What are you having for lunch today?
I was thinking of ham, cheese and mustard on white.
 |
 |
Or possibly cheese with mustard, mayo and ketchup or ham and mustard.
Followed by a selection of juicy citrus fruits.
 |
 |
I love it when food stylists do things a little bit differently.
All photos by ace food stylist Charlotte Omnes.
It is Tuesday and there are no freaking macarons in my house. I know this because for some reason I’ve been craving them all morning and a thorough excavation of my kitchen cupboards has not yielded a single delicate French confection. When the Minx goes back to school next week (may the heavens and all the saints and angels be praised), I will MAKE some.
But in the meantime all I have are some photos I took at Patisserie Camp, way back at the beginning of the summer. Sadly these will have to do.
Take it away Chef Jean-Marc.
Make a nice almondy macaron mix and colour it baby pink (I’ll put up a recipe when I’ve had a chance to make and test some, in the meantime just treat this as afternoon food porn).
 |
 |
 |
 |
Pipe hundreds of the little darlings out on a bunch of baking sheets and whip up a little raspberry jam.
 |
 |
Bake until crisp
Fill with jam
Sandwich them together and Robert est ton oncle. (Do Americans say ‘and Bob’s your uncle’ too? I’ve never had a clue where that comes from).
 |
 |
On Friday I drove down to beautiful Portland with my dear friend Nazila, writer of the gorgeous blog Banamak and champion drunken snorer, to attend the International Food Blogger Conference. It’s the first one of these I’ve attended and I came away incredibly inspired and full of plans and ideas for the blog.
I met up with old friends and made new ones, attended incredibly useful classes, ate unbelievably good food and had some great conversations with advertisers, PR companies, ad networks and publishers. My head is still reeling from all the information I have to process.
One of the aforementioned old friends was food photographer Andrew Scrivani, who closed out proceedings on Sunday morning with a hilarious and informative cooking and photography demonstration with his good friend Chef John from Food Wishes.
A note to all the many TV executives who read this blog – these guys need their own cooking show pronto quick.
 |
 |
Mr S gave talked us through some of his amazing photos; an exciting dry ice shooting station was set up and the food paparazzi came out in force, with the maestro on hand to answer questions.
 |
 |
Chef John tortured the assembled masses by frying up a batch of the world’s crispiest onion rings (featuring a special not-so-secret ingredient), and some garlic prawns, as well as putting together a yummy-looking affogato.
 |
 |
Unfortunately the props didn’t last long in a room full of hungry food bloggers.
 |
 |
An fabulously funny time was had by all, and many pictures were taken, despite the less than ideal lighting conditions for photography.
Please get The Baldie Boys on my TV set ASAP.
Oh goodness, it’s been ages since I’ve done one of these. It’s been a pastel-coloured, blossom-filled, playing in the sunshine, baking goodies couple of weeks.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
Or a day in the life of my Instagram feed.
Maybe this is why only 41% of you follow me on social media.
Seriously chaps, thank you for the amazing feedback I’m getting through the Urtak. I really appreciate you taking the time and trouble to respond. Some expected answers and some surprises so far.
I forgot to do a TWTWTW last week, which was silly as I had some cool shots from our weekend shopping trip to Portland.
It turned out to be a sunshine and showers, great food and great coffee, groovy shops and pink petals sort of a weekend.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
We had a wonderful time There’s a blog post on shopping in Portland in your near future.
This has been an Instagram week of raincoats and snuggles, marmalade and bundt cake, polka dots and salted caramels, with a hint of spring green peeking through.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
Day two of the Blogging Your Way workshop (other pics here and here), found Leslie Shewring from A Creative Mint taking her day in the sun (quite literally as the sun came out in New York after two days of Seattle-like torrential rain).
After hearing Leslie’s inspiring story of clicking with Holly online and subsequently striking up a great blogging and teaching partnership, we settled down for a day of more practical creativity.
 |
 |
The biggest thing I took away from the workshop is that styling is ALL about telling stories in an image.
Whenever I’m styling something I know I always look at the colours and shapes first, forget about the mood or story I’m trying to convey, and then wonder why the image seems flat and dead. I can be very dense sometimes. Of course, it’s all about the storytelling. Well, duh.
Leslie showed us how she pulls together inspiration boards to figure out moods and colour schemes. She’s just one of those people who can instinctively pull together a bunch of random stuff and magically turn it into a coherent and pleasing whole.
It does help that she has some great props – she gave us lots of sources for what she called ‘curated hoarding’. This was the second most useful thing I learned at the workshop. Now I can explain to the Husband what I’m doing when he complains about the crap on my desk.
We then talked about composition, lighting and the basics of photography and Holly gave us a ton of tips about styling and photographing interiors. Then for the rest of the day we had time to play ourselves and make the most of the lovely light at Divine Studio and Leslie’s pretty props.
Here’s a little ‘inspiration board’ I pulled together, with things I’d pulled off my desk at home.
And here are a few shots I styled and photographed of the beautiful food. Can you see what stories I’m trying to tell?
 |
 |
At the end of the day we all had fun taking pictures of all our new-found fri ends. Of course a huge part of the value and pleasure of doing these sorts of events is meeting a ton of inspirational and creative women. New friends include Tina, Audrey, Michele, Natalie and Gretchen, Jessica, Ashley, Amanda and Fiona (seen below, who’d flown in all the way from England). Also special thanks to Marianne, for being the most charming and easy-to-live-with roommate one could wish for. I highly recommend taking a stroll through the links above, you’ll find some super charming and talented women and some new and fabulously inspirational blogs.
And once more a HUGE thank you to Holly and Leslie. You ladies rock SO hard.
One day I’ll have a picture taken with Holly where I’m not looking either blurred or deranged (See also San Francisco pics).
Last week was a wintry week of knitting, hotpot, pancakes and new sweaters, with a haircut, a pedicure and some new pencils thrown in.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
Last week was an Instagram week of hearts and flowers, grey skies, cuddly cats and a newfound love of the colour yellow.
 |
 |
  |
  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
On the 1st January I started posting daily photos to Instagram. I’m @mirrormirroxx. Come and be my friend.
