Photo opportunities.

One Friday recently my husband was away and my friend came for dinner.  We combined both our hobbies by having a photographic dinner party. She never goes anywhere without her camera and wanted to have a go at food photography, and I was happy to cook her dinner, pour the bubbly and entertain her with intelligent conversation (ahem!).  This particular friend is quite special because without her you wouldn't be reading this.  It was her idea that I should write a blog, she encouraged me and she also came up with the name.  So I owe her a lot of thanks.

I usually take photos of my food with my phone, as it's handy, and I don't really have the time to style it as the family are often starving and I don't have time to hang around.  When I take a photo with my phone, it's automatically uploaded to dropbox on my laptop and netbook, so wherever I write my blog, the photos are there ready to be added. 

Sometimes, if it's a cake for example I will take the time to find a background (possibly the floor!) and some decent lighting, but on the whole the photography aspect is a bit rushed. However, I think photos are really important when describing food, a picture really does speak a thousand words, and if you look at a cookery book where not all the recipes are illustrated, you will know what I mean. 

So... we had champagne and nibbles, and a platter of prosciutto, fennel seed salami and bresaola and olives... and let her take photos of whatever she wanted, the food, the kitchen, the table... with fabulous results.  Having a decent camera and lens AND knowing what to do with them makes all the difference as you can see:

For the main course I made a lasagne, served with a simple green salad.  When you have made a lasagne without using jars of ready made sauce, you will never go back.  I made the tomato sauce in the morning, before work so it was ready to add, and just cooked steak mince and added it (with the secret ingredient, a splash of Worcestershire sauce) and some red wine. Then I made the bechamel with lots of nutmeg and a bit of double cream in.  It only needs a little bit, but makes it taste really luxurious. I layered it up with some fresh lasagne that I had frozen a few months before when there was some left over in the packet, topped it with cheese and put it in the oven.

By the time it got to dessert, we had finished the champagne and a bottle of prosecco, AND put the world to rights -  and somehow there wasn't a photo of the pud - but we had frozen berries with hot custard and vanilla meringue kisses that I had made the night before.  A light but delicious girly dinner - and a very good time was had by both. 

I tried to use the above photo of some of my cookery books as a background for the blog template, but it had problems uploading it, so I've given up for now.  And I had to include a photo of my pride and joy, which looks rather fetching in black and white.

I hope to feature more of the photos in future posts, but as they were such high quality they took a long time to upload, so I can't feature too many at once - and I hope it won't be the last time I have a photographic dinner party, as I enjoyed it so much.  And hopefully I'll be a bit more inspired to take better photos of my food from now on, if my family will let me!

Thank you for reading :-)

Caroline x