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Spicy Beef and Chickpea Shakshuka Recipe

Bavarian Potato Salad Recipe

Spicy Peach Peanut Sauce Recipe

Healthy Crispy Vegan Falafel Recipe

Hello!

Hello my name is Juli and I am the person who keeps this place full of food, stories and bad jokes. Just kidding, my jokes are the bomb! I am a thirty-two (still cannot believe it) year old 'girl' living in the south of Germany and I refuse to see myself as a grown-up! In fact I think I never

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Guys, I have a question today. Why do you like food photography?

As you have stumbled upon this picture somehow, I assume you’re either a (hobby or professional) food photographer or you just like to look at pictures of food. Or you might as well not give a crap about food photography but know me in real life and follow my account out of common courtesy… if you fall in that category, that’s probably not a question for you. But I digress… again!

Anyway… lately I find myself flipping through cookbooks, Pinterest and food photography related hashtags on Instagram. Analyzing pictures and styles, themes and color schemes I find myself captivated as well as completely fascinated by what I see. Even though I am currently struggling a bit with the execution, I am falling in love with food photography as such again. And when you think about how fascinated one can be with images of food, I can’t help but feel it’s indeed a bit random.
So I try to recall why and how I formed an interest in food photography in the first place. I fail to answer that question. Sure, I think first and foremost it’s the love of food. It is probably the common denominator that unites us all. But there must be more.

I mean, I have tried landscape and travel photography and franklyI am a bit bored by it. I tried portrait photography and while I am more fascinated by it, I am just not good at giving instructions and working with someone in that way. I tried a bit of street photography (definitely an interest of mine), yet personal rights in my country are not particular street photography friendly.

So the one thing I am always coming back to is food photography. One might think it’s easy. You don’t need a model or to be at a particularly exciting place BUT cooking (and don’t even get me started about baking) something pretty is damn hard. It’s time consuming and sometimes utterly frustrating. But it’s the one thing that’s keeping me interested and that makes me fall in love with itself over and over again for years now.

So please share with me what you like about images of food! And if you are part of category one, I’d be super interested to hear why you first started with food photography?

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Do you ever come back from a trip and immediately start to recreate your favorite gustatory memories?

I think I have recipes tried and tested, revised and improved from pretty much every trip I took in the past couple of years. Even our Iceland trip where we literally lived off eggs, toast and instant ramen introduced me to Skyr which is now on our shopping list almost every week.

There is a black notebook in my kitchen with pages and pages of scribbled down ingredients lists, crossed out and adjusted measurements, combination of spices that might or might not enhance the taste. Sometimes I come close taste-wise but I can never quite nail the experience. Yet each and every of these recipes is tied to a special place and a good memory in my mind.

This one though does not come from one of my favorite food memories as Banh Mi is definitely one of my husband’s obsessions. We fist got to try that style sandwich on our first trip to Melbourne (shout out to foodie friends who force you to expand the horizon of your palate). I swear I am not exaggerating, Stefan made me get Banh Mi once every single day for the rest of our time in Melbourne.

On our last trip to Melbourne this February, getting Banh Mi was THE ONLY thing on his to-do list. I cannot cast the first stone though, as the only thing on my list was cookbook shopping. But that’s probably a story for another day.

Anyway, so while probably every other person who ever visited Melbourne would associate the city with coffee or brunch, Stefan associates it with Banh Mi.

Other random associations:

London = Salt Beef Bagel
New York = warm coffee cake
Rome = Croissants filled with Vanilla Pudding
Lisbon = Pulpo Hot Dog (and I don’t talk about a sausage cut in shape)

Do you have any random food associations with places you have visited?

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Lately I do feel like time is rushing even faster than before. Since staying at home all day this feels particularly evident.

Psychological research suggests that our brain tends to only really notice the extraordinary in our lives. And when our days are all the same and there is little to no change, time feels shorter than when there is a lot to process.
So last week I made a conscious effort to make my brain process the time that passes more slowly. Not only because I hate when my days rush by in a blur, I am also a sucker for a good old self-experiment aka a little bit of self-manipulation.

So, what’s the verdict? Unfortunately my empirical data is inconclusive as last week didn’t go at all as planned but everything I touched failed somehow.. dun dun dun... But hey, at least my brain really registered all those fails.

My plans to work out were destroyed by me waking up sick on Monday morning and not feeling well all week. Self-manipulation??? We never know. But that didn’t work for a start.

Finally starting to read new books in my lunch breaks was cancelled by the aforementioned sickness because I had to lie on the couch and curse my wonky immune system for lunch instead. I did the second best and started re-watching Star Trek for the first time in 20 years. And I am obsessed… again. That kinda counts as new, right?

And oh my grand creative endeavors… I might have mentioned (aka complained about) currently being stuck in a creative rut. In my experience there are two ways out: The first (and the one I am going to share today for dramaturgic reasons) I call the ‚head through the wall‘ method. That means pushing until my mojo comes back. And as I really like bread I thought baked goods + my camera would be the recipe for success. Sadly I forgot that I am really shit at baking and the two things I wanted to bake and photograph turned out so ugly that I had to let go of this plan.

In hindsight, the one day that really felt super long last week was the one where I cleaned the apartment. Go figure
Anyway… there’s no real point to that today other than sharing a picture of me sprinkling flour - the one baking step I always nail! Now how’s your week been?

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Are you more a living in the past, present in the moment or planning the future kind of person?

While I really try to be more present in the moment, I find myself usually planning (and not uncommonly also worrying about) the future. While I am not believing anymore that my happiness is solely depending on X or Y happening 2 years down the line, I am one of these annoying people who always try to have a plan for how things will go. I guess it calms down my inner control freak at least a little bit. May it be the next few possible travel destinations, things I want to learn or explore or lately even meals we will have during the week, name it and I will most probably have a list on my phone for it.

The one thing I deliberately block out is the dooming question of what I will do next career-wise. But that’s a story for another time. Or for the sake of what’s left of my sanity, maybe better not.

Anyway, as always I digress… what I am actually going to tell you is, that lately (probably because the future feels more uncertain than ever) I feel myself thinking about the past. And I really don’t do that often.

I have been going through old phone photos, looking at old travel pictures and also went through my old food photography archives. Apart from brilliant memories mainly of past trips I figured out two shocking things:

1 - damn am I looking old compared to only a few years ago!!! And In case you’re wondering, I am NOT okay with it! When they tell you, you will benefit from your baby face in your thirties, DO NOT BELIEVE IT!

2 - When I started taking pictures of food, I was REALLY shit at it! Seriously, I forgot how bad I really was! And the worst part, when I look at those really lousy images now, I still vividly remember that I didn’t feel too bad about them back then.

Well, apparently not only my face but also perception changes over time. And in case you think I am being too dramatic (or have missed it on my stories) here you have a fun little gallery of Chili con Carne. Picture 1 - last week, picture 2 - 2017, picture 3 - 2015!

You can laugh. I certainly did!

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