Buckweat-Quinoa veggie muffins with lime-vanilla cream-cheese frosting

August is here and so is the middle of summer, not only that actually; August usually brings my whole family to Bonn for a little summer vacation.
My family has been visiting me regularly since I moved to Germany; a subtle way to keep an eye on my doing as well as experimencing new places, people and realities. The days of their visit are though punctuated by visits to some of our canonical restaurants of different extractions and traditions, often joined with some of my friends, but these days ar essentially a continous shopping-spree for the ladies of the family. By now, after more than 7 years, they are rather used to Bonn and so they do not need much attending from my side so I can continue my work as usual.

Lotta-Garlic chicken and a Conference

July is here.
With its finnicky mood this summer feels more like an early autumn. Sunny and melting days are followed by gloomy gray mornings. Every now and then though, there are days with a perfect balmy temperature; the sun shines through the patches of puffy clouds swimming in an ultramarine sky and the sparrows are chirping.
Autumn can be the best season of the year when it wants.

This year I am quite looking forward to the actual autumn since this year I will finally manage to attend again the Food Bloggers Connect conference in London.

Mom Francesca's eggplant and onion casserole

Traveling always improves our lives; a rich baggage of memories and images can change us more than we can actually realize.
Oral stories sung by bards and grandparents have left the place to printed works and the ominous prescriptions of altarpieces and religious friezes.
Printed and visual experiences continously pull and push us around like little creatures on our shoulders whispering in our ears words of alternate realities populated by far away but somehow familiar beings. Invisible silken threads connect us nowadays in ways almost unimmaginable to our immediate ancestors.
"Practice makes us perfect" they used to say, practice is all they had to learn by, to improve, to debunk myths and legends, when they weren't meant to accompany us in the sweet kingdom of Morpheus.

Chocolate rum quinoa pudding and a visit to Nantes

A trip to France always needs some time to get assimilated, especially when you come back with more than 1000 shots to edit.
I often rethink at the great weekend I spent in Nantes few weeks ago under a summery sun and in great company. Aside from exploring the objective beauty of a city, I find that getting in touch with its soul is a much more rewarding feat. People watching is great fun especially when you can sport an anthropological motive for your nosiness.
Being a tourist for me means being a citizen of leisure, living the city as close as its citizens would normally do but without the hanging pain of daily chores. I love to stroll among the frenchies, discovering their cities and their daily secret pleasures.
Having a camera on your shoulder though does single you out as an inquisitive foreigner ready to invade people's privacy for the mere pleasure of recording.

Roasted Onions stuffed with masala quinoa, amaranth and caramelized Brussel sprouts

I am going through a period when I just do not feel the sparks sparkle. New dishes may come out and find their way to paper but they stop there, there is no drive into cooking them or is it perhaps the photo shoot that somehow scares me?
To create compelling pictures you need a driving idea, a theme that is going to diffuse into your pictures. Most of my works so far have been concentrated in shooting the bare food, isolating it rather than making it part of an organic context.
Treating the plated food as a sculpture, an object of beauty with its own right to shine has always attracted me but now it doesn't seem to be enough.