About once a month I do a recipe shoot for the Birmingham Sunday Mercury, which from start to finish can take most of the day. I spend the day or so before the shoot brainstorming for ideas writing lots of notes, and then throwing most of them away. I try to come up with 3-4 dishes, then those 3-4 recipes will feature in my column for the next 3-4 Sunday’s. Just like any other creative endeavour sometimes the ideas flow and other times (usually after a long hard week) my brain is mush. On those occasions I stare blankly at a piece of paper seemly waiting for the invisible ink to show it’s self, but it never does so I then run a few ideas past my big sister, bless her. My sister Lynn is a very good cook in her own right, so chatting with her helps me clarify my thoughts. Shopping also influences the final choice of dishes; it greatly depends finding quality ingredients so I always go to the store with 1-2 backup ideas.
Besides the need to do a shoot I have been promising for months to give some cooking lessons at a local school (it’s something I do at various local schools from time to time). Then the idea hit me!!!!!!!! Why not combine the two? So the kids could see how the process works as well as getting a cooking lesson or two.
So that’s how I spent my day yesterday, I really enjoyed it, my host Maggie Skinner could not have been more helpful, the children paid attention and asked lots of intelligent questions. Even the food editor turned up and decided to write a feature story about it.
Yesterday was a Shoot © Kevin Ashton 2006
http://www.kikita.blog.co.uk
2006-04-06 @ 16:36