Still looking for a dessert to make for your mother on Mother’s Day? Try this Orange Rosemary Cake. My Mom and I developed it for the Go Bold With Butter Blog.

While you should treat your mother like every day is Mother’s Day, the Sunday of Mother’s Day should be an extra special day. It should be a celebration of how great your mom is! Every celebration needs a cake, right? Well, if your mother is a fan of oranges and of cake, then this cake will be the perfect way to end a Mother’s Day meal.

The cake can be made the night before, tightly covered, and then iced before serving. When making, be sure to add the glaze while the cake is still warm. Before icing, make sure the cake with the glaze already added has completely cooled. Have a great Mother’s Day!

Orange Rosemary Cake
Makes 1 10-inch diameter bunt pan serves about 12

Ingredients:

For cake:
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks), softened
1 1/2 cups granulated white sugar
3 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon almond extract
1/4 cup orange zest
1 teaspoon lemon zest
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary, chopped
1/2 cup slivered almonds, toasted and chopped
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sour cream

For orange glaze:
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time, mixing after each addition. Add the vanilla, orange and lemon zest, rosemary and almonds. Mix together. In a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Pour flour mixture, in halves, into mixing bowl, mixing after each addition. Add sour cream and mix until just incorporated. Be careful not to over mix.

Pour cake batter into a buttered and floured 10-inch diameter Bundt® pan. Bake for 40-45 minutes. The cake is done when a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool for 5 minutes and then place on a wire cooling rack. When cake is completely cooled, carefully remove from pan.

While cake is cooling, prepare the glaze. In a small pan, add sugar and orange juice. Stir and bring to a boil. Let boil for 1 minute. Remove from heat.

Using a toothpick, poke holes about an inch apart across the cakes surface. Brush glaze over the surface of the cake.

Tip: put a plate under the cake to catch glaze that drips off.

Let cake and glaze cool completely before icing.

Orange Cream Icing
Ices 1 cake

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar
2 ounces cream cheese, softened
2 tablespoons orange zest
1/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1 tablespoon unsalted butter, softened
1 tablespoon orange zest
1/2 teaspoon lemon zest
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
pinch of salt

Directions:

Combine all ingredients into a food processor. Process until a smooth and creamy icing has formed. Prior to serving, pour over cooled cake.

Do you like pancakes? What about Bacon and Apples? This is for you then. Here is another recipe that my Mom and I developed for the Go Bold with Butter Blog.

Oh, how I love weekend mornings. These are the times when you can unwind, relax and recharge for the busy week ahead. There are few better ways to do this than share a meal with your friends and family. It doesn’t have to be fancy; heck you can even wear your PJs if you like. All you need are the ones you love and great food. After sleeping in late the first meal of the weekend is usually pushed back closer to lunch time. With a later start to the day, your taste buds may be craving a savory breakfast item. Sure quiches, casseroles and omelets are all popular, but have you ever considered a Dutch Baby pancake?

Dutch Babies are cooked in a hot cast iron pan. As the bake, they balloon in size creating a delicious, light and flavorful breakfast treat. You can fill them with a wide range of toppings. For this weekend’s breakfast, I suggest this Savory Apple Bacon and Cheddar Dutch Baby pancake.

Apple Bacon Cheddar Dutch Baby
Serves 4-6

Ingredients:

1 apple, peeled, cored and sliced very thin
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, 3 of which are melted
3/4 cup bread flour
1/4 cup yellow cornmeal
1 cup whole milk, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
5 large eggs, room temperature
8 strips cooked bacon, crumbled
1 cup extra sharp Cheddar Cheese, grated
powdered sugar, for garnish

Directions:

Turn oven on to 375°F. Place 10-inch cast iron skillet in oven and let pan heat while you prepare the batter (5 minutes or so). Toss apple slices in lemon juice.

In a blender or food processor, add the 3 tablespoons of melted butter, flour, cornmeal, milk, salt, and eggs. Mix for 30-45 seconds until a smooth batter has formed. Transfer from blender or food processor to a large bowl. Add bacon and cheese and stir.

Remove skillet from oven and add the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter, and let melt. Arrange apple slices in a single layer in skillet. Pour batter over top.

Bake in oven until puffy and golden, about 25 minutes. Top with powdered sugar before serving.

Full Disclosure: Real Butter is compensating me for my efforts. The opinions expressed are my own.

It is hard to believe that Easter is almost here. Where has the year gone?

I realize that my posts have been lacking recently, a lot of big things are in the works. One of them is that  my mom and I have teamed up with the folks at Real Butter and have been working with them and a handful of other bloggers on creating content for their Go Bold With Butter Blog. Over the following months, I will be sharing with you what my mom and I have been developing. Here is one that is a perfect side dish to any Easter Brunch!

Asparagus with Orange Blender Hollandaise

Serves 8-10

This sauce is best to serve immediately after making, but can be held for a short while in a double boiler over low heat.

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
4 large egg yolks
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
1 teaspoon finely grated orange zest
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
Pinch cayenne pepper

2 pounds asparagus, blanched and cooled

Directions:

Warm glass blender container by filling with hot water. Let sit, while prepping other ingredients.

In a medium pot over medium heat, heat butter until it begins to foam. Once foaming, remove pot from heat and set aside to cool.

Empty glass blender and thoroughly dry. Add egg yolks, juices, and zest. Blend for about 15 seconds while adding melted butter in a slow steady stream, trying not to add the milk solids that have sunk to the bottom of the pot.

Tip: If your food processor has a hole on the stopper for creating emulsions, pour butter through that into the blender to control the stream.

Once butter is incorporated, remove blender canister and pour sauce into a glass or ceramic bowl. Season with salt and cayenne. Serve immediately over prepared asparagus.

Full Disclosure: Real Butter is compensating me for my efforts. The opinions expressed are my own.

Even though it has felt like spring for weeks in Charlotte, it was technically still Winter. That all ended yesterday with the first day of Spring! In honor of this day, my Mom decided to make a quiche inspired by Spring’s colors.

My mom and I have been spending a lot of time together lately. She is helping me with my first book (yes, I am thrilled to be working with UNC Press on my first book, I will share much more about it in the future. So that is why I have been absent recently), so we have a lot of time to talk.  After one of her walks on the Greenway, she told me about all the flowers in bloom and how they had inspired her to make a dish. She was so excited about it that she wanted me to take a picture of her inspiration. Like any son, I am going to listen to my Mom, but I have learned that when my Mom is inspired to cook something my stomach will thank me later.  So I took a quick trip over to the Greenway.

There were plenty of flowers in bloom, but there was one in particular that my mom was inspired by.

This Forsythia bush. The bush was probably 8-10 feet around and filled with hundreds of blooms!

From these beautiful yellow flowers, my Mom decided to create a quiche

made with zima tomatoes and yellow bell pepper. To round out the flavors she added blue cheese and bacon!

This quiche is perfect for any Spring brunch that you are planning.

Mom’s “Forsythia Quiche”

Ingredients

1 (9 or 10) inch baked pie shell, baked use your favorite kind.

6 slices thick cut bacon

1/2 cup zima tomatoes, quartered

1/3 cup yellow bell peppers, cut into a small dice

1/4 cup shallots, chopped

3 large eggs

1 cup heavy cream

1/2 cup  milk

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh chives, snipped

1 1/2 tablespoons scallions, sliced

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 cup blue cheese crumbles

Method

In a 9 or 10 inch quiche or pie pan pre bake your favorite crust following its recipe directions.

In a large frying pan, cook 6 strips of bacon over medium heat. When bacon is crispy and finished cooking, removes from pan and place on paper towels to cool. Reserve 1 tablespoon of bacon grease in pan. Add Zima tomatoes, yellow bell pepper, and shallots. Cook over medium heat for 3-4 minutes until soft. When soft, remove from heat.

In a medium sized mixing bowl, add eggs, heavy cream, milk, chives, scallions, salt, and pepper. Stir together. Add the softened tomato and peppers to the egg and cream mixture. Mix together. Crumble cooked bacon pieces and add to the mixture. Stir.

In cooked pie crust, spread the blue cheese crumbles out into a single even layer. Pour egg and cream mixture over top.

Bake for 20-25 minutes at 350F until a light golden brown and eggs have cooked.

A perfectly delicious way to begin Spring. With flowers in full bloom and Spring produce beginning to arrive, I look forward to  the meals this season will bring. Happy Spring!

I am not sure what this Winter was like for you, but here in Charlotte, it never really happened.

Living in the South, it doesn’t surprise me that we went a whole Winter without snow and much milder temperatures than what I experienced during my time in Madison. I am sure those living in Charlotte would agree that this Winter was exceptionally mild. I wore gloves maybe a few times, and can hardly remember ever needing to wear a hat. Sure there were a few mornings that would cause the thermometer to dip below freezing, but with highs in the 40s,50s, and 60s for most of January and February, it seems that Winter has decided not to happen.

Spring’s official start is March 20th, but given the flowers in bloom outside..

my brother being on spring break from USC, and my youngest brother starting high school lacrosse,

I am confident that Spring is here to stay. Don’t get me wrong, I do love Spring and everything that comes with it, I just wish there could have been some extended streak of cold weather  This past weekend, my Mom and I were talking about this lack of cold weather and more importantly the lack of soup making that a warm Winter brings. There are few things better on a cold day than a nice warm bowl of soup. Unfortunately, this Winter’s mild temperatures killed the mood for soup eating and making.

When having a conversation about the lack of something, it puts you in the mood for that item that you are lacking, So it wasn’t a surprise when later that afternoon my Mom decided to make a creamy tomato soup.

Mom’s Creamy Tomato Soup

Ingredients

1 medium yellow onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, mashed

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 (28 oz) cans good quality whole peeled tomatoes

1 tablespoon brown sugar

2 sprigs of fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

1 cup heavy cream

thyme for garnish

Method

In a large pot, place onion, garlic, and butter. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until onions turn soft and translucent. About 5 minutes.

Add tomatoes, brown sugar, thyme, salt, and pepper. Turn up heat and and let simmer for 15-20 minutes. While simmering, break up tomatoes with the back of a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat. Pour tomato mixture and cream into a blender ( Depending on your blender size, you may have to do in two batches) Blend into a smooth puree.

Return to clean large pot and keep on low heat until ready to serve.

Enjoy!

Look at this pineapple. Looks like a normal pineapple, right? What if I told you that this wasn’t your normal pineapple…

This is a miniature pineapple. When the pineapple was by itself, you might have assumed that it was a foot and a half long. A normal size for a pineapple. By placing the pineapple next to a cocktail, it was easy to see that this pineapple was much much smaller than your standard pineapple.

When creating your food photography, perception and scale are things that you do need to think about. Usually, the food items that you are taking a picture of will come in a standard size. Generally, we know what size an apple or an orange would be. We see these foods every day and have a good understanding of their proportions. With the rising popularity of miniature fruits and vegetables in cuisine, you may need to account for this in your food photography.

For example, let us look back at the original picture.

You know now that this pineapple is miniature. But, if you didn’t know that it was miniature, chances are that you would assume it to be of standard size.  The glass in the image next to it may help some, but the two images could be taken at different angles. When taking a picture of food that is outside of its standard size, it is important to convey this irregular size by including something of known size into the frame.

This doesn’t have to be as obvious as having a glass sitting right next to the subject. You could hold the abnormal sized food in your hands, include a fork or spoon, or you could have a standard size of that subject in the picture.

As Spring comes around enjoy playing around with new produce of varying sizes! just keep in min, if you want to emphasize an abnormal shaped food, find something to aid in understanding its proportions and scale.

on a side note….

Dear Readers,

I apologize for my absence over the last few weeks. I am currently working on an enormous project that I will be able to share with you very very soon. I realize I  have been alluding to this for a while, but I promise you that it will be worth the wait and I will be announcing it very very soon. This project will be occupying all of my time until May, so I apologize in advance for the lack of regular posts of the next 2 months. Thank you again for all of your comments and for following this blog, I really appreciate it.

- Taylor

With Valentine’s Day less than a week away, you may be wondering what to get for your Valentine? Well, if your Valentine has an obsession healthy adoration for bacon, then I have the perfect gift.

Everyone knows that Valentine’s Day and chocolate go hand in hand. Sure you could get your sweetie a large red box filled with chocolates. They then could go through the Russian Roulette of guessing which is the candy with the flavor they detest inside. Or, you could skip all  that and give them both chocolate and something they would love! For the Valentine who LOVES Bacon, slathering strips of bacon with rich and decadent chocolate will be the best Valentine’s gift they have ever received.

I could go on and on about how amazing the combination of chocolate and bacon is, but I will spare you. If you are a firm believer in the concept that bacon makes everything better, it shouldn’t surprise you that chocolate is actually improved when added to bacon. Here is how you can make chocolate covered bacon.

Chocolate Covered Bacon

Ingredients

1 pound of your favorite bacon

8 oz melted chocolate (I used semi sweet chocolate chips, but you could use dark chocolate if you prefer ,can be melted in microwave or over a double boiler)

1/4 cup toffee bits

Lay bacon strips out in a single layer on foil lined rimmed baking sheets. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 385F. Time will vary depending on thickness of bacon. Remove from pan and let cool on a layer of paper towels or brown paper bags. Once cooled, break strips in half. Holding a halved strip in one hand, dip the bacon in the melted chocolate making sure to cover the area below your fingers completely. Using a spoon, scrape the excess chocolate back into the remainder of the melted chocolate. Repeat the process until all the bacon has been covered. Place chocolate covered bacon on parchment paper, sprinkle with toffee bits and let dry.

If your Valentine is a Bacon lover,  they will love you even more after receiving chocolate covered bacon for Valentine’s Day.

In a former life, this glass bottle did once hold a chocolaty and refreshing yoo-hoo. Now it has been re purposed for something far better (yes better than chocolate). Nope, those aren’t green beans. This bottle of filled with chilli peppers and inside is Hot Pepper Vinegar.

The Monday after Food Blog South, I headed with my agent, Mac, down to Mobile, AL, for a press conference he had with one of his other clients.  After the press conference we drove from Mobile back home to Charlotte. Like every road trip, you have top stop for gas. If you are like me and spend A LOT  of time in the car, you grow fond of stopping. I blame all the hours driving to college towns for tailgates, but I have developed a fondness for certain Truck Stops. Truck Stops are awesome! They are almost always open, have plenty of drinks and candy to eat while you drive, and can be a nice break from the road. I have developed my favorites on I-85 and I-77, but had never been on this part of I-65 before. Whether it was fate or coincidence, I will never know, but I couldn’t have been happier with Mac’s decision to stop and get gas in Greenville, AL. There we stopped at the coolest gas station I have ever been to. The Smokehouse. Part BBQ restaurant, part general store, and of course a place to get gas, I could have spent hours looking at all the treasures this place had inside. In the back of the store, past the wall of hanging autographed portraits of former Auburn and Alabama coaches, was a room lined with rows of canned goods. There was everything from home made hot sauce to pickled corn and carrots. After picking up a jar of Sweet Potato Butter, I came across an interesting array of vinegars. There were a dozen or so jars that in former lives had all contained something else. Now they contained a wide variety of hot pepper vinegar. If you have never had hot pepper vinegar, you are missing out. It is the perfect addition to anything that you need to add a little tang and spice. Most commonly seen with BBQ, it is also perfect for greens of all varieties, cornbread, and even fried chicken. The hotness and flavor will very depending on the bottle’s contents, so it is easy to make one that fits your taste buds.

Making the vinegar is quite easy. All you need are clean and sanitized glass containers, spices, chili peppers, and white distilled vinegar.

I don’t have an official recipe for you yet, more of guidelines of how you can experiment. You will need

- Clean glass containers with tops. I re purposed a soy sauce bottle, maple syrup bottle, and an empty bottle I had sitting around

- an assortment of chili peppers. Use whatever you like, for example Serranos, jalapenos or habaneros ( if you like it very hot)

- whole garlic cloves

- whole peppercorns

- white vinegar heated to just under boiling

How many peppers you will need and the amount of vinegar you be able to make depends on the size of your container. For my 3 containers, I used about 2 cups. To make your jars, add a teaspoon of peppercorns and a whole peeled garlic clove. Then add the combination of peppers you like. Cut the tops off of the peppers and stuff the jar full of them. If your jar’s opening is too small, you may have to cut the peppers into strips. Just remember, the more you cut the peppers, the more surface area you create for the vinegar to absorb the flavor. If you like your vinegar really hot, then include the pepper seeds. Otherwise cut the seeds out before putting the pepper in the jar.

Once your peppers and seasonings are in, its time to add the vinegar that has been brought to just under a boil. Using a funnel, carefully pour the vinegar into  the bottle. Pour slowly so the contents don’t overflow. Stop pouring just before the top. You want to leave a little bit of head space.

Now your vinegar is ready! Over the next couple days/weeks, the flavor will intensify. You can store it in your pantry or in the refrigerator. Here are the 3 that I made.

In a few weeks, I will tell you which I like best and show you some uses for the vinegar. Enjoy!

2 years ago today, I started Taylor Takes a Taste! Wow the last 2 years have flown by! Here is a recap from year one, and now for a recap of year 2.

Year 1 was amazing, I thought it wasn’t possible, but year 2 was even better! Here are some of my favorite posts from the last 12 months.

January

In January, this double chocolate pie , experiments with beer bread, and my first Food Blog Conference!

In February, I celebrated a lot of National Food Days, gave my first food photography tutorial, and was ready for spring!

In March, I made funnel cakes, deep fried cookie dough, and had a little March Madness tournament of my own.

In April, I continued to celebrate National Food Days, went to a soft shell crab festival and shot and shot a book promo !

In May, I went Strawberry picking with the Charlotte Food Bloggers, had a crawfish boil, and checked out the Charlotte Food Truck scene.

June brought a month filled with cream pies, food photography tutorials, and National Food Day celebrations!

In July, I celebrated the 4th, taught my first food photography class, and did more food photography tutorials!

In August, I counted down towards tailgating season and celebrated a few more national food days.

September, October, November, and December, brought with it 15 weeks of traveling, tailgating, and 2 food photography workshops.

For this season’s tailgating tour, I moved the tailgating posts to a new site Taylor Tailgates, so if you haven’t seen them all please check it out. In the fall, I traveled to another 15 games, putting my total at 29 tailgates in the last two seasons.What I am doing with all this tailgating content is something that I can’t quite reveal yet. Hopefully in the next week, I will be able to tell you about a project that I spent all of 2011 working on and will spend a good part of 2012 working on as well.

This year has been amazing! I have eaten a lot, traveled a lot, and taken thousands of great pictures. In the Spring of 2011, Julie and I started the Charlotte Food Bloggers group. We are working on redoing our website now, and have a whole lot planned for 2012! If you live in Charlotte and have a food blog, of are interested in recipe writing, food photography, WordPress, and talking about/eating great food we would love to have you join us! We have a whole lot of great things planned for 2012, so I will be sure to share with you what we are up to.

So what should you expect in 2012? Right now, I am lining up several food photography workshops that will take place late spring/early summer, if you want me to come to your city send me an email! I would love to see if we can work something out.

At the end of this month, I will be going to Food Blog South in Birmingham, AL. I had a blast last year, so I am very excited to see old friends and meet new ones! Let me know if you will be there, I would love to meet you!

As far as other posts you will see,  I have a few more food photography tutorials, I will be finishing the largest project I have ever undertaken ( will be revealed soon), and will encounter a whole lot of other things that I haven’t even imagined yet!

2011 was an even better year than 2010! I can’t wait to see what 2012 holds!

Welcome to my last post of 2011.  This is not a summary of everything that I did in 2011 (that will come January 16th on Taylor Takes a Taste’s second Birthday) but more a post that combines almost everything I am passionate about.

In deciding to start a food blog, one makes it pretty obvious to the world that they are passionate about food. So my love for food should be a no brainer. Another one of my passions is photography. Making pictures, learning about new techniques, and experimenting with different lighting setups are all things that happen in my apartment. In the past year, I have started to teach about food photography. I have taught a few classes and hosted my own set of workshops. These weekends and afternoons have been some of the most rewarding days of the past year. In 2011, I have discovered my passion for sharing what I have learned with others.

This being said, it only makes sense to share with you a tutorial I think you will find very useful. With New Year’s Day being tomorrow, it only makes sense to have a post with black eyed peas as the subject. (those of you who are just here for the food, scroll down for the second half of the post an explanation and recipe for Texas Caviar)

For good or bad, we live in a world where your food is first judged by its picture. Whether it be in a book, on a restaurant’s website or any other two dimensional object, your dish will be judged by its picture. If you can’t be there to smell and taste the dish, a picture is all you have to go off of. Because of this fact, anyone who deals with food and the internet has to become a semi professional food photographer.

As many of you have realized, that is not an easy task. Yes nice cameras and expensive lenses can produce amazing images in the hands of someone who knows how to use them, but LIGHTING is the MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT of your food photography. This same unfortunate world is a world where one’s food photography schedule doesn’t line up with natural light’s schedule.

What does this leave you with? Well you have to try your best and take pictures in your kitchen or other parts of your house using artificial light. Do pictures in your dining room turn out like this?

Or maybe you have found your kitchen works a little bit better? (my kitchen is too messy to take pictures of, Thankfully my girlfriend has an immaculate kitchen complete with pink tea kettle).

That is a little better, but still not what it could be.

A new year is all about setting new goals. I have a new goal for you. If you have found that your schedule only allows you to take pictures when there is no daylight available, make your goal to MAKE GREAT PICTURES WITH ARTIFICIAL LIGHT!

You may be saying, sure you can take great pictures with expensive lighting gear. Yes, this is true, but what if I told you that you could make a photo studio for around $15 ?

Yes, it is true. All you need is….

A 500 watt Halogen worklamp that you can get at Lowe’s or Home Depot. I got mine for $6 when I was tailgating in Birmingham. It might be a little more, but all you need is one that is at least 500 watts (the power is important, don’t get a florescent one, THEY AREN’T bright enough)

WARNINGS

Halogen lights get extremely hot. I mean it. DO NOT use these with animals or small children around. This little $5 light has no on or off switch, so you will need to plug it into a power strip that has a switch. Also, you must use it on a flat level surface. AGAIN, I can’t stress this enough. The light gets very hot so be very careful and let it cool down before moving and use caution. I am not trying to scare you. They are safe, just pay attention when using and do not leave them on when unattended.

The second item that you need is a diffusion panel. This consists of a PVC pipe square frame. Take 4 equal lengths of PVC pipe and connect them in a square shape using 4 elbow joints of the same diameter as the pipe. To do this, you will need to tape a diffusion material to the PVC pipe square. I used Paper Vellum. It is sold in large rolls and in sheets. Price will vary depending on where and what size you buy, I bought a 5 yard roll. Cut your vellum to the size of your frame and then tape it to the vellum to the frame. You want to pull the vellum so it is tight and makes a flat panel.  You could also use parchment paper. Really, any translucent material that you can make a flat panel out of will work. Different materials will have different effects on the light so play around and see what works best for you.

All you have to do is shine your light through your diffusion frame and use a piece of foam board as a fill card. You can use a box or anything else you like to prop up the panel and your foam board.

This set up works with backlighting, as well!

A Halogen worklight is a Tungsten light source, so you will need to change your camera white balance to Tungsten.

While this light and set up does have some drawbacks ( I won’t get into those here) and is by no means perfect, for those of you who want to have a great lighting set up for around $15 it is hard to beat!

If one of your goals for 2012 is to improve your food photography, I hope that this set up can help!

On a related your note, if you really want to improve or learn from the beginning about food photography, I want to help!

I have received a lot of emails and questions from people about the December workshops that I did in Charlotte, asking if I would do a workshop closer to where they live. Well, the answer is YES! I would love to meet you and spend a day exploring the world of food photography.

So let me announce….. (drum roll please)

I am working on the site now, I will let you know when it is ready, but here is the general concept.

If you would like me to come do a workshop in your town, shoot me an email taylor at taylortakesataste.com and let me know:

1) where you want the workshop to be

2) how many people do you know that would be interested in attending

3) what are you interested in learning (for example artificial lighting, taking pictures of food outside, flash photography and food, travel.. ) Or a little bit of everything!

In a week or two, I will have a page where you can see what cities I have had requests from (right now I am working on NYC area, Boston, and Raleigh, NC) If I can get enough people interested, then I will book a plane ticket or load up my car and come to your city for a weekend filled of food photography and fun! Ideally there would be a Saturday and Sunday workshop that would last the whole day and each day would have at most 8 people.

The workshops would take place anytime in April, May, June and July!

This is in its preliminary stages, but if you are interested send me a message and lets see what we can organize!

Here is to a great 2012 !

- Taylor

TEXAS CAVIAR

For those of you interested in the food, let us talk about Texas Caviar. No, there are no fish eggs here. Texas Caviar is a dish made of black-eyed peas!

I adapted my recipe from one in Saveur

Ingredients

2  15-oz. cans black-eyed peas, drained and rinsed

1⁄4 cup  chopped cilantro

1 diced jalapeno pepper

1 chopped red bell pepper

1/2 cup  thinly sliced red onion

1⁄4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

1⁄4 cup red wine vinegar

1/4 tsp freshly cracked black pepper

juice of 1/2 lemon

Salt to taste

In a large bowl, combine the black-eyed peas, cilantro, jalapeno, red bell pepper, and onion. In a separate bowl, whisk together the olive oil, vinegar, pepper, lemon juice and salt. Pour mixture into larger bowl and toss to cover evenly. Store in the refrigerator until serving.

2011 it was great. 2012 it will be even better!