Eat All About It

I’ve been impressed with the events food-lover Keren Brown organizes around town, from the Foodportunity networking nights to meetups with visiting authors. I’m glad to be part of her first “Foodportunity Expression” seminar, a food writing class that I’ll lead at Andaluca restaurant from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.  Jan. 16.  We’ll cover a range of topics, including effective writing and meaningful restaurant criticism, hands-on exercises and critiques, standing out in a crowded field, and finding inspiration.We’ll also enjoy lunch together, with pintxos cooked up by  Andaluca’s Wayne Johnson.

Here’s a link to the full details. Want to join us? Sign up here. (Cost: $99, including lunch). I may be the official speaker for the day, but I can already see that some wonderful writers will be part of the group, and I’m looking forward to a great day of conversations and questions and constructive criticism.

My husband and I took a food photography workshop with Penny De Los Santos earlier this month (you’ve seen her work in Saveur and National Geographic and various cookbooks), organized by the amazing Seattle Bon Vivant. It’s been interesting exploring photography: When I started out as a journalist, the antiquated expectation was that the writer would stay out of the photo planning, leaving that entirely to the professionals. Later, some of my favorite photographers to work with were those who enjoyed collaborating, helping me understand how they translated or supplemented a story with images. But now, writers really do need to understand enough about the mechanics of photography to take at least passable pictures on our own, even if we’ll never rate as pros.

My big step into improving my (zero) baseline was taking a 10-week Introduction to Digital Photography class at the professional Photographic Center Northwest, where we learned to take our cameras off manual, to learn about shutter speeds and depth of field and other fundamentals. (This was my final project.) Food photography is such a specialized field on its own, though, and Penny’s class got me thinking about food pictures again, eyeing what other people do and trying to figure out how they got the effect they did, trying to break down their photos the same way I analyze the words of writers I admire. 

I also remembered that we don’t even necessarily need a class to improve. Just the practice of photographing the same object and comparing and critiquing our results, as we students did with Penny at Spring Hill, was enormously instructive. We could do the same with a group of friends at any meal.

Here’s a more detailed writeup I did on the class over at Al Dente Blog, and here is a link to a Flickr page of photos from participants (we still need to get ours up there) and links to blog entries by others who wrote about the experience. I especially enjoyed this post by photographer Paula Thomas, who compared Penny’s approach to another food photography workshop she took this year. Funny how interesting it is to see how others describe the same event in words as well as pictures.

Let the bidding begin! It’s time for the sixth annual Menu for Hope, the food-lover’s ultimate fund-raiser, and this year’s prizes look fabulous. 

The raffle raises money for hungry people, in the form of donations to the UN World Food Purchase for Progress program. Raffle tickets cost $10 apiece, and can be applied toward any prize you find tempting in the mix of swag and edibles and equipment and classes from some prominent (and generous) food bloggers. This year’s list of temptations includes personal photo workshops from professionals like Matt Armendariz and Lara Ferroni, dinner for two at Ad Hoc, an afternoon of foraging with Langdon Cook, six jars of Pim’s amazing marmalade, a 7.75-lb leg of acorn-fed Berkshire cured by La Quercia, a $449 home sous-vide machine (I’ll be writing more about this one next week, as I just test-drove a model), a jar of the sourdough starter Clotilde uses in her Paris kitchen, scads of signed cookbooks, and much more. 

Some of the prizes depend on location, so don’t bid on the private chocolate tasting at Rococo in London or a 10-course degustation at Attica in Australia unless you’re prepared to travel.

 Chez Pim has an overview of the fund-raiser and a link to the sites hosting prizes around the world (some of which can be shipped anywhere). Gluten-Free Girl is hosting the West Coast bids, so check out her post for a list of what’s available here.

Always dreamed of writing a cookbook for a major publishing house? How about… well, contributing a recipe to a group cookbook? Winners of a cookbook contest at Foodista.com will have their recipes in a Foodista cookbook published by Andrews McMeel in 2010. I wrote about it in today’s Christian Science Monitor, over here.

We’re finally seeing more Seattle chefs compete on reality TV, now some of our amateur cooks are going to get a chance too.

Master Chef, the new Fox TV reality show featuring Gordon Ramsey, is scheduling auditions in Seattle for Jan. 10. The Hollywood Reporter calls the show, based on a hit show in the U.K. and Australia,  ”a culinary American Idol” where contestents around the country will create dishes for a judging panel to consider. 

The key prerequisite for applicants: You can’t be a professional cook. They’re looking for “amateur chefs, passionate foodies, the ultimate dinner party host/hostesses.”   

Want to get a jump on the process? Not too intimidated by the idea of working with Mr. “SHUT IT DOWN”? Email masterchefseattle@gmail.com, and give the casting folks your name, age, occupation, current photo, contact number and a brief description of your cooking experience and style. Put Seattle, WA as the subject of the email. The Seattle casting call will be from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Sur La Table in Kirkland, 90 Central Way.

*updated 12/10

I probably am a foodie, by any definition of the word, but I’ve always hated that term. I wrote here in today’s Christian Science Monitor about whether I’m alone, and whether there might be a better word to use.  Nominations?