Happy April Fool's Day (tomorrow)!

 

Edible and Non-Edible Art #1 and 2

Today's post is the beginning of a series devoted to food portrayed in the arts. Or perhaps it's a continuation of the theme from the Pi Day post - pies as objets d'art. 

I think there about a dozen artists to feature so I'll try for two per post once in a while over the coming weeks and see how we get on. I found these artists through @womensart1 on Twitter as part of their campaign for #WOMENSART.

Let's start with breakfast. 

#1 Judith G. Klausner

Embroidered Egg on Toast, Judith G. Klausner

#1 is US artist, Judith G. Klausner. Her bio states that she enjoys playing with her food. Here's one of her cameo Oreos.

Oreo Cameo, Judith G. Klausner

Klausner's website is very interesting to browse through, lots of unusual artwork there. She sells 3-D prints of her Oreo Cameo series.

#2 Caitlin Freeman 

Caitlin Freeman is a food artist and pastry chef, formerly at the Blue Bottle Cafe at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art. She finds inspiration there for recreating artworks that are consumable. Here is her Mondrian Cake on the front cover of her 2013 book:

Here's a sampling of other treats:

The Marsh Family

The Marsh Family consists of Dad, Ben Marsh, his wife Danielle and their four kids, Alfie, 13, Thomas, 12, Ella, 10 and Tess, 8. They live in southeast England and, with a lot of time on their hands during the UK lockdown, have been entertaining themselves and others by performing parodies of songs on YouTube. 

The family members are multi-talented and I think it's obvious that a great deal of practice, as well as fun, has gone into all their performances. They started out in spring 2020 with "One Day More".

People have jokingly called them the von Trapped Family. 

Their YouTube Channel is not monetized in spite of the viral nature of the videos. They have donated their media appearance fees to Save the Children. 

Here's a recent video, Feb. 18, 2021: "The Buy-in Eats Tonight" - "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" adapted by the Marsh Family: 

Happy π Day!

3:14 Time for our yearly tribute to pies. This year there's no better tribute than reviews of two 2020-published cookbooks: Lauren Ko's fabulous new book, Pieometry and Helen Nugent's equally wonderful Pie Style.

Pieometry

Lauren Ko

I've mentioned Lauren Ko previously on this blog (March 14, 2018) but in case you missed it or don't remember, here's a bit about her, even more than what I posted earlier:

A young woman living in Seattle, Ko is completely self-taught when it comes to pies/pastry. She comes from a family that loved cooking, but pies weren't in their inventory of interests. In the early days of Pinterest, she noticed wonderful photos of pies that others had posted and decided to try a lattice-top apple pie - her very first pie. 

Soon she was inspired by photos from other bakers and started using pies as an artform and Instagram as a place to save the photos of them. Within a couple years she was a phenom on YouTube and Facebook and started holding workshops in Seattle, quitting her full-time job to devote herself to pies. Today she has 415,000 followers on Instagram and has just published her first book, Pieometry.

On Instagram, she doesn't really go into her techniques for creating the most awesome designs ever but she promises in Pieometry to demystify the process. In the introduction she claims that anyone can make these pies and she encourages beginners to be brave and get creative, starting with simple recipes and patterns and working up to more complicated. 

                

 Lauren's Instagram account is @lokokitchen.

I was happy to find Pieometry at the library and I brought it home, not so much with the intention of baking, but more out of curiosity to learn her secrets and look at the amazing photos. The book itself is a work of art. 

Pie Style

Helen Nugent

Helen Nugent, a Torontonian Instagrammer with 65,000 followers is also a self-taught pie artist. Her website is Pie-Eyed Girl (with lots of recipes and instructions) and her Instagram handle is @batterednbaked. Helen occasionally has tutorial videos on her Instagram channel. Look at this beauty from Pie-Eyed Girl: 

Holiday Wreath Spiced Cranberry and Apple Pie

Like Lauren Ko, Helen has a 2020 cookbook now for sale or, if you're lucky like I am, on the shelf at your library. 

The book has recipes and how-to's and tons of amazing photos. 

 

Like Pieometry, Pie Style is another treat to leaf through, even if you have no intention of making anything and it's a useful tool if you actually have pastry dreams and aspirations. 

 

Happy π  Day!

The Women are Coming

March 8 is International Women's Day. The theme for 2021 is #ChooseToChallenge.

A challenged world is an alert world.

Individually, we're all responsible for our own thoughts and actions - all day, every day.

We can choose to challenge and call out gender bias and inequity. We can choose to seek out and celebrate women's achievements.

Collectively, we can help create an inclusive world.

From challenge comes change, so let's all choose to challenge.

More at the 2021 International Women's Day page.

Blogiversary!

It seems hard to believe, but March 4 is the 10th birthday of Some Favourite Things. What started out to be a way to save for myself as well as share my fairly eclectic interests with family and friends has remained, after approximately 1100 posts, just that. 

Some Favourite Things has also been a way of keeping track of what I read and I've enjoyed writing the occasional book review. I just checked and believe-it-or-not, there are 89 book reviews so far.

I have a small readership that comments only rarely. Statistics show that readers come from across North America as well as parts of Europe, Scandinavia and even Russia and Indonesia. I suspect that most people trip over my blog as part of a Google Search and are one-time visitors. That's ok. I've never been concerned with readership numbers the way so many bloggers and vloggers are these days (and I have no problem with these folks because they are providing income for themselves). No, I started out and continue to do this just for myself and if there are things that others find interesting, that's the icing on the birthday cake.

😊

Doing research, preparing posts has been both a learning experience and an enjoyable way to spend time. Quite a lot of time, in fact.

After 10 years, it would be normal to consider whether to continue. I'm still thinking about that. In the meantime, I will carry on. 

If you're reading this, thanks for visiting Some Favourite Things!