Do you remember when they met?

I know! Check our old email messages! There must’ve been an email about it.

There we stood at the wine store, pacing back and forth poking at our iPhones trying to find the email we may or may not have gotten about meeting up for brunch to meet our friend’s new guy.

I’m not a big fan of giving gift certificates or money (though I absolutely don’t mind receiving them myself) because I like to add some creativity to gifts, especially meaningful and/or practical gifts. I think it’s related to the photographer in me where I like to gift memories whether it be an experience or items that can conjure up memories or create new ones.

For our wine loving friends, we had already decided on giving them a wine blending experience and a few bottles of wine from the same vineyard as something they could actually open for an engagement gift. I then suggested that we specifically find wine from the year our dear friends met.

Great idea, right? BUT it was so difficult to remember the year because it seemed like forever since we all knew them as a couple and it seemed so foreign that there was a time when they weren’t together. After several lifeline phone calls with our other friends recounting the details of group outings and trips and pacing too many times back and forth in the store, we concluded that it was 2006 and were finally on our way out of the store.

And so we put together an engagement gift package that included the wine blending seminar certificate with wine from 2006: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Zinfandel.

We picked Ravenswood for the blending seminar and wine. They were a pleasure to work with in making gift arrangements for our friends and even let us design and print our own certificate.

The gift package seemed to need a bit more variety, so we found ourselves browsing the food aisles at Cost Plus World Market for ideas to add to the wine themed gift. Their Brix Chocolate for Wine (Dark and Extra Dark Chocolate) and wine infused salami (Volpi’s Chianti, Pinot Grigio and Rosé Salami) seemed like a perfect complement!

I’m told they did not last long and they wanted to know where they could get more of the chocolate! Success!

These three amazing short films pretty much sum up why I love to travel.

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

EAT from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

The 3 guys took 44 days, traveling 11 countries with 18 flights, logging 38 thousand miles. They used 2 cameras and generated almost a terabyte of footage to create this great imagery.

Makes me want to go out and wander again.

Words and photographs cannot describe how much traveling has changed who I am today.

I’ve always passed by it and wondered what it was like on the inside. The exterior always kind of gave an impression that it was an oldie. So one night last year, while looking for some place to eat for dinner, I had a chance to finally try it.

The brown interior did look oldish, like a transportation back in time, but near the front door, there was a lounge and bar area which seemed like a neat and comforting place to hang out and watch some sports.

Since I was going through the Jasmine Star Wedding Photography CreativeLIVE Workshop, I had brought my DSLR with me, on the prowl to look for an interesting photograph and the light fixture in the ceiling caught my eye, unexpectedly (photo above).

I got the Tortellone Napoletana which I didn’t like so much mainly because the texture of the filling was too fine and ground up:

And we tried the calamari (something I tend to do any time I see calamari on a menu). It satisfied our hunger.

It will be yummy and a place I suspect no one has been……..curious?

That’s what the email said last August.

Back in 2004, some of my friends and I used to get together randomly and spend time with each other whenever we were free. Simply spontaneous and unplanned. Hours would turn into whole day affairs. It was as if we had nowhere to be and had all the time in the world to just hang out. Sometimes we ended up going into dinner time and cooking together. And if we had things to do, we would just do them… together because doing things together no matter how mundane is always better with friends… like grocery shopping, errand shopping, studying or working remotely, and even taxes (yes, tax calculating and filing… we were so wild). There even used to be a time when the guys (mostly) would go golfing and the girls would hit a few balls at the driving range, and then join the guys to watch them play the rest of their 18 holes… and golf is definitely not a short game!

But as the years have gone by, we’ve gotten more busy with work, home ownership, relationships and marriages, and just life in general. And those days became less frequent. Before they disappeared completely, we resolved to make an effort to see each other more regularly than special occasions or parties… and our (roughly) monthly dinners were born so that we could all catch up on each others’ lives like we used to.

I was not part of the original discussion, so my impression of how it works may be flawed. As I understand it, each person takes turns organizing the dinner (significant others are not exempt from rotation) – finding a best date and time for most, picking restaurants that most of us have never been to before. And I think we’re supposed to have it on an evening during the week (Monday through Thursday).

Last August, our monthly dinner was held at the Basque Cultural Center Restaurant in South San Francisco since the organizer had seen this restaurant featured on Check Please! with favorable reviews. It’s definitely one of those unexpected kind of places at a random location (a cultural center!) where you wonder how everyone eating there knows about it. It reminded me of the Garden Club (an Italian restaurant in the back of a dive bar where early bird specials are the norm, also in South San Francisco). But the Basque restaurant felt more like going over to a relative’s house for dinner.

Dinner started with complimentary soup and salad and one of us ordered Prosciutto of Parma with Melons:

And the entrees were hearty especially the Pepper Steak and the Fresh Seafood of the Day:

We couldn’t turn down dessert, but having had too much food, we all split a few… spoons for everyone!

And an Italian version of neopolitan — spumoni. I’ve always thought chocolate, pistachio, and cherry was an odd combination, though:

I usually focus on taking photos of just the food and might ask someone to take a group photo for us, but this time, I decided to take some candids of my friends. They were great and mostly pretended the camera wasn’t there… which is how I like it!

At the time, I was right in the middle of the creativeLive online photography master course on wedding photography with Jasmine Star and Jasmine Star’s favorites includes many prime lenses like the 50mm.

I had actually bought a 50mm f/1.8 4+ years ago since it was cheap and good (I heard it was a very good value at around $100), but didn’t really use it much over my 18-55mm kit zoom lens. But Jasmine Star and a few other people were saying how they loooove it and the co-instructor for the photography workshop I had taken also liked his 50mm and was reminiscing about how back in the day (he learned on film photography), people used prime lenses and if you wanted to zoom in or out, you actually walked closer or backed up; his pre-digital remark was in a “they don’t do it like they used to” kind of way. I almost forgot, too, that I also learned film photography on a 50mm… and had to walk to get the picture since I didn’t have zoom lenses (or as Jasmine Star likes to call them, a “lazy girl lens”).

So during our dinner, I thought I’d give my 50 a more fair chance. And I must admit that it grew on me more and more. Even if these pictures were taken on my very old Canon Rebel XT. (I have replaced the XT since, but still testing which one will be the winner.)

When I was younger, my aunt and uncle had art hanging on their walls at their house and one of them was of fruit. I can only remember pears.

It was still life, but delicious still life. I never really thought much of it until recently.

Before leaving on my November international trip, I was excited to find a package FedEx’d to me. An advanced signed copy of the new South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook (to be released on November 16) and two complimentary tickets to the 2011 Food Festival’s Grand Tasting Village this coming February in Miami Beach, Florida. I can’t wait!

I had won the cookbook and tickets from a Foodspotting photography contest. I had signed up for the site when it was in beta and the contest encouraged me to finally try the site out which involved finding and submitting 3 photos that represented each category chapter from the South Beach Wine & Food Festival Cookbook. As I went through my photo collection for 21 photos, I wished I had cataloged them better. What I found is that I don’t eat BBQ and comfort food out at restaurants much. Unfortunately, this contest wasn’t about how good the photos were artistically, but about speed, but I’ll take it. (I almost wasn’t a winner in the contest because of a bug in the foodspotting site which affected the actual results, but I was able to work it out with foodspotting to clear things up.)

I started taking digital color photos of food shortly after I took a black & white film darkroom photography course back in 2002. At the time, no one else was taking photos of food during meals since journaling and sharing such photos on social networks weren’t a big thing yet. My reason for taking them were to practice the photography concepts I had learned in the course like composition, framing, and depth of field; food was an easy subject and readily available.

After all these years of taking photos of food, it’s satisfying to know that even though I didn’t have a goal at the time except to simply take photos that I’m able to turn the effort into something more. I’m grateful for my patient friends and family who have supported my effort especially when they were hungry and waited for me to finish taking photos of the food at our table, including this one:

Hungry

The funny thing is that when I found out I won, the first thought that came to my head was… I get to take more photos of food! Maybe that makes me more of a photographer than a food enthusiast.

Because I would go hungry for a good shot (photography, that is).

After the cooking class/party I had for my birthday last year, I was motivated to get back into the kitchen again (I had stopped baking/cooking in February 2007.) I wasn’t ready to make cooking a several hour affair as I used to, so for the traditional Sunday dinner, I grabbed Rachel Ray’s Express Lane Meals off my bookshelf.

Back in the day when my friends and I were getting together and cooking dinner as a group on a frequent basis, Rachel Ray was a favorite to some. So when I saw this book at Costco and flipped through it, I picked it up and thought I’d give it a try sometime… 30 minute meals sounded pretty appealing after a busy day. Years later, I finally perused my book again looking for a recipe.

I was impressed by the way they organized the sections:
Meals for the Exhausted
Meals for the Not Too Tired
Bring It On (But, Be Gentle)

I looked through all the recipes, but I wasn’t very pleased; I couldn’t figure out how the recipes in the book prompted me to buy it initially. In any case, I opted to make the Chicken with Scallion-Lime Sauce and Sweet Carrot Rice from the Exhausted section (p68).

The recipe tells you how to make the sweet carrot rice using the pot method, but as an Asian house, I have a rice cooker. Uncertain of how the rice would turn out, I put it in with the chicken broth and carrots and it turned out fine.

I didn’t particularly like the flavor pairing with the lime sauce and neither did the others. I think it was because in this recipe, the lime is more prominent while in typical Asian cooking, lime is usually just an accent.

I’m not sure if I like Rachel Ray’s recipes after all and it may be awhile before I try another recipe from the book again, if ever.

I have a Sunday tradition where I go out with my mom for dinner. It’s not usually a fancy place or anything, often just comfort food. For Mother’s Day last year, I decided to cook my mom a meal instead of going out to eat because I wanted to do something more personal, restaurants were probably busy, and it’s often more economical and healthier to cook in.

I didn’t have much time to plan (less than a day or so), so I thought I’d flip through my then recent issues of Real Simple magazine for some inspiration as I knew they often had quick dinners for weeknights. I found this recipe for salmon. My mom is a big fan of salmon, so this seemed perfect.

There were some mixed feelings about the olives in the salad and I think it had something to do with the citrus and the salty olives trying to commingle.

Seared Salmon With Oranges, Tomatoes, and Olives
(Originally from Real Simple May 2009, p236, Kate Merker)
Serves 4
Hands-On Time: 20m
Total Time: 30m

Ingredients:

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 pieces skinless salmon fillet (1 1/4 pounds total)
• kosher salt and black pepper
• 1 navel orange
• 2 small beefsteak tomatoes (about 1 pound), cut into wedges
• 1/2 cup fresh cilantro sprigs
• 1/4 cup pitted green olives, halved

Directions:

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Season the salmon with 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper. Cook until opaque throughout and golden brown, 4 to 5 minutes per side.
2. Meanwhile, cut away the peel and pith of the orange and cut out the segments. In a large bowl, gently combine them with the tomatoes, cilantro, olives, the remaining tablespoon of oil, and 1/4 teaspoon each salt and pepper. Serve with the salmon.

When I was backpacking around Europe with a friend, we had picked up a small jar of Nutella in Venice, Italy. On a budget and trying to plan out our itinerary a bit on the fly, we had planned to eat it for breakfast with fruit or bread, but our plans never panned out and so we ended up with the roughly 13 oz. glass jar of Nutella as our traveling companion as we traveled through Venice, Rome, Florence, Nice, and Barcelona where we finally gave up on the meal idea and gifted it to a friend of hers we met. Lugging around the jar of Nutella had been a running joke for us… too bad we didn’t take photos of it visiting all the sights.

I had a jar of Nutella and wanted to do something with the tasty hazelnut spread and remembering the delicious and chewy nutella cookies a friend of mine would make every now and then for me, I found a recipe for Nutella Almond Cookies. Before I started baking these cookies, fortunately I had gone to the store to buy another jar because apparently the Nutella I had already had lost its freshness and so I chucked the old one and opened up the new container instead. I was attracted to this recipe because I’m also a fan of almonds. Since I didn’t have a fresh bag of chocolate chips on hand, I omitted them. The almond slivers easily broke apart as I was mixing them in… I also forgot to put them in for the first few cookies. The spacing doesn’t need to be as generous as 4 inches apart with the medium cookie scoop I used and I had also added 1/3 cup of flour to the original recipe as someone else had suggested, but I found they were a little more on the cakey side. Next time, I might try it with 1 1/2 cups flour instead.

Nutella Almond Cookies
(Adapted from recipezaar)

Ingredients:

• 1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup nutella
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup sliced almonds

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to incorporate and set aside.
3. Using an electric mixer (or manually) in another medium bowl, combine the butter, chocolate hazelnut spread, sugar, and brown sugar and cream the ingredients together, about 4 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat until smooth, about 1 minute.
4. Using a wooden spoon or rubber spatula, stir in the flour mixture one-third until just combined. Add the almonds and stir until just combined.
5. Using a tablespoon measure or a medium cookie scoop (1 1/2 tablespoon), spoon out the cookie dough onto a cookie sheet (or a silpat), spacing the mounds about 2 inches apart. Bake until lightly golden around the edges, about 8 to 10 minutes. Allow cookies to cool.

Paul Child: What is it that you really like to do?
Julia Child: Eat!
Paul Child: And you’re so good at it!
(Julie & Julia)

Recently, I was watching an Iron Chef America episode where Giada De Laurentiis and Rachel Ray competed against each other with Bobby Flay and Mario Batali as their respective teammates. What stuck out is how Ray kept saying, “I am not a chef, I’m just a cook.”

Coincidentally, I had recently been thinking about the term “foodie” which has apparently officially made it into mainstream language, at least according to the Oxford English Dictionary and Merriam-Webster and they each have slightly different definitions:

OED: A person with a particular interest in food; a gourmet. (Sometimes distinguished from ‘gourmet’ as implying a broad interest in all aspects of food procurement and preparation.)
MW: A person having an avid interest in the latest food fads.

Something has always bothered me about that term especially when people call themselves foodies as if it were a credential that could be earned when it’s really a self-classification and many times, it seems to be used by someone to give themself more credibility with an air of elitism (According to OED, “1982 V. Woods et al. in Harpers & Queen Aug. 66/4 ‘Foodies are foodist. They dislike and despise all non-foodies.’”); there appears to be a similar conversation around chef vs. cook. I’m curious how many self-proclaimed foodies like cooking (OED) and how many just chase the latest trendy restaurants and just eat (MW)?

I also started wondering when the trend of taking photos of food during meals started to become more popular. When I was getting more into photography, I started taking photos of food because I found it as an interesting subject as still life and good practice for framing, composition, depth of field, and lighting. I used to be the only one taking photos of food I had made and food I had ordered, but now it’s not uncommon to be in the company of many (especially in a group setting frustrating our hungry dining companions who aren’t taking photos and also potentially being disruptive to others). I suppose now that social networking has become a regular part of people’s lives, it’s just natural to visually share what people are experiencing through taste.

Since I started reading Best Food Writing 2009, a birthday gift from a friend of mine, I thought it would be a good opportunity to expand my creative adventures to include food here (and my exploration of food establishments in my travel site).

Be warned that although I’m okay with cooking, I’ve mostly been doing baking and desserts (pictured above are pound cake and mixed berry Zinfandel sorbet I’ve made in the past). I’ve enjoyed the precision of baking and how it’s easy to create a baked treat as long as you have the staples of butter, flour, and eggs (and baking powder and baking soda).

After I had a private cooking party this year for my birthday and after organizing a screening of Julie & Julia followed by a cooking party with friends, I’ve been inspired to expand my culinary repertoire into cooking more. There should be some interesting adventures ahead…

Every year I have this tradition of picking up Noah’s bagels for my team since training is early in the morning. I have the option of getting it catered, but it’s 1) more economical and 2) a nice gesture where I do something for them. I called and pre-ordered them (so that I could determine the bagel porportions) and arrived at the store early in the morning to pick them up. The lady reopened the Baker’s Dozen box of bagels that was already filled with bagels, put in a plastic bag (for storage of leftover bagels later), then two knives, and a stack of napkins. I then watched her reconsider and take 75% percent of the stack of napkins and return it to the shelf leaving me about 5 napkins for 13 bagels.

I asked the lady at the register for more napkins and knives because the two knives would most likely be used for the two tubs of schmear leaving no knives for halving the bagels. At that point, she told me that she could put the bagels through the slicer for me. Although neat, I declined due to lack of time.

I asked her for more napkins, again. She was reluctant, grabbed a small stack and said, “We’re not supposed to…”

Is there a napkin shortage going on? I don’t think my request of at least 13 napkins was outrageous – one for each bagel – because if I bought the bagels individually I would have gotten at least one napkin for each bagel.