"essays" news and stories

This is the time of year when life can start to feel overwhelming and cooking becomes more of a burden than a joy. Thankfully there is lots of good food writing out there that can help you recenter yourself and find the peace and satisfaction available in cooking, eating and living.

Earlier in the week, Culinate posted an essay by Charlotte Freeman entitled The Walking Cure. It is about a time when Freeman was struggling with an inexplicable illness that made her run fevers and feel exhausted. A practitioner of Chinese medicine recommended outdoor physical exercise and so she started taking long, very slow walks in the woods on the Utah/Wyoming border.

The essay contains a sense of quiet, almost as if you have stepped into the woods with Freeman and you are able, for a moment, to feel the dampness of the trees and hear the twigs snapping as you step. It also makes you (well, as least if you are me) want to leap up, grab a book about mushrooms and head to the woods in order to find your own.

Source

All you aspiring food photographers (and some of you professionals) should have a look at photographer Michael Ray's Food Photography Blog. Organized more as collection of Ray's articles than as a blog, the site has tons of interesting tips and techniques that pros and amateurs will find useful. Granted, those of us that take pictures for our blogs probably aren't going to hack up our barbecue grills and install lights and gels underneath them when we photograph our tuna steaks. Nevertheless, plenty of Ray's insights about lighting and composition are good to keep in mind for when we're in our own studios, er, kitchens. This step-by-step photo walk-through of setting up a shoot is especially cool.

[Photo: Michael Ray]