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At the start of the Summer I was hired to shoot food photography for a pretty great book. You may recall that I’m from Vancouver Island, and if you’ve read any of my blog posts before, you know that I love making food look delicious on camera, to say the least.

So, when the chance came to shoot the food for a Comox Valley based book that promotes local chefs, local food, and the people who live on the Island that grow and produce this food..’Sign me up’ I said!

Here’s the cover and some shots from the book…I hope you enjoy them.

The book is available for purchase on the North Vancouver Island Chefs Association website.

Think that title is a little out there? Or totally intriguing? Wait till you see the food photography. And it won the book a pretty big compliment.

This year’s James Beard Award (coined “the Oscars of the food world”) for best cookbook photography went to the The Big Fat Duck Cookbook, by Heston Blumenthal. The photographer is Dominic Davies from the Netherlands. You can see images from the book at the link above, as well as some of Davies’ other work.

So…now that you’ve looked at the cookbook photography…what do you think? Obviously it knocked the socks off the Beard Award judges; did it knock your socks off too?

Wanted: guest blogger/foodie/writer

Job Description: 1 - 2 blog posts per month about something food related

Compensation: guest posts returned!

That about sums it up. I want to exchange blog posts with a food blogger, who may also be a foodie, a writer, an artist…there isn’t any restrictions and certainly aren’t any necessary requirements, except that you have to have a food or food related blog yourself.

You must want to write about what you love, it must somehow be related to food, and I will do the same for your blog. We will discuss and approve each others post ideas before writing.

There are more fabulous, talented food bloggers out there than I can keep track of, and I wanted to throw my idea of cross pollinating our talents through our blogs.

Any takers?

Email me at info@jackieconnelly.com.

• Do you know that the UBC Farm is the only operating farm in the city of Vancouver? And that it holds numerous programs educating children, students and adults to learn about growing food, farming and agriculture, physical and holistic health and more?

• Do you know that the UBC Farm supplies organic food to Pair Bistro, Nu Restaurant, Sage Bistro, Cru Restaurant, UBC Food Services, Provence Restaurant and more?

• Do you know that this farm land is currently under threat?

If you are a regular reader of my blog you will know that I am a supporter of local farmers, farmers markets, and growing our own food (and now in my own gardening efforts). If you’re new to my blog, well now you know this bit about me too. I studied art at UBC for 5 years and while I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts which I am proud of, the severe growth of ‘University Town’ did not sit so well with myself and a lot of others. Now, the University wants to continue their construction on the UBC Farm land and the Farm needs your help and support to impress the importance of everything that the University will be destroying if they move ahead with this construction.

How you can show your support: Tuesday, April 7, 2009 from 3:30 pm into the early evening to attend the Great Farm Trek 2009! Join thousands as they trek from the UBC Student Union Building (SUB) via the Board of Governors meeting and then on to the UBC Farm. If you can’t make it until after work, they will be shuttling late-comers by bus from parking areas near UBC Farm directly to the Trek crowd anytime between 3pm and 6pm. After 6pm, the crowds will be located at the UBC Farm for festivities. This is a celebratory, family-friendly event…bring snacks, water and weather-appropriate clothing…the event will happen rain or shine! At the UBC farm there will be live music, food, addresses from David Suzuki and others, and a ceremonial planting.

For more info and questions: email friendsoftheubcfarm@gmail.com

For directions, Trek route, and parking instructions please see: www.amsubc.ca

If you’ve just scanned the info above and aren’t sure about how the UBC Farm impacts our city, grab a coffee and take a break to watch these two videos, they say it all.

Our friends at DoMatcha must really like casinos.  Or maybe it’s the Cirque shows?  Or maybe they’re huge fans of the original CSI?  Either way, they want to go to Vegas and they need our help!

Today is the last day to vote for their DoMatcha-tini in the Best Tea Cocktail competition. Finals are in Las Vegas in May, and they need to stay in the top 15 finalists in online voting to get there. Right now they’re in 10th place, but they need more votes! In Vegas they could be selected for the top 5, and with any Irish luck they could win the finals! Voting ends today so if you haven’t voted yet please give them a hand. Thanks for your support!

Here’s how to vote:

1. Go to the World Tea Expo website
2. Under Top Tea Cocktail Voting (down the left hand side of the site)
3. Vote for DoMatcha-tini by adding a checkmark

That’s it! Good luck DoMatcha!

Jack Bernard and his bar team, along with everyone else that has been working hard to get LUX at Caprice known as one of Granville Street newest and most popular hot spots since it opened this past November, must have the inside scoop. The Georgia Straight’s Golden Plate Awards aren’t being announced until their March 12 issue, but somehow Jack knows they’ve done pretty good.

In this case, pretty good translates to 1st Place - Vancouver’s Best New Restaurant Downtown and 2nd Place - Most Imaginative Cocktails. A huge congratulations everyone at LUX, you deserve it.

To see more of the food, beverage and restaurant interior photography we have shot for Lux, visit here and here.

To quote one of the many lovely food blogs I read, bread&honey recently wrote a  post by this same title, for the same reason as I write this post: because we have lives. Lives that involve significant others, lives that involve children (for me, pets), my wonderful clients, and necessities like paying the bills, laundry, eating and sleeping. Sometimes blogging is one of those things that gets left out momentarily, and that’s ok. Now I’m going to excuse myself and go back to working on my next post. See you all back here soon.

Cheers,

Jackie

As part of our foodie interview series Chewing the Fat, we recently interviewed Christy from the Australian foodie blog Fig & Cherry. Now Fig & Cherry has been nominated in the Blogger’s Choice Awards for Best Food Blog. Woo hoo Christy, congratulations!

If you haven’t already visited her blog from our interview with her, or otherwise, please do so here…and if you enjoy it, you can vote for it here.

Good luck Christy!

Miss 604 is one smart cookie. So smart that she got me writing this post. The challenge? Write a post about the charity close to my heart, and link to her efforts towards CandaHelps. So, here goes.

There are several charities close to my heart and the hearts of my family including the BC Cancer Foundation as we have a family member who is a breast cancer survivor, the BC SPCA as there are two fur bearing members of my family and would have ten more if I had more time, but at this time of year the Food Bank tops my list.

Sitting down to Christmas dinner. photo: Simon Ogden

This year instead of buying Christmas gifts for the adult members of our family (we still bought for the little ones) my Grandpa wrote ‘Food Bank’ on a yellow stickie note and stuck it to an empty gift box; after we had finished eating the massive meal prepared by my mom, uncle & cousins the gift box was put on the table and people contributed whatever money they could to it.  For some it was $5 or $10, for others $20, but we all felt good making a group effort that would go towards others who aren’t as lucky as we are.

Being a food photographer and seeing the amount of food purchased for our shoots (and lots of it not used, go bad and/or thrown away) I must remind myself how lucky I am and that there are other less fortunate people living in my neighborhood, my city and in my country that need help not only during the holidays but all year round.

Happy Holidays to everyone,

~ j