We have gone from unseasonably cool spring weather to hot and humid summer weather overnight here in STL. Might be a good time for a snow cone.
I worked with St. Louis Magazine art director Kevin Goodbar on the current issue which is out this week. Simple, colorful, and I hope it sells a boatload of magazines.
Last weekend we attended our daughter’s graduation from Duke University, where she was graduated with a masters degree in Environmental Management. Barb and I are very proud of Emily.
One of the honorary doctorates was awarded to a British scientist, Sir John Pendry. He is credited with creating the first practical “invisibility cloak”. I know it sounds like science fiction, but it is real! Using metamaterials, he is able to bend light around an object, so that it is invisible. My crude illustration of my cloak is in the photo below.
We had some nice meals in Durham, and at one restaurant the wine list included both the white and the red wines that we will be serving at Emily’s wedding in a few days. Of course we ordered them, and they are good.
That must be a good omen.
We were greeted at the studio this morning with a flooded floor. The heavy rains caused our storm drains to back up, and it made quite a mess. Greg has been mopping since he arrived. Thankfully there is not much going on today.
The mud patterns on the tile floor appealed to me, so I took a few photos…
Look for beauty where you can find it!
Saturday evening was unseasonable cool, but it was still a lovely evening for pizza by the pool. Barb and I worked all day in the garden, and I even got in the pool briefly. The solar cover warms it some, but it was still pretty brisk.The sky was unusually beautiful. The wind kept the clouds moving all the time.
Our friends gathered for pizza, and we started a fire in the chiminea for extra warmth. My friend Jeff brought some toppings, including an experimental topping of crabmeat, avocado, chevre, and dill. He also made his signature pizza, caramelized onions, gorgonzola, mushrooms, and arugula.
I should have taken a photo of Barb’s pizza, which got a little too thin and did not survive the trip to the oven. It would have tasted great, and we’ll definitely try again next time. It was salsa, black beans, corn, and cheese.
Barb and I lunched with her parents at the Carmi Motel Coffee Shop today, and it was just as I remembered from the last time, about 20 years ago.
I had the BBQ, fries and slaw. The service is friendly, the food fried, and you get free coffee refills. Easy on the pocketbook, too.
Our friends from Adamson and Logan’s Roadhouse Restaurants were in the studio last week for a busy day of shooting. The T-bone above was one of my favorites.
Jeff Knubley art directed the shoot, and also had time to take several production photos. He was nice enough to share them…
I know a lot of people like leftover cold pizza for breakfast, but this one is hot from the oven, and is breakfast for dinner.
The base is sautéed swiss chard, and it’s topped with bacon, mozzarella, and a couple of raw eggs. The eggs in this case were most definitely sunny side up, since the pizza was in the oven a brief 2 minutes or so.
This was one of the six pizzas we made Saturday evening, a beautiful night in spite of the weather forecast, which said 100% chance of storms. It did start to drizzle around the time we were serving dessert, which was sage ice cream with strawberries and balsamic vinegar. So we went indoors.
My friend Maxine Stone has been writing a book on Missouri’s Wild Mushrooms, and now that the finish line is near, she needed a few photos of mushroom recipes to complete the project. She called a couple of days ago, and I was glad that I had time to help her out.
We photographed nine recipes in her house, and she was very well organized. We took a lunch break near the end, and got to try several of them. They were all delish.
One of the most unusual recipes was for Candy Cap sauce over ice cream, shown above. Candy caps are naturally sweet, and after snapping the photo, we devoured it.
One of my favorite photos is the black trumpet soup, shown above. The base of the soup is butternut squash, and it is topped with black trumpets.
The book is being published by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, and will be available this summer.
