see what you are doing. To help our Weekly Photo community find each other, use the hashtag #food for this week and include @nwpianthology in your post.
This is your week to be a food documentarian. What do you eat or what do you see others eating? Capture some images of food through your lens!
Food is love. In so many ways, whether we grow it, buy it, prepare it, or serve it, the act of sharing food is a way of showing that we care for another. Our holidays and rituals often have food associated with them, and they involve rituals of planning and shopping and preparing that invest the food with memory and meaning far beyond its nutritional value, flavor, and calorie count.
And I don’t cook. It’s not that I can’t cook, in fact, like many women, I learned to cook at my mother’s elbow and even went through a period in high school where i prepared dinner each night for my family in exchange for not having to do the dishes. It didn’t last for long. If I were going to cook, I wanted to create. But I’m not interested in eating as much as I am in creating.
Luckily, I married a man who enjoys cooking and has cooked for me and our family since the beginning of our relationship. He cooks for holidays and occasions, he cooks for my friends and family, and he cooks each and every day, day in and day out, even when he doesn’t want to, even when he doesn’t feel like it. And each and every meal is made with love.
This morning, Easter morning, he had already planned to make buttermilk biscuits from scratch. Inspired by a meal last week outside of Nashville at the Loveless Cafe, he looked up a recipe, bought a quart of buttermilk, and decided to see if he could make biscuits as good as the ones we ate last week.
And when he got ready to cook this morning, I got out my camera to capture the steps in the process. (I’m lucky that he is a good sport about my photography–even when it gets in his way!) So I snapped some shots of the biscuits in process. As I was taking pictures I was also thinking about my friend Karen’s Make With Me invitation at the NWP ianthology this month–which is all about making food. I knew I was unlikely to contribute a food make since i really don’t make food…but with my photos in hand and Geoff’s great food make, I was inspired to use the photos to build a movie about the biscuits.
The biscuits were amazing…and delicious! And he even made lattes at home to go with them. Making the video was fun too…completed start to finish on my phone. This is my first solo video…I’ve done bits and pieces before, but never the whole thing and never on my phone. So it felt good to put this together. And it’s funny, I’ve written about making biscuits before…here...and the memories entwined in that process of making food in my childhood. Even for someone who doesn’t cook, food is associated with memories and with love. My Easter, with an empty nest and no kids at home, was filled with food and love today as Geoff cooked for me this morning and reveled in his own creation and my creation based on his creation…and then later cooked for my parents, treating us all to an Easter dinner made with love, creating space for talk and memories and full bellies.
In many ways the video I made today was a love letter back to my husband for the love he puts into the food he makes. And the process of making with someone else in mind fills me, as the maker, with love and appreciation. Food is love. And today, making this movie (about food) was love too.
Thinking Through My Lens 