winter table

It all started a dozen years ago, when I picked up a discarded painted canvas on a sidewalk, and painted a big glass, with milky white liquid at the bottom. You know, glass full, glass empty kind of thinking... That was then now It is my inner fight between light and dark,happiness and reflexion,my obsession with bareness and fullness, the muteness of objects, loud or soft,the peace or joy of colors. I paint birds, rocks and leaves, but I always come back to the table, pitchers and glasses.

food make-up ?

I guess times are going to get harder for all of us. May be, Who knows ?...., but I keep getting e-mails like this one from people who want to get into food styling. This last one is from a colombian woman with an interesting Spanish translation for food stylist in her signature ! make up for food ? or in French " maquillage pour aliments " ?

"Hello,
 
First of all, I want to tell you I'm starting my own proyect on food styling and I want to work in the bussines. I'm a colombian advertisment professional and I have been working for an Editorial company, as a producer.
I was wondering if there is a posibility of doing an internship with you as an assistant or anything similar you may consider. Right now I have my visa papers in order to stay there for 6 months or less.  
If this is not possible for you, maybe you could recommend me something that could be good for my career.


I know that in this work you grow professionaly depending on the experience you have and who beside you learn.
 
Hopping you  will consider giving me the opportunity or might as well guiding me what shold be my next step.
 
regards.
Beatriz Velásquez
Maquillaje de alimentos/ Producción fotográfica "

BUT I LOVE WHITE too....

Yesterday was pretty spectacular in many ways. Set out to meet C. at the Heath holiday sale.Cars parked for blocks,long lines in the factory store when the sale had only started half an hour before. Everything is beautiful of course, but also expensive.The reason is a good one, all handmade with a georgous sense of style and colors.The new owners are taking the midcentury look to a risky palette of saturated blues and reds. I am curious to see if they become as popular as the old quieter tones. Which I prefer.Linen is my choice, a soft white that I never get tired off. It is my breakfast set, so I need to ease into the day with softness. C.had given me the cups some years back, and sometimes I missed the saucers, I found them with slight defects for 50 cents each ! Now, that was a sale of economic downturn proportions !.only glitch : had to wait 45 minutes for my $1.72 sale ( everything is 20% off the marked price!).

Then we  set out to eat at Fish ,just a block away, to a lunch of fish(!) tacos outside on the deck. It is a restaurant I had meant to check for a long time and was pretty curious about , plus the sunny sky helped: Yesterday was one of those days, when you thank your lucky star to live in such beauty with a mediterranean weather to allow you this kind of experience... at the end of November.

The fish tacos ( with organic beer ) was disappointing. The use of tilapia set me back a bit, after all their restaurant arbors a sign " organic marin" , isn't tilapia a farmed fish and a pretty unappealling one ? So at first. it had a smoky bite from the grill, but the fishiness lingered,served with what looked like vibrant and fresh sauces, but instead, that tasted bland. give me some chipotle mayonaise or pomegranate-jalapeno salsa or something. They didn't skimp on cilantro though! price $ 12. worth it totally if it is fntastic, not otherwise. oh well we paid for the view.

The day ended with a night out in San Francisco. The sunset sky over the Bay on my way there was fun to snap,

I was meeting my friend J for dinner and  an event/talk with Toni Morrisson. After parking the car at the masonic auditorium, I suggested the Top of the Mark ( the 17th floor restaurant at the top of the Mark Hopkins restaurant). It felt so" big city" to enter this old and lavish and huge lobby, the view ( again) was impressive and we had a very pleasant moment, sitting comfortably and having a tasty treat of a mezze platter each with cosmo for me, wine for J. presentation was nice, service gracious. Then T.Morrison received a standing ovation on her entry, and admitted that she didn't believe she would live to see an African-American in the white house. Our local talk show host Michael Krasny did the interview, probing gently, intellectual in his approach. T.Morisson seemed happy, giggling  many times, showing a lighter side  to her darker writings. Her new book " A mercy" sounds fascinating, blending early american history and human complex emotions.

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November sun

You must have heard of the Southern California fires and the( 85 F) 30 oC  temperatures....Here, it has also been unusually warm, with some hot winds going every which way. scarry, yes, but without the fires here, also utterly delicious. tank top on bicycle, a switch back from soups to salads,pique niques on Muir Beach, the Bay waters looking a saphire blue, and a return to the back yard for a week end lunch. I had put it all away, including the finely woven straw table mat. It was the first time we were using it, after our purchase in San Miguel.
We had a fancy lunch at restaurant Chamonix (!) in San Miguel de Allende, eating in the back patio, surrounded by bougainvillas and that great blue waterfall wall that I already showed in an earlier post. The tables were covered by these mats, and we found it so pleasant to the touch and the eyes that we decided to track one for ourselves . track is the right word since we had to wander around the crowded square in search of Maximiliano, who was carrying them on his back and peddling them, usually in front of the terrace of the restaurant to the left of the Parroquia, the big baroque chuch, ressembling in a minor way to the Sagrada familia , the Gaudi madness of Barcelone.The Plaza was crowded with aztec dancers celebrating San Miguel , men were twirling upside down,tied to their ankles around a giant pole, I was drinking another  margarita when I spotted Maximiliano and bought( haggled over)   the mat.Sunday lunch brought us a little bit back to that memory and to the the warmth of everything Mexico, only quieter.

I love black

Black is anonimity, depth, drama,boldness, graphic,despair,forever,opposites.

When my grand father offered me a watch as a young teen, I chose a black face watch with a white leather band.

It signaled my desire for non conformity. I still arbor this need, but have found myself instead quietly moving toward the black . In its safety, there is always elegance. In the eighties, I had a set of black plates and loved them for awhile.Now, there seems to be a return to the black ceramics after decades of white.yin/yen,now welcome to my tea time with a tux.

candyland

We tricked and treated for years when Dot was growing up.Then, in junior high, some of her classmates smashed our pumpkins and egged our house. at that point, We started a period of dark porch, and pique niques in the back bedroom with the t.v wheeled in and a good movie. But this year, I decided to be a friendly face for the neighborhood kids that have suddenly crowded our street. It felt right after all these hidding years. So I carved my little pumpkin with its throwing up guts ( great success with the kiddies) and wrapped my porch with spidder web hanging low: if you had to bend down, you were too old to trick and treat !!!
Then, I made a deal with the monsters: candies,  then photo....

aren't these the cutest ? they all loved to have their picture taken and I think it shows.click on the image to see the kiddies' faces...