I may be stating the obvious here, given the food blog, but I’ve always had an admiration for good food—especially picture worthy food. I spent my college and law school years planning vacations and road trips around food spots I’d heard about and wanted to try—I’ve got a long list, I’ve probably got a place to eat in every big city in the country. I used to relish in the moment when I would sit down in a restaurant I’d been longing to try. I’d look at the menu, carefully decide everything that I would order, and then I’d sit and wait—camera in hand—for the food to arrive. I’d never take a bite before snapping a photograph, or 50, and capturing the moment—taking insta-worthy pics before instagram ever was. I’ve probably got over 5,000 photos of just food on my old computer—sitting in limbo because I never really had an outlet to share them.
When I got the idea to start a blog about food, I was so excited by the idea of taking pictures of my own food. Since I’m cooking anyway, how hard could it be to stage my food into blog worthy pictures? Probably not too hard, until you add a food loving minnie me into the mix. Just when each and every last seed and berry is strategically placed on your smoothie bowl, in comes a precious little grumbling belly with two little lobster claws for hands grabbing away and saying “oooh yummy, is that mine?”
And there goes the shot… or so you’d think. But sometimes, maybe even most of the time, those little hands creeping their way into the frame do more to make the shot than break it. And even more importantly, it gives me a gift much greater than any cute picture.
The more often it happens, the more I realize and appreciate how lucky I am and what’s really important in life. Being somewhat of a control freak for most of my life, having a toddler teaches me not only about patience, but also about not sweating the small stuff… So maybe I just spent the whole afternoon cooking, preparing and plating a dish for the blog and in an instant all that hard work and what my idea of perfection was is gone, but the more I do it and the more it happens, the more I realize that it’s all good. I can re-plate the food, or remake the dish next week… My world won’t end because something didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to, so there’s no reason to sweat it. I started this blog so I could do something with my daughter that makes us both happy and allows us to share our happiness with others. Life’s not perfect, things don’t always go as planned, sometimes things are out of our control, but as long as we’re together and we don’t sweat the small things, we’re happy and having fun. So next time something frustrating happens, take a moment to reflect before you react. If whatever it is that happens won’t affect your life in the grand scheme of things, don’t sweat it, move on and be happy!
With that said, here are some of our behind the scene shots, a look into our day to day fun… our blooper reel.
