You didn’t think I had vanished from the face of the earth now did you? I’ve just been incredibly swamped with work ever since the new Year started. It’s weird, wonderful and a little troubling too. (knock on wood) It could be over next month, so I am taking everything I can to make up for possibly leaner times coming soon. The funny thing is too that I spend more time working in the studio then ever before… It must be a sign of some sort.

Cress

I thought I entertain you with a couple of shots from recent shoots I did. I’m getting more and more food assignments which is good news as that – ultimately – is what I want to do. Next week is again going to be really busy with on monday a shoot with a man who tries to get schoolkids to eat healthier by educating them about growing their own in small city garden, on Tuesday I am in the studio together with a food stylist shooting for a producer of a sustainable substitute for tuna, on Wednesday product shots, on Thursday I have the second day of shoots for a restaurant in Arnhem where we will do the desserts and a la carte menu and on Friday I am giving a workshop.. And that’s the week over again. Well except for the portrait shoots on Saturday..

Small cherry pie

And because Tom is still unemployed he has been doing most of the cooking so not a lot of recipes to share. I miss actually coming up with new recipes and even though we have eaten really well and delicious, because of the terrible light at night I haven’t shot any of them. But there will be recipes soon again!

In the meantime we’re also shopping around for a new kitchen, which is fun and frustrating at the same time. We are going to make the kitchen a bit bigger and according to all the sales guys we have a really big kitchen. We don’t think so, as a kitchen can never be too big right?

Possible colorsetting of new kitchen

I can’t give you the exact details of the kitchen but the color setting will be fairly similar to the one above. The wall will be light and the flour will be wooden but the cupboards will be fairly similar and the counter will be slightly less dark (but still stone). It’s a lot of work figuring out all the details while still trying to stay within budget and convincing the salesguys that we do NOT want to spend any more… O well, within the next two weeks, we will probably make the final decision so I’ll let you know once I have the details! And then you think you’re done you still have to figure out what to put on the wall and the floors… *sigh* But it’s all for the greater good!

So no recipe from me this time but there will be one next time!

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What on earth is in that soup??

I haven’t had a lot of time to shoot our dinner this week, so instead I thought I share a fun photoshoot with you that is – sort of – food related. I do a lot of stockphotography so I had this idea in my head to shoot in a nice kitchen with a lovely young couple. The couple are people who have modelled for me before and whom I met through my previous job (sort of in my other life, long time ago..lol) and we were lucky enough to be able to use the cooking space of cookingstudio K-O-K-S in Amsterdam. One of the guys that runs the place is a kitchenarchitect so the kitchen they have in their store are mostly fully operational as they also do workshops. Yes, it’s the same cookingstudio we go to with Kort Lontje!

Anyway, the idea was to have them cook something for real and take photos in the process. We had a lot of fun during the shoot and we basically threw all the leftovers from the vegetables we cut and the fish that was filleted (is that the right word??) into one large pan, which is what the girl is holding up on the first photo above.

While the photos kind of look like a proper kitchen you would not believe the re-arranging that had to be done to turn a store into an actual kitchen area. All the real cooking is normally done in the back, but this kitchen is in the front of the store, so when you look through the window this is what you see. I had bought loads of fresh veggies, fish and clams (which I ended up eating for dinner that same day, except the clams which I gave to the Albert and Pieter, who own the store) but it does look like a real kitchen does it not?

I think the series turned out rather well, despite some of the things that went wrong and Wouter even managed to make some sort of edible dish out of all the cutting and breaking of eggs that he did (we had to break four eggs, before I had the photo correctly… )

Anyway, just so you know that I have not disappeared from the face of the earth, but that I am still alive and kicking..

Will post some lovely recipes soon I hope.

Doesn't look all that bad, now does it??

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Ten (or is it 11 already?) years ago we decided that yellow or rather vanilla was a good color for the kitchen… It was fine for years but do you know that feeling when all of a sudden you can’t stand to look at the same kitchen anymore? lol.. I do have to say that it has never been properly installed. We had one of those guys that kept talking and talking and talking but didn’t really do a good job. I actually think that his talking was a way to distract us from the actual issues at hand. Or maybe we were just so fed up with him that we were glad he was gone. We should of course have paid more attention but that’s just how it goes!

This week on Monday we had someone come over to do our garden as that was a total mess and this guy does it in his spare time. It was pouring rain on Monday but he still carried on and cleaned our entire garden. I will show you a before and after picture in a minute. But since he was busy and I was kind of forced to stay home, I thought it was a good idea to clean out the kitchen and get rid of all the overdue stuff and restructure it a bit. Now that I am cooking much more then I used to I also want to have a kitchen that is up to the task. Of course that involves throwing away things that we have had forever and never really use and updating things like our knifes and pots and pans.. Not all in one go though, because the good stuff tends to be expensive too!
Of coursethe next step in that is actually getting a new kitchen but it is hard to choose and make sure that I will still like it in a couple of years. We’re in no hurry; first the holidays and the move to the new studio (still not confirmed!!!!) and after that we will be slowly starting to look at new kitchens!

And as a bonus; here is our before and aftershot of the garden!

After

Before

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